Participating in the American Demise

There's been a buzz in the news cycle during the last couple of weeks about yet another national plague; one that’s rotting the culture and moral fiber of America.  It has nothing to do with sexual preference or email-gate: not about Muslims or right wing Christians; and it isn't over a warming earth or smarmy, sanctimonious political windbags.  Nope, none of those.  The new national scourge is, hold onto your butts sports fans – participation trophies.

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For those who’ve been on a cruise or just naturally choose to avoid stupidity, participation trophies became part of the national debate when professional football player James Harrison announced that the trophies that were given to his children would be returned.  Said Harrison; “I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best...cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better...not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy.”

And so, for the time being at least, our new national Yoda on America’s moral fiber is a professional football player; appropriate for a sports crazed nation that is absolutely, insanely and unabashedly goggle eyed gaga over football. Of course it was Harrison’s right to strip his kids of the trophies. It’s not like he beat them or sucker punched a woman.  That he had to announce it to the world would be puzzling if not for the fact that Harrison has a penchant for stirring the pot.  And stir it he did as the battle lines were drawn and the pros and cons of participation trophies were debated in every medium and I suppose damn near every sports bar in the nation.  The anti-trophy crowd’s argument was outlined by Nancy Armour of USA today; “Yet somewhere along the way, someone had the misguided notion that kids should live in a la-la land where everything is perfect, there are no hardships or heartbreaks, and you get a shiny trophy or a pretty blue ribbon just for being you…No wonder study after study has shown that millennials, the first of the trophy generations, are stressed out and depressed. They were sold a bill of goods when they were kids, and discovering that the harsh realities of life apply to them, too, had to have been like a punch to the gut.”  Pardon me, I feel a sneeze coming on –“BULLSHIT.”  Ah that feels better.

So there we have it.  The collapse of America is imminent because of participation trophies.  Okay, that’s hyperbole but I’ve exaggerated for a reason, because folks have gone off the deep end over cheap hardware.  Consider NBC Washington anchor Jim Vance who opined, “It’s child abuse to give a kid a trophy that he has not earned.” We’re talking about children here folks; children playing games.  But as too often happens with youth sports the adults are butting in and fucking up the works; because that’s what adults do.

Having two kids who participated in youth sports and having coached youth sports I guess I have a little experience in the area.  My kids got participation trophies.  They’re packed away in a plastic bin somewhere.  My kids; one 32 and one 29 seem to be doing just fine thank you and I don't even think that they remember the trophies.  They work, they’re raising kids and they’ve gone through some hard times; particularly my daughter who I often consider one of the grittiest, most tenacious people I know.  I have a nephew who got a participation trophy for tee ball.  A few years later his dad died and the boy became the man of the house and remained so all the way through his college graduation. 

As a coach I gave out more than a few of these trophies.  The kids were happy, for a moment; and then the trophies were more or less forgotten in favor of the pizza party and handed to the parents who I imagine put them up on a mantle to collect dust and take up space until they were finally put away in storage.  These are mementos, nothing more, nothing less.

Give a kid a trophy and the leap is made that he won't be prepared for real life.  Okay, wanna get the little blighters ready for the real world?  Let's talk behind their backs; spread rumors about them; throw them under the bus; flip them a bird and drop an "F" bomb on them if they reach in front of you for the bowl of potatoes at the dinner table and by all means decrease their allowance as you load more chores on them. 

Over the decades I’ve become weary of that time worn notion that somehow athletics prepare kids for life, build character and toughen the spirit.  I’ve adopted John Wooden’s idea that “Sports don’t build character, they reveal it.” It isn’t up to the coach, the team or an activity to do the parent’s job of preparing a child for life, molding character and building a foundation that will stand up to life’s storms.  As for Ms. Armour and her notion that millennials are depressed; well maybe she needs to take a little stroll out of the sports department and take a visit to the news department.  Everyone’s depressed lady.  Americans are working brutal hours, are afraid to take vacation time and are bringing home less of the bacon (which by the way costs more per pound and has less lean and more fat); our government is a bureaucratic, bickering snag to progress; we’ve been at war for more than a decade; personal privacy is extinct and the front runner for the GOP presidential nomination is nuts-a-rama.  And Nancy Armour is worried about trophies?

What is truly disappointing is that the national debate about youth sports has centered on hokum; a non-issue.  Whatever happened to the other issues?  You know the ones that are apparently too trivial to catch the ire of Washington news anchors.  It would be refreshing to see Google get blown up with stories and debates about:

                Kids burning out at a young age because they’re pushed by parents and coaches to travel hither and yon playing a sport year round in that often futile hunt for the D-1 scholarship.

                Coaches falsifying records to pack their teams with ringers.

                Coaches teaching kids the "benefits" of flaunting league rules.

