THE BASEBALL ISSUE : How Baseball Momentarily Distracted Me From Reading : ESSAY

Rarely does the daily paper move me to reexamine my life. But a recent New York Times piece quoted a Chinese scholar whose “belief in Buddhism . . . has curbed his appetite for books.” Mr. Cha says: “To read more is a handicap. It is better to keep your own mind free and to not let the thinking of others interfere with your own free thinking.”

I clipped his statement and placed it on the bedside table, next to a pile of books I was reading or planned to read or thought I ought to read. The clipping is about 2 square inches and almost weightless, the pile of books some 9 inches high, weighing a few pounds. Yet they face each other in perfect balance. I am the scale on which they rest.

Lying in the shadow of the books, I brood on my reading habit. What is it all about? What am I doing it for? And the classic addict’s question: What is it doing for me? Mr. Cha’s serenity and independence of mind are enviable. I would like to be equally independent, but I’m not sure my mind could be free without reading, or that the action books have on it is properly termed “interference.”

I suspect the interaction of the mind and the book is something more complex. I can see it encompassing an intimate history and geography: the evolution of character, the shifting map of personal taste. And what about the uses of language itself, as well as the perennial lure of narrative? But perhaps casting the issue in such large terms only shows how enslaved I am. Buddhism aside, there is no Readers Anonymous, so far, to help curb this appetite.

To tell the truth, I had begun to think about reading before coming upon Mr. Cha. It was the spring of 1986, an uneasy time for me but a magnificent season for the New York Mets. As often happens with a new love or addiction, I didn’t know I cared until it was too late. I had never followed baseball and felt safe from television, one of the devil’s ploys to buy our souls. But, alas, we are never safe; in the midst of life we are in death, and so forth.

My family watched the Mets. At first I would drift through the living room and glance, with faint contempt, at the screen. Gradually I would stand there for longer and longer spells, until I came to know the players by name and disposition and personal idiosyncrasies: how they spit and how they chewed, how they reacted to a failed at-bat--with impassivity or miming the ritual “darn-it” gestures--how their uniforms fit and which folds they tugged in moments of stress.

The game itself I already knew in rudimentary form, having played punch ball on the summer evening streets of Brooklyn as the light fell behind the brick houses and the pink Spaldeen grew dimmer with each hopeful arc through the twilit air. All that remained was for the finer points to be explained to me. I was surprised and touched by the element of sacrifice, as in the sacrifice fly (the adjective evoking esprit de corps and a tenuous religiosity) and the bunt, a silly-looking play, several grown men converging to creep after a slowly and imperturbably rolling ball. I was impressed by the intricate comparative philosophy of relief pitching, and shocked by the logistics of stealing bases. This sounded illicit yet everyone took it for granted, like white-collar crime, with the most expert thieves held in high esteem like savvy Wall Street players. Then one evening--the turning point--I sat down, committing my body to the chair, my eyes to the screen, my soul to the national Oversoul.

I pretended an anthropological detachment. My quest was for the subtleties and symbolism--the tension of the 3-2 call, the heartbreak of men left stranded on base, the managers’ far-seeing calculations recalling the projections of chess players (if he does this, I’ll do that), the baffling streaks and slumps and above all the mystifying signs. For at critical junctures, advisors sprinkled on the field or in the dugout would pat their chests and thighs and affect physical tics in a cabalistic language.

Soon it was clear I wasn’t as detached as I pretended. The fortunes of the Mets, as well as the fluctuations of each individual Met, had come to matter. It was partly proximity, the sine qua non of most love, and partly aesthetics. When giraffe-like Darryl Strawberry lazily unfurled an arm to allow a fly ball to nestle in his glove, I felt the elation I used to feel watching Andre Eglevsky of the New York City Ballet leap and stay aloft so long it seemed he had forgotten what he owed to gravity. Not unlike the elation I got from books.

I never watched an entire game, though. I hadn’t the patience. I would enter late, around the fourth or fifth inning, when the atmosphere was already set--not that it couldn’t change in an instant, that was part of the charm. I was like those drinkers who assure themselves they can stop any time they choose. I could start any time I chose. I was not compelled to scoot to my chair at the opening notes of the “Star-Spangled Banner” like a pitiful little iron filing within range of the magnet.

Night after astounding night became a season of protracted ecstasy. It was not just the winning but the beauty of the plays and the flowering of each distinct personality: modest Mookie Wilson’s radiant amiability and knack of doing the right thing at the right moment, boyish Gary Carter’s packaged public relations grin, Howard Johnson’s baffling lack of personality, absorbent like a potent black hole at the center of the team, Roger McDowell’s inanity, Bob Ojeda’s strong-jawed strength and the departures and returns of his mustache, Keith Hernandez’s smoldering and handsome anger at the world, Len Dykstra’s rooted insecurities packed together to form a dense and lethal weapon, Dwight Gooden’s young inscrutability, reflecting the enigma of the team--arrogant or just ardent? All became crystallized.

Amid the glory was an unease, a tingling of an inner layer of skin. I grudged the hours. I felt forced to watch against my will. Yet what was the trouble? Watching baseball is harmless, unless compulsion itself be considered blameworthy--but I am not that stern a moralist.

The games were depriving me of something. There it was. The instant I identified the uneasy feeling as “missing,” all came clear. Reading. Reading was the stable backdrop against which my life was played. It was what I used to do through long evenings. Never mornings--even to one so self-indulgent, it seems slightly sinful to wake up and immediately sit down with a book--and afternoons only now and then. In daylight I would pay what I owed the world. Reading was the reward, a solitary, obscure, nocturnal reward. It was what I got everything else (living) out of the way in order to do. Now the lack was taking its toll. I was having withdrawal symptoms.

I tried to give up baseball. I cut back, backslid, struggled the well-documented struggle. And then, abruptly, my efforts were needless. The burden fell from my shoulders as Zen masters say the load of snow falls from the bent bamboo branch at the moment of greatest tension, effortlessly. The Mets won the World Series and overnight, baseball was no more.