Baseballhead:
C'mon, Get Happy

Michael Cox

Hey! Ho! Let's go, Baseballheadites! This week's misread headline: "Beckett tosses gum as Marlins sweep Expos."

It's been a weekend of upsets and oddities in MLB. Lessee...the Diamondbacks and Cards were victims of severe upsets, Minnesota can thank the Orioles for helping extend their lead, the Braves can thank the Marlins for a similar courtesy, and the Mariners and Red Sox lost series they could have just as easily won. On Sunday, Boston closer Ugeth "Rhymes With 'Nougat'" Urbina violated my new "Go Out With Guns Blazing" rule: Never walk in the winning run, even when your control's so bad you have to carefully groove a fastball.

And speaking of blazing, the two West division races got a lot hotter this past weekend as the Mariner bullpen uncharacteristically blew in Anaheim. (Not "blew two games," just "blew.") The A's did their part by taking two of three in Texas, where the Rangers were celebrating "turn back the clock weekend" by dressing as the 1961 Washington Senators. Why the curious choice of costume? Five words: "There's no place like home." Preferably spoken repeatedly after clicking a pair of ruby slippers together three times.

The A's didn't impress Mr. Blackwell either, mixing and matching eras with their 1972 yellow jerseys. In fact, after also getting an eyeful of the weekend's Braves-Phillies retro uniform series, I have one piece of advice for any team marketing representative stuck on the idea of turning back the clock to the '70s: you might want to give that ol' clock just one more twist.

Over in the NL West, the Dodgers lost their weekend series to the Giants, allowing SF to pass them in the standings exactly the way Arizona did during their series in L.A. Toss in a couple of D-Back losses to San Diego, including Sunday's Randy Johnson ERA-fest, and like their Junior Circuit counterparts, a couple of games is all that separates the top three teams. The next couple of months ought to be either exciting or a death of a thousand cuts, depending on your city of origin.

Of course, that could all be wiped out by a strike, but I'm hoping that like myself, you're gonna cross that bridge when you come to it.

In fact, my advice to you is to enjoy baseball as much as you can while you can. Do not "strike." If the "fan strike" people cared about much more than getting their name in the papers, they'd be out pounding the pavement, with signage and flyers, every day at every park. Instead they're making a scrapbook.

Do not rant. Do not rave. Leave that to sportswriters. Maybe a few of them will quit. (On the other hand, that's unlikely, because the only thing baseball writers like better than baseball is the knowledge that they hold a job other than bag boy.)

Don't write angry letters to the editor standing up for your "fan's rights." Fans don't have rights, they have preferences. You want a baseball league with "fan's rights," you'd better start your own baseball league. If you do start your own baseball league, give me a call. Seriously.

You're reading this column because you love to watch an expertly played game of baseball (as much as I'd like to believe it's because you love to read an expertly written column). What gets in the way of that love is not the owners and players. The current owners are no more greedy than Harry Frazee when he sold Babe Ruth, Walter O'Malley when he moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles and then "forgot" to install water fountains in their new ballpark, or Charlie O. Finley when he tried to sell his roster off piece by piece. The players are no more greedy than Ruth when he demanded more money than the President was earning, or Curt Flood when he objected to being traded from a champion to the hapless Phillies.

The problem is that baseball has a romantic past. Or, should I say, a romanticized past. A past where owners charged a dollar for a box seat -- never mind that a dollar is about all anyone would pay. A past where players were loyal to their teams -- never mind the fact that what Granddad remembers as "loyalty" was in fact called "the Reserve Clause."

That past is a sham. You don't even remember it personally. It's a fake memory of a nonexistent time when owners weren't money-hungry and players chose en masse and of their own free will to play for next to nothing.

Sorry if I made you cry.

Here and now, we enjoy some of the greatest players to ever step on a baseball diamond. This could be -- no, this is -- a golden age for baseball, played with incredible skill and unprecedented dedication, in some of the most beautiful ballparks this side of what you read about Ebbets Field in that book. You know, the one written by the guy with the bow tie.

But what happens? We gripe about ticket prices (if they're so out of reach, why's it so hard to get a good box seat?). We gripe about commercialism (funny, the guy with the bow tie remembers the Ebbets Field outfield wall with fondness). We gripe about publicly funded ballparks (clue: it takes a public to make something "publicly funded"). And to top it off, we do much of the griping while we're watching the damn game!

Do you curse the oil companies for their corporate irresponsibility during a car trip? Do you pause your Hawaiian vacation to grouse about the $4 headset charge on the plane ("I remember when they were free! And all the in-flight movies starred Rock Hudson -- now there was an actor!")? Do you get tanked on cheap vodka and call talk show hosts, frothing at the mouth to discuss Tommy Lee Jones' "obscene" salary for MIB II?

So do yourself a favor: stop and smell the roses. Or the horsehide, or the grass clippings. Just smell something other than the increasing amount of invective being tossed around by sour old (and young) men with press box access. Most of them are griping because if there's a strike they'll have to buy their own dinners for the rest of the summer. Mike Lupica for one could do without free coffee for a while.

Go see a game. If you can't get to a ballpark, watch on TV. Try to spend the entire time thinking about just what it is these men are doing on the field, and how well they do it. Even Neifi Perez has his defense, although you might want to concentrate on watching the pitcher while Neifi's at bat. Look up at the sky (sorry, Minneapolis). Keep score -- there's nothing that will keep you focused on the game like scoring.

Don't think about the owners or the union or the price of a fishwich for just one game. Remember how good it makes you feel. Try to avoid quoting James Earl Jones' speech from Field of Dreams. It goes over especially poorly when combining it with your Darth Vader impression and improvising, "Ray, I am your father." Trust me on this.

Ignorance is bliss, you say? Considering the veracity of most of the current rhetoric, ignorance is smart.

We'll have plenty of time to let 'em have it when there are no games to watch.

about the author

Michael Cox regularly participates in "turn-back-the-clock nights." Inform him that setting his computer clock back so he meets his deadline isn't what the actor posing as Abner Doubleday had in mind at mc@strikethree.com.