                Coaches and parents acting out at games, all the way from abusing umpires, officials and the other team to coming to outright fisticuffs.

                Kids undergoing major orthopedic surgeries because they’re pushed to do too much too soon.

                The use of steroids by kids as early as 8^th grade.

                Coddled kids?  What about those uber-talented youngsters who get to skate from youth through college not being able to read at grade level?  What about the star athletes who, during their youth, aren't held accountable for any aspect of real life, be it basic responsibility or differentiating between wrong and right.  As long as they produce runs and wins, hey, it's all good - just try not to get caught next time. 

If we’re going to have a national tirade about participation awards why are we picking on kids?  What about the tens of thousands of adults who jog a 10K at 15 minutes a mile?  They get medals. And while kids usually forget about their awards the adults literally slaver over their medals; they paper their walls with them  At the risk of sounding like a geezer, back in my day you didn’t get a medal unless you finished in the top three. Everyone else got a cheapie little ribbon.  I’ve got less of a problem with an 8 year old getting a trophy than an adult getting a fancy medal for taking pictures along the course with a cell phone. 

Sports is America's graven image.  Professional sports are a business for both owners and players where character, fair play and sportsmanship are for the most part relegated to the worn, dusty shelves of nostalgia.  College sports are a morass of hypocrisy, greed, corruption and oceans of money misapplied.  But youth sports are for the most part and for the vast majority of kids supposed to be a fun activity.  Yes there are opportunities for life lessons; to learn about teamwork, appreciate camaraderie, develop healthy habits, hone skills and coordination, learn perseverance and maybe develop a lifelong activity. Youth sports have become the last bastion of sport as a game; where fun is supposed to trump yes - real life.  

                

Baseball Takes the (A) Rod

At the instant of the crack he would glide along the deep green carpet looking up in the high blue sky picking out the orb that at its apex must have looked like a dancing white pea in the chill swirling winds above San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.  He moved surely as if guided by some mystic inner sense directing him right to the spot where the little orb would land.  And then he would position the glove just right, oftentimes just in front of his belt, opened and waiting like a leather basket. Plop the orb would drop into the glove and he’d step forward and throw a seed back to the infield.  I had the pleasure and yes, the honor of seeing Willie Mays, arguably baseball’s greatest player do that in person in many a game at the frigid and usually unfriendly confines of Candlestick Park.  I also watched Mays belt a fair amount of his 660 career home runs.  I didn't see the 660^th, which he hit in the uniform of the New York Mets in the twilight of his career.  It was 1973, the Vietnam War was still raging, Nixon was living his Watergate nightmare and I was just about to turn 20. 

Two Stories; Giving and Taking

This is a story about two stories.  Both are typically American.  Both reflect values.  One story is about values cherished.  The other is about values gone awry.  The stories tell a story; about what is good in America and what is wrong with America.  Each story is about responsibility; accepted and denied. Both stories were on the recent nightly news and were broadcast within minutes of each other.  One story can warm the heart and bring a tear.  The other story is a groin kick that makes you wonder about the double dealing we often think pervades our society.    

Welchie and Reggie on a Chilly Ballpark Night

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;

He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.

And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,

And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

From Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer

It was awfully late in the year to be attending my first baseball game of the season; nearly mid-June, a Tuesday evening game against the Washington Nationals. I usually manage to get to the yard in late April; certainly no later than mid-May.  This game was a birthday present for my son and a present for myself.  There aren't many better ways to spend an evening than taking in a ballgame with your son.  It’s the American way.  There are a lot of “American ways”; some good, some not so much.  This is one of the best.

A Dog Day at the Park

“[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”  ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, April 1^st 1989 – September 1^st 1989. 

It’s been a season nobody saw coming. Like that line shot foul ball into the stands that finds your skull when you turn away for just an instant, we glanced away for a moment in June and looked up just in time to be struck by 2013.  After a 2012 World Series Championship the Giants have found themselves in last place in their division, playing baseball that is often sloppy, passionless and sometimes downright unwatchable.

11 strikeouts in the better days of 2012

Glove Story

Donning a glove for a backyard toss, or watching a ball game, we are players again, forever young.~ John Thorn; baseball historian.

Its baseball season again.  Time to dig into the closet and pull out the glove.  I did that last year about this time and went through some moments of panic when I couldn’t find it, tearing the closet apart, shouting at my wife, "Cora, Where in hell is my glove?" 

"I don't know. I don't play baseball." she yelled back. 

Then I remembered that I’d loaned it to my son.  I asked him to give it back which gave me an idea for a present for his upcoming birthday. 

