“The crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd,” is something people talk about quite a bit. Go ahead, Google it. You’ll see a healthy amount of responses. Baseball, more so than other sports, is able to distill its essence into one specific sound, that distinct crack that stems from the noise made by the bat colliding with the ball.

Basketball’s utmost sign of success is a noiseless swish. Soccer’s is a low-rumble emerging from the crowd throughout the stadium as a run begins. Football is an assault on the eardrums with no clear discernible noise rising above the others. Baseball’s noise is true and tells a story. When that sound hits and the crowd roars, you know good things are happening.

Or at least that is how it used to work. Baseball, it turns out, without a crowd, makes that distinct sound rather meaningless. The crack of the bat rings loud and true for monster home runs into straight away center field and it also rings at the exact same frequency as a routine ground ball to shortstop.

Considering the broadcast crews do not travel with the teams, it makes it even more difficult. Aaron Goldsmith said that much in the Dome and Bedlam podcast: Not being able to see the ball means the announcers have to rely on picture-perfect production. Even the best announcers will be slightly delayed without having their own two eyes to fill in the gaps the crowd leaves behind. The crack of the bat used to mean something exciting. Now it is muted.

This is an understandable byproduct of what Major League Baseball has put out on the field. Baseball in 2020, as a whole, is a fragile shell of itself. It is the perfect product for this hellscape year. Just do it because why the fuck not.

I think about Mariners prospect turned starting first baseman Evan White. Last week, he hit the first MLB home run of his career. Like everyone else that was supposed to have 2020 go a certain way, it feels like he got cheated out of a moment in his life that should have been bigger. Instead of a roar from the crowd, any crowd, he trotted around the bases in silence, listening to the drone of fake crowd noise that more resembles the tiniest swarm of cicadas.

Achievements in baseball are solely celebrated in dugouts and on social media. There are no high fives. There are no baseballs thrown back onto the field. There is nothing left but the crack of the bat, and, it turns out, the crack of the bat loses its impact without the crowd to back it up. It is no longer the most powerful sound in all of sports.

We aren’t supposed to have sports right now. Sports are supposed to be for those who were able to face the horrors of this year head-on and actually make some sort of progress. Sports are not supposed to happen solely because the rich people in power shrivel up and die at the thought of making less than the maximum amount possible. Rich people in power getting their way at the expense of everyone below them is as American as baseball. 

We are seeing that unfold in real-time in this truncated MLB season. The Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals very well might not have a team to field in a few days. MLB appears to just be making shit up on the fly every day. The owners, from the get-go, have insisted on making a mockery of the process, and a mockery is what we have gotten. We’ve got baseball, in some form. We’ve gotten the crack of the bat, in some form. We haven’t received anything more than that.