First Base Coach

No real world phenomenon enters the Seinfeld universe with as much consistency as baseball.  The fallout of “The Pony Remark” is so significant because it jeopardizes Jerry’s softball game; Elaine’s attempted “conversion” of a homosexual is likened to luring a star second baseman away from his team; Elaine dates retired first-baseman Keith Hernandez and the two make double-entendres about rounding bases; Kramer sees Joe Dimaggio eating donuts and says that he dunks his donut in his coffee with the same concentration that he devoted to his hitting; in "The Wink" Paul O'Neill becomes John Goodman's Babe Ruth in a parody of The Babe's promise of knocking out three home runs (2 for O'Neill) for a sick kid, a challenge accepted by Kramer so he could get a card back from a boy in the hospital; and of course George gets a job with the Yankees which, in a sense, institutionalizes the baseball reference.  

The reality of a baseball game is very important to that of Seinfeld and its critique of American consciousness—and not just because of the often religious reverence often held for the game and its players.   That there are rules to everything, that someone must win and someone must lose, and that it all exists with an audience consisting of fans and enemies, with commentary and with coaching, is the conceit of Seinfeld, and the actuality of baseball.   Keith Hernandez’s appearance in the show highlights the parallel between Jerry, the stand-up comedian, with the ball player as they are both fans of each other and both admire and wish they could do what the other does.  George is one level removed from the action—he wishes at one point to be an announcer, he eventually works in the front office of the Yankees, and he is constantly coaching Jerry, whether by providing arbitrary rules, advising in a lie (“remember: it’s not a lie if you believe it”), providing him with an idea for his sitcom, concocting a scheme by which Jerry can break-up with his girlfriend in order to date her roommate, or being Jerry’s assistant in dating a demanding woman.

“The Understudy” literalizes this metaphor when Jerry and George’s softball team plays against that of Rochelle, Rochelle: The Musical.   Bette Midler plays the title character of the play and Jerry is dating her understudy who bursts into tears at moments that seem unacceptable to Jerry, such as at the end of Beaches, a problem which he brings to the attention of George—“It was Beaches for god’s sake.”   When her hot dog falls out of its bun onto the ground before the baseball game and she starts bawling we see the line between baseball and the absurdity of Seinfeld disappear: to the side Jerry rolls his eyes as George motions for him to comfort her about her fallen hot dog, which he eventually does.  George is further removed from the field and looks like a third base coach, still wearing the uniform but not athletic enough to be in the game; Jerry, who was a star in the first game of “the Pony Remark,” fits the part of the ballplayer and joins the understudy wearing the uniform of the opposing team as she laments the tragedy of the hot dog a little closer to the third base line, a spot more ambiguously between the baseball diamond and the outside world. 

Baseball players have no free will.  A signal comes from the dugout through a series of signs to the pitcher.  Under this guidance he hurls the ball to the batter. He tries to hit it, or, if the opposing dugout decides, bunt, or if it’s no good, take as a ball.  The coach tells the players where to stand, and they only react to what happens.  The runners don’t choose: they follow base-running directions.   The cliché that romance is baseball, that sexual progress is akin to rounding the bases, is subject to this determinism in Seinfeld’s rendering of it—the characters live in a superficial world devoid of real choice.  The understudy delivers her absurd emotion and Jerry can either engage and try to make it to first and open the possibility of scoring (women just “play defense” in the words of Elaine).  Or he can fail to comfort her, strike out, and be sent back to the dugout.  Or, as Jerry does so many times, he could just walk away from the game and wait to see who’s pitching the next game.  George decides for him, sagely keeping his player’s batting average up, and Jerry goes in to comfort her. 

The world is more complicated than this and there exists no set of rules to describe every possible occurrence.  It’s an adolescent fantasy that love can be like baseball, that sex is a home run, that there are clear-cut winners and losers, that choice may be deferred to those more experienced and more removed from the situation, that one keeps his girl at an emotional distance of 60 feet 6 inches, and that there’s always another at bat coming up, and another game after that, and that little difference exists between one and the next.  Marriage destroys this fantasy—a serious commitment would compromise the recreational, transitory nature of the relationship.  When George gets tired of the adolescent game and wishes to remove himself from it and become a man he proposes to Susan who eventually accepts.  The episode ends with George already longing for the easy, superficial life he just gave up and sitting up in bed with Susan.  Jerry calls and tells him to watch the baseball game but Susan wants to watch Mad About You, the sentimental sitcom about newlyweds working together through their problems, talking to each other and not receiving tips from the coaches on their teams.  George is miserable, trying to join the real world while being locked in the superficial Seinfeld reality that recurs day after day with its 18 70 second half innings, that unfailingly will never end in a tie.