A Sunday Stew

For many here in the States, the best part of Sunday is football.  Not so for me.  I’m partial to Sunday supper.  Sunday supper has its origins in Britain and Ireland where a hearty meal of roasted meat was served with a bounty of sides after the Sunday church service.  It’s remained popular to some degree in the former colonies, including The United States. 

Lance and Fair Play

“I’m deeply sorry for what I did.” ~ Lance Armstrong.

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone..”  ~ Book of John; Chapter 8.

Let’s make one thing clear from the start; I loathe drug cheats in sports.  And that’s both ironic and understandable because three of my favorite sports, baseball, cycling and track and field, have made as many headlines about doping as they have about competition. 

Bamboozled at the Old Ball Game (A Fan's View)

“There is but one game and that game is baseball”  John McGraw

“When baseball is no longer fun, it's no longer a game.”  Joe DiMaggio

The cops just knocked on the door and told us to turn down the music; the bartender skipped last call and stopped serving; mom just told our friends to go home; and the lifeguard just hollered, “Everybody out of the pool.”  The party’s over. That’s how it felt for us Giants fans when it was announced that left fielder Melky Cabrera was suspended for 50 games (the remainder of the season) after he tested for excessive levels of testosterone; dirty.  What is it about left field at AT&T Park?  First it was drug cheat extraordinaire, Barry Bonds; now Cabrera.  

Memorial Monday Musings

 

It's Memorial Day Weekend.  Today is the day that we celebrate the time honored tradition of  barbecuing pork flesh.  Or is it the day that we honor basketball by watching an NBA playoff game?  It could be Fireworks at the Ball Park Day.  In honor of filling corporate retail coffers it might be the day you get to take twenty five percent off anything in the store and take an extra 15 percent if you use your store credit card (exclusions apply; does not include Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Nautica or Izod).  Maybe it's the day we revel in the great American motor car by getting 0.9% financing on any new car in the lot (FICO score of 720 or better).  Actually those are some of the things that we DO on Memorial Day.  They are certainly not the spirit and meaning of Memorial Day; regardless of the fact that many of our fellow Americans believe so.  

My dad always called it by its original name, Decoration Day.  In 1868, Union veterans of the Civil War set aside May 5th to decorate the graves of Civil War dead with flowers.  Major General John Logan later established May 30th as the day to honor America's war dead; a date chosen because flowers would be in plentiful bloom nationwide. 

Jumping Over the Candlestick

I indulged in a nooner yesterday.  Not that kind of a nooner; cleanse that dirty little mind.  A nooner is a weekday baseball game.  Years ago it was called a businessman’s special.  Take off from work at noon, maybe take a client, catch the game and back to work for a couple of hours.  Men went to the game in business suits; there was no such thing as business casual.  When I was working at a retail hardware store my co-worker Joe would often say, "I'm going to the businessman's special today.  Joe wasn't a businessman, he was the delivery driver.  His "suit" was jeans and a Giant's t-shirt.  The midweek day game is great fun, and usually an opportunity to get a good seat at a good price but unfortunately is becoming a dinosaur.  The reason; grousing about post-game traffic mingling with rush hour traffic.  Let's just take all the fun out of life. There was no work for me this day and in lieu of a client I opted to go with my wife; a definite upgrade.

A Separate Reality; Of Hoops and Sox

"Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays.  He should never miss a payment."  Bobby Hull

Two sports related stories got me to thinking lately about how professional athletes just don’t get it.  Bear in mind, this isn’t a revelation.  I didn’t put down an article, slap myself in the forehead and exclaim, “Gee, these guys are really clueless.”  Let’s just say that these stories served as a reminder that pro athletes seem to exist in their own separate reality.

First, is the story of the National Basketball Association, “work stoppage.”  Who comes up with the phraseology that makes it sound like these guys are coal miners or plant workers just trying to get a square deal?  The NBA, errr, “work stoppage” had been brewing for some time; at least a year I suppose.  I couldn’t say for sure how long it’s been percolating since I don’t particularly like professional basketball to the point that I simply accept a hiatus during that short sports Dark Age between the end of football and the day pitchers and catchers report.  What I’ve gleaned is that the owners and players can’t agree on how to split the basketball related income (BRI).  According to an article in Forbes; “The players have come down from 57% they were making under the old agreement to 53%; the owners have moved from 47% up to 50%.”  The BRI for the 2010-2011 season was 3.817 billion dollars.  And so loyal fans and the disinterested yet disgusted among the rest of us sit back and watch millionaires haggle with millionaires over 3% of nearly 4 billion in coin of the realm.

