‘Am I Going to Feel Any Better?’
Voice of God 1: The science behind that is the older you get, there are few novel experiences that slow time down. So as a kid, every moment arrests you because it’s the first time you’ve seen it, the older you get, the fewer things you’re seeing for the first time so fewer things slow down time for you.
Voice of God 2: I like that theory. I like the theory but I’m looking for…how to slow down time.
Voice of God 1: Yeah. Find stuff that’s novel.
Voice of God 2: Am I going to feel any better?
Voice of God 1: Here’s a high drive to center field off of the bat of Pages, it’s gotta chance! It’s gone! Oh my goodness! An absolute blitzing! 13 runs in three innings!
The May 15, 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers TV booth had a lot to ponder. Their team was up by 8 runs in the bottom of the third when Andy Pages came to the plate. As the batter faced off against the Athletics’ Jason Alexander, the perception of time led to pontificating on happiness. Then Pages hit a home run and the subject was not revisited.
This mid-May baseball television commentary is everything good about sports and broadcast and art. A Cuban born World Series champion hitting off against a guy that might have been named after Jerry Seinfeld’s fictional best friend led to two baseball lifers, one play-by-play announcer and a former athlete turned color commentator, wondering if there’s more to life than this. It’s “Waiting for Godot” meets “The Simpsons” episode “Brother’s Little Helper” (the one with Bart on behavioral drugs, MLB spying on everyone and Mark McGwire helping cover up the conspiracy by hitting dingers (Mark McGwire: “Do you wanna know the terrifying truth? Or do you wanna see me sock a few dingers?” Townspeople: “Dingers! Dingers!”)). We already know the terrifying truth. We also want to see those dingers.
Baseball doesn’t give life meaning. But it also doesn’t promise to have answers. It’s just a game that’ll, fingers-crossed, outlive all of us and gives us something to help ignore everything else. And helping to distract people is one of the best things you can do.
I do not know if you will feel any better. I hope you do. But there’s nothing much me or anyone else can do to make that happen. What I can do is bullshit about baseball. If you’re willing to do that, I’m more than happy to tell you about the time I saw Frank Thomas’ first grand slam at the then brand new Comiskey Park (I had great seats for getting on the honor roll), the best places to sit to get a foul ball (I’ve caught one at Wrigley and chastised a grown man at Nats Park for taking one from a child), how easy it is to get to throw out a first pitch at a Minor League Baseball game (Just email! Thanks, Omaha Storm Chasers!), the time Ron Santo thought “Dawson’s Creek” was a daily soap opera and James Van Der Beek had to break it to the lifelong Cub (except for the one year he played for the White Sox! (If Ron Santo could play for both Chicago teams, I can root for both!) that Ron was watching reruns or why Moisés Alou is the worst Cub of all time.
Speaking of Alou, one of the aforementioned Voices of God in the Dodgers’ booth was Dodger great and Cub-for-one-year, first baseman Eric Karros. The one year Karros happened to be a Cub was 2003, the same year Alou blamed a fan for his own mistake in left field, arguably the second-biggest blunder in modern MLB history (nothing can compete with Red Sox first baseman’s Bill Buckner World Series game 6 error (Buckner, another former Cub first baseman!).
None of this connects and all of this connects. The history of the actual game means something to some. The background noise of baseball means something to others. It’s is always there, helping us ignore the inevitable. That’s the gift, specifically baseball on television. If you were in the stadium the night our Dodger TV announcers asked for happiness, you missed on life’s biggest questions. But for the majority of people that took in this game, they were given the chance to explore what it all means.
It’s about dingers. Everything in life is about dingers.
This piece is in Recommend If You Like The Baseball Issue Summer 2026. You can find physical copies in bars, cafes and stores in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The newspaper is available for purchase here.
We are not owned or funded by a billionaire or even a millionaire. We do have a Patreon. If you can’t afford to become a patron, please sign up to our mailing list. It’s free and we’re asking here instead of a pop-up. Pop-ups are annoying.