"Hitting a baseball well, as in cricket, is a very rare skill. One of most difficult things to do in the world to do, hitting a ball coming at you at ninety miles an hour with a round bat. Wonderful to watch"
About this Quote
There is something disarming about a musician admitting that the most virtuosic thing he can think to praise isn’t a solo, but a swing. Peter Tork’s line is basically fandom without irony: a pop-cultural figure looking past the branding and the stats and landing on the sheer physical improbability of contact. That’s the intent here: to reframe a familiar spectacle as an almost absurd feat of timing, perception, and nerve.
The subtext is admiration for craft, not celebrity. “Very rare skill” is a quiet corrective to the way sports highlights flatten difficulty into routine. By invoking cricket, Tork signals he’s not doing narrow American chauvinism; he’s talking about a global category of expertise: the split-second read, the micro-adjustment, the body trained to make decisions faster than language. He also sneaks in a musician’s sensibility. Hitting is rhythm and anticipation, an improvised response to a fast-moving cue. The phrasing even stumbles a little (“One of most difficult things to do in the world to do”), which makes it feel spoken, not polished - awe overriding articulation.
Context matters: Tork came from a made-for-TV band that spent its career negotiating what counted as “real” ability. So when he praises hitting as “wonderful to watch,” it reads like a defense of performance itself: the joy of witnessing mastery, whether it’s on a stage or in a batter’s box. Not everything needs to be explained away. Sometimes the point is the gasp.
The subtext is admiration for craft, not celebrity. “Very rare skill” is a quiet corrective to the way sports highlights flatten difficulty into routine. By invoking cricket, Tork signals he’s not doing narrow American chauvinism; he’s talking about a global category of expertise: the split-second read, the micro-adjustment, the body trained to make decisions faster than language. He also sneaks in a musician’s sensibility. Hitting is rhythm and anticipation, an improvised response to a fast-moving cue. The phrasing even stumbles a little (“One of most difficult things to do in the world to do”), which makes it feel spoken, not polished - awe overriding articulation.
Context matters: Tork came from a made-for-TV band that spent its career negotiating what counted as “real” ability. So when he praises hitting as “wonderful to watch,” it reads like a defense of performance itself: the joy of witnessing mastery, whether it’s on a stage or in a batter’s box. Not everything needs to be explained away. Sometimes the point is the gasp.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sports |
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