How Closely Connected Are Baseball And Chess?

Can a chess player be a starting pitcher for the first game in the World Series of Major League Baseball? Consider this year’s championship series.

World Series and Chess

On the mound starting in game one of the World Series on Tuesday will be Charlie Morton for the Atlanta Braves who will battle Framber Valdez, the starter for the Houston Astros. Imagine if a starting pitcher were a chess player.

No imagination is needed because it has happened: A chess player was a starting pitcher in 2020. Meet chess-playing Tyler Glasnow, a hard-throwing, right-hander for the Tampa Bay Rays. Last year he started game one of the World Series for the Rays against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Unfortunately for chess fans, the Rays did not advance to the World Series this year. Even if they had, Glasnow would not have been available to play. He underwent season-ending surgery in August to repair his throwing arm and likely will miss all of next year too.

Tyler Gasnow And Game Of Chess

How much chess does Glasnow play and when did he begin? The right-hander began playing chess in elementary school where he joined a chess club. When he lived in New York for three offseasons before joining the Rays in 2018, Glasnow began hanging out at Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to play chess against the local experts on the permanent tables in the park. Before the pandemic, it was his way to pass time.

In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, Glasnow said: “I would ... get beat by all the chess players, but it was still fun…. You learn a lot, too, from them because they’re so much better than me.’'

He added that chess is also “just kind of like something I do on my phone to pass time.’’

I would ... get beat by all the chess players.
—Major League Baseball pitcher Tyler Glasnow

Playing Chess After Striking Out 8 Yankees

Even more revealing about Glasnow's passion for chess is that earlier this season he spent the afternoon at Washington Square Park after a stellar performance on the baseball field. On the previous night, he had struck out eight over seven innings and allowed just four hits and three runs in a start against the Yankees. Does winning in baseball improve how he plays chess, or does chess improve his performance as a baseball player?

Baseball And Chess

USA Baseball, the governing body for the sport of baseball in the United States and the sport’s representative on the U.S. Olympic Committee, sees a very definite connection between baseball and chess. For example, it claims that success in chess is “very much related to the ability to think ahead of the game, to anticipate and strategize moves well before they happen on the board. In baseball, that same rule applies to individual and team facets of our game.”

In baseball, the same rule [of anticipating and strategizing moves] applies to invididual and team facets of our game.
—USA Baseball

According to USA Baseball, the baseball field or “the diamond has to be our chessboard where we know how best to use our pawns and bishops and our kings and queens on the field.” We might not see chess pieces on a baseball field during a game; however, strategic moves and tactical decisions guide both sports.

What do you think? Are baseball and chess closely connected?