If the Forbes article is to be believed, the two sides, owners and players, are simply engaging in the proverbial “pissing contest” in which the real object is to not be the side that “capitulates.”  Meanwhile players are crying the “woe is me,” and blaming ownership for the impasse.  Derrick Rose, average salary 5.6 million dollars, said recently, "It's very sad, but everybody knows it's not our fault,"  Kevin Durant of The Thunder, who averages 17.2 million dollars a year complains that the owners are at fault and the players have “sacrificed a lot.”  For their part, the owners are crying poverty saying that 17 of 30 teams have been losing money.  It all seems so simple to me; owners run your business better and players maybe you aren’t entitled to a salary that rivals the GNP of a small nation.  Lost among all of this are the “little people."  You know, those behind the scenes folk who work for the teams in ordinary jobs for ordinary pay trying to just keep up and the arena workers who’s part time paycheck might be keeping the wolves at bay; all of whom are probably having a hard time relating to millionaires just out their teens who are wondering where the next Bentley payment is coming from.  Do you suppose that Kobe or Lebron are frequenting the watering holes around their home arenas that are going dry for lack of a basketball season?  Are Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade checking in on that guy who would normally be hawking programs at the arena to see if maybe they can help with the food bill?

The other story, published in The Boston Globe came out of the ruins of the Boston Red Sox season ending collapse.  The article describes more than a few distractions during the course of the season; the manager’s separation from his wife, his alleged problem with pain meds and players taking it easy on their conditioning regimens.  But it was two other distractions in particular that caught my attention.

                According to the story in the Globe, “As Hurricane Irene barreled toward Boston in late August, management proposed moving up the Sunday finale of a weekend series against Oakland so the teams could play a day-night doubleheader either Friday, Aug. 26, or Saturday, Aug. 27. The reasoning seemed sound: the teams would avoid a Sunday rainout and the dilemma of finding a mutual makeup date for teams separated by 2,700 miles.  But numerous Sox players angrily protested. They returned early that Friday from Texas after a demanding stretch in which they had played 14 of 17 games on the road, with additional stops in Minneapolis, Seattle, and Kansas City.  The players accused management of caring more about making money than winning, which marked the first time the team’s top executives sensed serious trouble brewing in the clubhouse.  After sweeping the A’s, the Sox commenced their death spiral “and owners soon suspected the team’s poor play was related to lingering resentment over the scheduling dispute, sources said. The owners responded by giving all the players $300 headphones and inviting them to enjoy a players-only night on principal owner John W. Henry’s yacht after they returned from a road trip Sept. 11.”

                Through September, the Sox were in contention but fighting for their post-season lives but a trio of frontline pitchers, Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and John Lackey, decided that game time was better spent buried in the man cave that is the club house; “Boston’s three elite starters went soft, their pitching as anemic as their work ethic. The indifference of Beckett, Lester, and Lackey in a time of crisis can be seen in what team sources say became their habit of drinking beer, eating fast-food fried chicken, and playing video games in the clubhouse during games while their teammates tried to salvage a once-promising season.” “For Beckett, Lester, and Lackey, the consequences were apparent as their body fat appeared to increase and pitching skills eroded. When the team needed them in September, they posted a combined 2-7 record with a 6.45 earned run average, the Sox losing 11 of their 15 starts.”

                 For the record, in 2011 Beckett’s salary was 17 million, Lackey’s 15.9 million and Lester, poor destitute guy, a paltry 5.75 million.  Yes that would be U.S. dollars; these boys aren't living paycheck to paycheck. 

And so what, you ask, do these stories have in common and why are they, to coin a popular baseball phrase, giving me a case of the red ass?

Part of the answer can be found in a CBS News story from June of last year which reports that only 45 percent of Americans are happy in their jobs.  Sure it’s a dated story but let’s go out on a limb and figure that with an economy that’s remained stagnant the rate of satisfaction hasn’t appreciably increased. In fact I’ll go further out on that limb and venture to say that if this survey were taken today, the percentage of dissatisfied workers would be even higher.  Chief among the reasons cited are; jobs are uninteresting, incomes haven’t kept up with inflation and health care costs are eroding take home pay.  About 64 percent of workers under 25, around the age of your NBA millionaire, are unhappy in their jobs.  What a lot of this likely comes down to is that in an economy with an unemployment rate stubbornly hovering just a smidge below 10 percent people are taking whatever work they can find; like it or not.

What NBA players, Red Sox and just about any professional athlete you can name all have in common is that they just don’t know how good they have it and their self-centered, entitled antics are a slap to the face of the working stiff who can only dream of what it would be like to be able to do what you love to do and get paid six, seven and eight figures to do it.

