If you’re anything like me, you love a good time loop. It’s one of my favorite sci-fi premises. Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Cause and Effect,” etc. I love them all. Time loops offer opportunities for unique storytelling. They show us how putting in the same or similar inputs can lead to radically different results. And this is where, importantly, they relate to baseball.
Baseball is, I think, the closest we can get to time loops in real life. Teams play 162 games a year, and they trot out the same or similar lineups each day to play other teams doing the same.