An explanation that isn't.

One of the most fascinating (and frustrating) things about baseball is it’s essential unpredictability. Good teams lose to bad teams and weird things happen often enough that there’s actually an expression for it. We say, “That’s baseball.”

Oddly, although this feels like an explanation, it really isn’t. No team has yet lost a game because of some voodoo endemic to the game. Rather, they lose because of specific reasons on that particular day.

Also, there’s a bothersome asymmetry here. When good teams win, we don’t say, “That’s baseball,” since the more obvious explanation is, “They were the better team.” Thus, on those less likely days when poor teams play well, we actually rob them of the credit by chalking their win up to mischievous metaphysics.

Call it luck, call it the variables of individual contests, or call it the seductive deception of statistical reasoning. In the end, the one way to describe all of it including the silly propensity to come up with vacuous statements to explain it all is by saying, “That’s baseball.”