American workers today are being overworked as companies understaff either because they can’t afford to hire or they’ve discovered that employees don’t have so much mobility within the job marked so they can work them like so many oxen and make a tidy profit.  The day that my employer offers me a set of 300 dollar headphones because he senses that I feel ill used over having to work on  weekends is the day that I’ll have, as Fred Sanford used to call it, “the big one."  But I wouldn't expect headphones, a bottle of scotch or any other perk because as a salaried worker I expect that there are times I'll be putting in 12 hour days or logging in on weekends from home.  I can’t imagine that there are very many American worker bees feeling sorry for the Sox players who had to “tough out” a double header.  And while we’re on the subject of that double header let’s consider the accusation by the players that management was more interested in making money.  I guess those boys never took Business 1A where you learn that making money is the chief interest of management.  Baseball is a business.  I know that because players stress that fact all the time to justify holding out for another few million dollars or for breaking the hearts of loyal fans by jumping to another team for a better deal. 

One worker who was questioned in the CBS survey lamented that, "There is no sense of teamwork in most places anymore."  Well friend, if you’re looking for teamwork don’t look to the Red Sox, where part of the team takes the field, another part watches from the dugout steps in support and the front line pitchers sequester themselves to eat chicken and knock down a few brews. New allegations in the Red Sox story now include tales of drinking in the dugout itself, something the players vehemently deny.  The story has grown legs, hit sports talk and generated angry reactions. 

This is the kind of story that puts folks off whether they’re sports fans or not.  It violates that traditional notion that American success is a product of teamwork.  It’s a notion that may be more romance than substance but it’s one that Americans hold dear nonetheless.  Be it 18^th century barn raisings or its 21^st century descendent, The Habitat for Humanity, church or school fundraising activities, ordinary people pulling together to help out in disaster relief or simply getting together to help a neighbor move or paint the house, Americans cherish teamwork.  They teach it to kids in sports and they try to instill it in executives through activities that range from classrooms to whitewater rafting to wilderness trips.

These stories repulse Americans because try as they might, many can never seem to grasp that illusive American Dream and these days many who thought that they had finally grabbed a piece of that dream are seeing it slip away.  How, they ask, can young men who have achieved an American Dream beyond wildest dreams so take it for granted?  How can those who make so much money playing games never seem to be satisfied with the riches they have?

And so when we’re presented with images and stories of professional athletes holding out for yet more money, whining about a double header or treating the notion of teamwork with seeming disdain, Americans get angry and offended.  Or course these stories are nothing new.  Cluelessness among pro athletes and their kin in other entertainment industries seems to be a cherished tradition. It could be Latrell Sprewell spurning a 7 million dollar a year salary because, as he put it so diplomatically, “I have a family to feed,” Barry Bonds absenting himself from his team when he just didn’t seem to be in the mood to be at the ball yard, Randy Moss telling a reporter that he plays when he wants to play, or any of the many incidents involving strip clubs, fire arms or getting in trouble in the wee hours at places that most thinking people avoid.  The NBA, errr, work stoppage and Red Sox-gate are the 2011 versions of athletes existing in a separate reality. We’ll see what drama 2012 holds.  Meanwhile I’m still waiting for that set of headphones that I’m certain my boss is going to give me for all those Sundays when I’m logged into the office trying to keep up with the workload.

Derek Jeter, Three Thousand Hits and a Christian

     Yesterday Derek Jeter got his 3000^th hit which just happened to be a home run.  He was only the second player to achieve that mark with a dinger, the other being Wade Boggs.  When a ballplayer’s milestone hit just happens to be a long tater it creates something of a logistical problem; a problem that leads to anything from an informal negotiation to a court battle.

     There was a time when a fan would settle for a short meet and greet with the player and an autograph or two in exchange for a home run ball.  That sort of behavior is now frowned upon.  Nowadays it’s expected that the fan will enter into hard negotiations with the player, the team or both.  Shockingly (he said with tongue firmly in cheek) a cottage industry has developed around home run balls.  Called ball hawking it is capitalism on steroids, pun intended.  In simple terms the ball hawk snags the ball and then tries to take the player to the cleaners (Yes I know what you’re going to say and I’ll take that up later).

     A few cases in point here.  In 2008, A’s rookie Carlos Gonzalez hit his first major league homer.  A ball hawk named Tom Snyder caught the ball and asked for a jersey and two signed bats.  The A’s rejected the offer saying that uniforms take too long to replace.  So in what I would consider a bizarre bit of negotiating, Snyder asked for $10,000 which the A’s also rejected.  Snyder left with the ball and Gonzalez probably figured his souvenir 1^st home run ball was gone.  Not so, as Snyder traded the ball a week later for a signed photo with Gonzalez (a fair deal he should have taken in the first place).  The “gentleman” who caught Ken Griffey’s 600^th home run ball asked for, as Griffey put it, “a few things that were out of hand.”  The imagination sort of reels over what “out of hand” means.  Griffey never got that ball which eventually sold for $42,000 at an auction. The stories about the McGwire and Bonds “record breaking” home run balls are now legend.  McGwire’s 70^th in the ’98 season sold for $3 million and the Bonds 73^rd single season ball went to court over who actually caught the ball.

