With apologies to W. Earnest Harwell, who is "long gone ..."
Baseball is President Bush tossing out the first ball -- the only weapon of mass destruction he ever saw -- and trading Sammy Sosa for Mitch Williams.
It’s the big league pitcher formerly known as Fausto Carmona, whose real name is Roberto Hernandez. It’s Jennifer Love Hewitt, who knows nothing about baseball, eating hot dogs at a Phillies game with her boyfriend of the moment.
A tall, thin man waving a scorecard from his dugout – that’s baseball. So is the big nasty outfielder who bulked up and started hitting the ball hard at age 35, running out one of his 755 home runs with a sneer on his face. And Jose Reyes, who took himself out of the lineup after clinching the batting title on the last day of 2011.
It’s America, this baseball. It’s obscene chants from the bleachers at Wrigley, the fake hill in center field in Houston, drunk White Sox fans, ball parks named after banks and telephone companies, the intimate charm of Tropicana Field. And the weed covered lot at Michigan and Trumbull where Tiger Stadium stood.
There’s a fan in Saginaw who remembers the day nine years ago when Brandon Inge snagged a one hop liner and threw the runner out, and wasn’t booed. That’s baseball. So is the scouting director who recommended that the Tigers select Steve Pegues, Randy Nosek, Les Filkins, Matthew Wheatland, and Wayne Dotson as first-round draft picks.
It’s six dollar hot dogs, eight dollar beers, $30 T-shirts, and taking out a second mortgage so the whole family can see a game in person.
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. Here the only race that matters is the race to the bank on the first and 15 th of every month. The creed is the salary negotiation. Color is something to distinguish the worthless paper money of one player’s country from another.
Baseball is Josh Beckett knowing how many off days are on the Red Sox schedule, and the location of a good golf course in every major league city. It’s a Sox fan running across the Fenway outfield in the rain, in his birthday suit. The fifteenth out of every game sponsored by a certain car insurance company, that’s baseball. So is Cowboy Joe West who knows, deep down in his Texas heart, that the fans are really there to watch him call balls and strikes.
A housewife in Chicago couldn’t tell you the color of her husband’s eyes, but she knows that Joe Ballplayer is hitting .337, likes chicken alfredo, and prefers to be on the bottom. That’s baseball. So is the bright sanctity of Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame, where an overaged pixie named Rabbit Maranville is, but Gil Hodges and Jim Kaat aren’t.
Baseball is the wacky wit of Bobby Valentine, Lee Elia cursing out unemployed Cubs fans who come out to see day baseball, Mayo Smith telling writers that Tigers fans wouldn’t know a ballplayer from a Chinese aviator, and Mark McGwire’s reluctance to talk about the past.
Baseball? It’s just a game-as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It’s Frank McCourt spending the Dodgers into bankruptcy, and then telling fans how much he loves them. It’s the Houston Astros selling naming rights for their new stadium to Enron. It’s the Mets laundering Bernie Madoff’s money. It’s new words added to the sports fan’s vocabulary: andriol, primobolin, ephedra, androstendione.
Baseball is Tradition in the Baltimore Orioles’ orange uniforms. And Chagrin in failing a drug test. It’s Dignity in the blue serge of Jim Joyce calling Jason Donald safe. It’s Humor, holding its sides when a drunk kid with no shirt eludes an entire crew of rent-a-cops. And Pathos in the person of Albert Belle screaming at a fan.
Baseball is a sweaty, steaming dressing room where hopes and feelings are as naked as the men themselves, and one out of every six players is gay. It’s a dugout with spike-scarred flooring and an advertisement on every flat surface. It’s the endless parade of names in box scores, abbreviated almost beyond recognition, impossible to know anyway with 30 teams and 750 players.
Arguments, two dollar packs of baseball cards, $40 for an autograph at a card show, Morganna the Kissing Bandit, all of them are baseball.
Baseball is a rookie-his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat-trying to begin fulfillment of a dream. It’s a veteran too; a worn-down Steve Carlton hanging on any way he can to accumulate another year of service time in the pension plan.
Joes Canseco, once a sure first ballot Hall of Famer, starting a second career as a kickboxer, that’s baseball. So is the voice of a doomed Rafael Palmiero telling a Congressional committee: I never used performance-enhancing drugs. Period.
Baseball is cigar smoke (you can’t smoke in the stands anymore), roasted peanuts ($3 / bag), winter trades (get their agents’ permission first), and the seventh-inning stretch. It’s time on the DL for stiff necks acquired by sleeping wrong, broken bats with cork scattered across the infield, and the strains of Metallica when Trevor Hoffman comes in to pitch the ninth inning.
Baseball is a highly paid Boston Red Sox pitcher telling the media “What I do on my off days is my business.”
This is a game for America, this baseball.
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