Scenes from a Wednesday Mariners victory over the White Sox

Today, the Mariners defeated the Chicago White Sox in eleven innings of play. Felix Hernandez threw some baseballs, there were some questionable calls, the Mariners bobbled here and there and finally Leonys Martin walked it off with a home run into right-center to bring the team a game back above .500 once again.

As I watched the game, I thought about the form of the baseball broadcast we have been watching throughout our entire lives: seven cameras set across the field, focusing primarily behind the pitchers' mound and then behind home plate once the ball is in play. Perhaps another on the opposite side of third base to catch a runner two steps late at first base. I realized that the way we visually structure "baseball" is doctored by these cameras, and that the way certain broadcast mores demand homogeneity perhaps turns something as aesthetically beautiful as a game of baseball into an economic equation for advertisers and late-night programming blocks. And then I thought: that's bullshit.

So what follows is a brief recap of the Mariners' baseball game against the Chicago White Sox this afternoon, chosen from what would be otherwise all-but-useless images which nevertheless suggest that even in the most dictated and controlled environment, reality seeps through the crevasses. You won't see the typical broadcast images here: a camera behind the pitcher, a close play at first, a slow-motion replay on the basepaths.

But importantly, that doesn't mean that things don't happen outside the purview of each of those visions, as if subject position demands the particular kind of reality we percieve. Roland Barthes, perhaps, said it best in 1980: the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.

Boy, if only.

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