     Returning to Jeter’s 3000^th; it was caught by a fellow named Christian Lopez.  According to the folks who are supposed to be experts in the matter, the ball would be worth about $250,000.  As the ball sailed over the fence the Yankee brass were probably opening the safe and pulling out the checkbook.  Lopez was located and asked his price.  Nothing; Lopez wanted nothing.  Well the Yankees weren’t going to accept an outrageous offer like that so they gave Lopez four front-row Legends seats for the remainder of the season, including the playoffs and a gaggle of signed Jeter memorabilia.  In addition he had his photo taken with Jeter and met with Reggie Jackson and other Yankee stars (and I would imagine, got their autographs as well).

     Now, back to that “cleaners” thing.  Yeah, yeah I know, Jeter’s salary will average $16 million dollars over this season and the next two, and the Yankees are one of the richest franchises in sports, so between the two a couple hundred thousand is nothing.

      A quick review of the comments section of any article on Lopez/Jeter says that in the eyes of many of his fellow Americans, Lopez is a bloody fool.  A few choice samples from Yahoo Sports for your reading pleasure:

                “What a fool!!!!! He looks like he eats a lot. Will regret that he didn’t take the money.”

                “Christian did a STUPID thing, nothing admirable about it. His girlfriend should dump him.”

                “The right thing was to get paid so your family will be set....just sayin”

     And here’s one of my favorites, “All you people who talk about morality, integrity, the right thing to do, etc. when it comes to this make me sick. Since when does anybody who catches a ball have a moral obligation to return it?”

     A couple of thoughts.  To be fair, a number of commenters commended Lopez for what he did, citing integrity, moral obligation and honesty.  None of those really apply here.  The ball was not stolen property.  According to Major League Baseball rules, the ball belonged to Lopez free and clear so there was no compelling reason, legal or moral to give the ball to Jeter.   So why did he do it? I would like to think it’s because he’s a good guy.  I also would like to think that I would do pretty much the same thing.  I’ve often posed that same question to myself and my answer has always been that I would probably ask for an autographed ball and an autographed picture of me with the player.  And I think that’s a fair deal.  As a baseball fan those would be some nice mementoes for the mantle.  I seriously could not see myself asking for a horse choking bankroll.  It isn’t in my makeup and apparently it isn’t in Lopez either and if that makes us chumps then fine, we’re chumps. 

     As it worked out, in my opinion anyway, Lopez got a pretty nice little package.  Had he gone into a hardball negotiation session, I doubt that he would have been offered that deal and may have ended up settling for less.  He could also have opted to auction the ball.  As to the comment that Lopez’s girlfriend should dump him, it’s quite likely that the quality that made him give the ball to Jeter is just what she is looking for in a mate.  Maybe she just isn’t in to opportunists.

     This story might also say something about Derek Jeter.  With the possible exception of some Red Sox and Mets fans Jeter is seen as one of the classiest guys in sports.  A milestone hit by A-Rod, or the aforementioned Bonds might not invite the kindness shown by Lopez.

     And so this leads me to a final comment on the whole affair.  In a short time Derek Jeter will retire and when he does it will leave one less in a meager pool of classy athletes who would invite the kind of goodwill shown by Christian Lopez.

    

My Old Baseball Friend

     Welcome back baseball.  Welcome back to the friend I knew and loved.  For a while there you were going through a rough patch. You fell in with a bad crowd, started messing with substance abuse and got addicted to some really bad stuff. Your personality changed, you lost your charm and became a big, brutish lout. You lost the respect that you had for your rich and storied ancestry, forsook your forefathers and got infatuated with a fake, fleeting here and now. When you lost your self-respect you got pretty sleazy and slept around with a bunch of self-absorbed phonies. You stopped being the baseball that I knew, that we all knew, a subtle, strategic game with all those nuances like double switches, the hit and run and the suicide squeeze. You started resembling a “D” level, beer league softball game.  And what about your caretakers, those guys who were supposed to look out for you? They just became a bunch of greedy enablers turning a blind eye, letting your addiction run rampant while they raked in their ill-gotten gains.

     The home nine is in first place and playing some exciting ball. No bombastic displays of tape measure home runs with footballesque final scores. The Giants are winning low scoring, one run affairs. They're doing it with pitching; a solid rotation and a stalwart bullpen. The offense is pure punch and judy, with an occasional long ball and some sort of smoke and mirrors magic woven by manager Bruce Bochy.  Last year we christened the season "torture" and the one run, walk off torment is back for a delicious second course. 

     In recent years I sat out that bastardization of baseball called “the steroid era.” I walked out on the freakish thing it had become, figuring I wouldn't return.  Sometime during the 2009 season my interest started piquing again.  Barry Bonds, the man who had so arrogantly soiled one of sport’s most hallowed records was not invited back for 2008 and when I was satisfied that his stink had left the yard I was ready to come back. While a recession driven belt tightening kept me away from the stadium last year, I watched on TV with renewed joy the game being played as it should.  And listening to the radio broadcast while working in the yard or tending the barbecue has brought back baseball memories of my childhood.

     Yes, I love baseball and I’m not ashamed to say that I love it in a naïve way; in the tradition rich, storybook, peanuts and Cracker Jack, smell of the green, green grass, baseball cards, hotdogs and beer, all-American way.  I love it because unlike professional basketball and football, baseball unabashedly honors its past. It’s a game that’s spanned decades has gone through little change to the game itself yet continues to captivate its fans.

      Professional basketball has gone from a patient team game to an up and down the court race punctuated by in your face slam dunks tossed down by petulant, chest thumping, preening players who’ve physically outgrown their field of play.  For the most part I find NBA players to be dislikable. There is no reverence for the past in the NBA. Today’s players wouldn’t know Jerry West or Oscar Robertson if they smacked into them at the foul line and most fans probably don’t know of an NBA past that goes beyond MJ.

     And what can you say about the NFL? It’s the consummate sport become business. And while it keeps some tenuous ties to its past it has become something unrecognizable from what it was a mere 10 years ago. Never satisfied to be what it is, the NFL seems to be in an insatiable quest to get bigger, brasher and glitzier. There is no charm to its championship game. The Super Bowl is an event which every year has to outdo its predecessor.  It’s an uncharismatic happening of a game that falls victim every year to its own hype; a hype which it inevitably fails to live up to. With its ostentatious overpriced arenas and personal seat licenses it has become a Romanesque orgy for gamblers, rich guys and corporations that’s thrown the common fan to the curb. Unlike professional basketball and football, baseball has maintained some affordability.

How many of these did I lose?

     Baseball has always had an intimate connection with the fans.  The Brooklyn Dodgers not only played in that borough but lived there and mingled with their neighbors and fans, shopping in the local stores, going to the local barbershop, and playing with local kids.  In his book Bums, Peter Golenbock writes about the memory of a Brooklyn fan who said of Duke Snyder, “We would be playing stick ball and he would come home….and the kids knew who he was. ‘Hey Duke, want to take a few cuts?  It was like he was one of the boys. He’d take a few cuts."  When I was a kid, after games we would go to the player’s entrance and wait for our heroes to emerge, offering a glove, ball, baseball cards, or scraps of paper for them to autograph.  Most would graciously sign, while admonishing the kids to be patient and polite.  I recall Sandy Koufax taking my ball as he stepped onto the team bus.  I thought for a moment that he had stolen my baseball until he dropped it out a window to me with his autograph and those of some of his teammates.  I lost that ball.  In fact I must have got the great left hander’s autograph a half dozen times, losing all but the one I still treasure.  While the player’s entrance is now off limits, a ball player will still stop and sign some autographs before and during BP (batting practice).  I recall Dave Stewart kindly signing autographs for my son and his friend before a playoff game against Toronto.

     I can’t remember the first game that I went to. I know it was at windy, frigid, Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Probably in 1961 or 1962 (I would have been 8 or 9 years old), the details escape me , might have been against the Cards, but I clearly remember walking out of the concourse and into the seating area to stare in awe at that field; so vast and so green.  It seemed bigger than anything I’d ever seen.

Maury Wills steals third

      A rabid Giants booster, my mom was the head fan of the family.  I was, and for the life of me I don’t know why, a Los Angeles Dodgers fan.   I think that maybe I was just attracted to that Dodger blue color.   Now you have to understand that a Giants fan and a Dodgers fan under the same roof do not make for a peaceful household between the months of April and October.  There was plenty of yelling and screaming during the many great games that we watched and listened to while “hating” each other and each other’s teams.  Those Giants-Dodgers games of the sixties defined the game that I grew up with and love to this day.  The Dodgers were a punchless team with plenty of speed.  Maury Wills would bunt himself to first and then the drama began.  No secret he would steal.  In the first act of the drama he would take his lead, the pitcher would throw to first and Willie McCovey would smack a leaden glove onto the diving Wills.  Time and again this scene repeated itself with Wills extending that lead by mere inches each time.   Wills wore out the pitcher and McCovey’s heavy paw wore out Wills.  The first act would usually end with the Dodger shortstop dusting himself off, standing on a freshly robbed second base.  Act two had Wills, dancing off second, racking the pitcher’s nerves until he pilfered third.  Act three ended with Wills either crossing the plate or being stranded at third.  Mom hated Wills, I hated Willie Mac but we both reveled in the rivalry.

Russ Hodges, Lon Simmons, Bill Thompson

     The sounds of spring, summer and fall were the voices of Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons calling the games while my mom worked in the garden or did her housework.   It seemed that everywhere you went there was a radio tuned to KSFO; “And there’s the pitch. Mays swings. And you can tell it BYE, BYE, BABY!”   Radio was king and baseball was the game of great voices; Hodges, Simmons, Vin Scully, Mel Allen, Jack Buck, Ernie Harwell and Harry Caray.   For a kid a transistor radio was an indispensible piece of equipment.   It was the only way you could you catch the last few innings of a night game, under the covers with the radio just loud enough to hear the game and just low enough that mom and dad wouldn’t hear.  How else could you catch bits of a weekday World Series game, trying to tune out the teacher yet keep an eye and half an ear on her so as not to get caught.   And every now and then there was that rare, cool teacher who would let us watch some of the game on TV.

     Baseball was the game that we could always play even if we didn’t have a team.  Any kid with a tennis ball and the side of house could play a ball game all by himself.   I was that kid and many were the afternoons when I would throw a tennis ball at the house and as shortstop field the grounders coming off the wall, throw it back against the wall and as first baseman field the rebound always just nipping the phantom runner.  On warm evenings dads in the neighborhood would go out with us kids to a local field and hit us some flies.  Even into my twenties and thirties I would go out to a local ball field with my friend Scott and we would take turns hitting and shagging grounders.  Now nearing 60, I do miss hearing that crack, ranging over and snagging a backhander right in the sweet spot.  I even miss that sting of the ball when it smacks into the palm.

     Baseball is a game for the senses. It’s the green of the field, the blue of the sky, chatter of the players, crack of the bat, ball skittering on grass and the pop of the glove.  It’s the smell of a dog and a beer, oil on a leather glove and a sweaty old cap.

     Baseball is nicknames on the back of a card (does anybody really collect football and basketball cards?).  It’s The Mick, Jocko, The Say Hey Kid, The  Baby Bull, Big D, Slick, Biscuit Pants, Willie Mac, Rube, Smokey, The Splendid Splinter, Buck, The Kid, Killer and Stan the Man.  Baseball is kids tearing open the wrapper on a pack of cards, shoving a stick of stale bubble gum in the mouth, thumbing through the cards and negotiating multiple “humpties” for a star.  

     Baseball is a colorful language of its own.  Its a can o’ corn, hard cheese, gopher ball, around the horn, chin music, tools of ignorance, bases juiced, fungo, heater, hot corner, on deck, on the screws, seeing eye single, skip, southpaw, small ball, scroogie, slider, slurve and of course, the Mendoza line.  C'mon, who needs the Romance Languages when you have baseball lingo.

      So welcome back baseball.  You’ve gone through some changes over the years and I haven’t been a fan of many of them.  I like interleague play about as much as I like eating liver.  And do you really need another level of playoffs, as if a 162 game season can’t decide the best teams?  I can’t say that I like the uniform changes.  How come you got rid of the stirrups and long socks and started sporting those pajama bottoms?  You know, I didn’t like the DH when you first introduced him to me and I don’t like him now.  If he’s fat, slow, out of shape and not able to play in the field anymore maybe he should just retire to the coach’s box or the broadcast booth.   And did you really have to silence the chin music? I miss those days when some of the game’s toughest hitters would come nervously to the plate to face an angry Bob Gibson.  Some Drysdale heat to the ribs kept that batter out of the pitcher's office.  And where did the jawboning between managers and umpires go?  It was always great fun to see two paunchy guys go nose to nose and belly to belly screaming whatever it was they were screaming with the crowd in full boo, ending with the umpire heaving his fist in the air and the manager out of the game.   

     But, you do have a problem.  How are you going to deal with the guys who cheated you; who cheated us and who stole from the greats of the past?  Those guys who arrogantly thought they were bigger than the game.  They screwed up all of your record books and they did it with no regard to the forefathers they disrespected.   Barry Bonds says that when it comes to the record books and the hall of fame there are no asterisks.   Well that’s fine with me; just keep him and his injected ass-terisk out of both the books and the hall.  And while you’re at it keep the sniveler McGwire and the arrogant Clemens out too.

     There are some fans who aren’t thrilled that you’ve gone back to your old self. They liked the barrage of long range shells, travelling implausible distances, launched by chiseled fakes.  They’re bored by the bunt, the butcher boy, a drawn in outfield and the sac. fly.  My feeling is you should tell those fans that if they’re looking for an exhibition generated by muscle bound fakery there is a “sport” just for them. It’s called the WWE.  

Baseball is a game of memories. I hope those who read this will share some of their memories, either as players or as fans.