It’s a day to quote other people. I am too tired to write. And sad, some. I’m just realizing that I’m done watching Mets baseball this year. In the scheme of things, not such a big deal, but I’m sad. Here is part of Mike Lupica’s column from today:
“The Mets had one last chance in the bottom of the ninth, had a great chance to make that inning like the bottom of the 10th against the Red Sox 20 years ago. Valentin got the hit he didn't get in the sixth, Chavez got the hit he didn't get in the sixth, Paul Lo Duca walked with two outs. Beltran at the plate. Heilman at least tried to make a pitch. Beltran watched the season go by with the bat on his shoulder. He went to the dugout. The Cardinals go to Detroit for Game 1 tomorrow night.”
And following is a piece written by a friend, Rebecca Day. She wrote it ten years ago but really it’s timeless, and I couldn’t have said it better myself.
One thing before that, though – only 106 days until pitchers and catchers! And, um, go Cardinals! And bring on football season, finally. OK, here’s Rebecca, brought to you in Cardinal Red:
This time last year I was depressed. I must have been depressed because I didn't care what the St. Louis Cardinals were doing. Oh sure, I dissed baseball like everybody else disgusted with the baseball strike, but I wasn't particularly angry at the greedy players and owners. I just didn't care anymore.
That's not like me. When I was growing up in St. Louis, my first stop in the morning was the Cardinals' box score in the Globe-Democrat. I’d end each day with my transistor radio under my pillow as Jack Buck and Harry Caray serenaded me with the lyrics of baseball's play-by-play. Caray's "it might be, it could be, it is...a home run" were words I lived for when Ken Boyer, and later, Orlando Cepeda, came to the plate. I grew up on Bob Gibson pitching so I just assumed when Jack Buck said, "he struck out the side," that's what pitchers always did.
I can still recite the Cardinals' batting order from the '67 and '68 seasons, and Gibby's 1.12 E.R.A. from 1968 is to me the greatest sports achievement of all time. When I witnessed Gibson break a World Series record by striking out 17 Detroit Tigers in the ’68 series, I meant it when I told my mom on the historic K that I'd never felt such joy in my life. I still mean it.
After taking my heart out of baseball for a year, I must be feeling better. Now that fans have had their revenge and the stadiums are filling up again, I'm starting to come back, too. I ordered the Major League Baseball package for my satellite system so I can watch the Cardinals from my home in New York. I wear my red cap around the house again. I'll drive a couple of hours to Philadelphia just to watch my team play. I think I see a new energy and life in the revamped Cardinal organization. Or maybe it's just my old feelings for baseball coming back.
That doesn't mean I approve of the way baseball has gotten down to business. No one should make $31,000 a day for playing a game and then demand more. Blackmailing a city by threatening to move a team to another state in order to get an expensive new playground is too Machiavellian for my tastes. Complaining that an umpire's untimely death ruined opening-day gate receipts is unspeakable. Yup, baseball is full of unsavory folks.
So what is it about the game that brings me back, that brings us all back despite the glaring faults? A team wins its division and the fans don't know whether to laugh or cry because the team may be playing in another city next year. We watch our favorite players jump ship when they get a better offer, and we're torn between finding a new fav or following our heroes as they hopscotch for dollars around the leagues. A woman umpire tries to advance in a man's world and strikes out when she hits the Dome Ceiling. A family of four pays $150 for a few hours' entertainment and ends up supporting the drug habit of a player who didn't have anything better to do with his paycheck than trash it on drugs. Yet we still go out to the ballgame. Why?
I guess it comes down to the fact that baseball is bigger than drugs, bigger than Marge Schott's faux pas and George Steinbrenner's mouth – bigger even than the players’ absurd mega-million-dollar salaries. Names like Cardinals, Yankees and Red Sox have lived longer than any of us and with each spring training and autumn pennant chase those venerable names take on more history. Baseball's excesses may have diminished our ability to see the game as a metaphor for life, but for those us for whom baseball is part of our existence living without it is worse than the sum of the game's human errors.
For me, baseball is an amalgam of people, places, events – even smells. It's Grandma singing the National Anthem with the reverence reserved for a hymn. It's food I wouldn't eat anywhere else. It's the somehow tolerable stench of cigars, hot dogs, stale beer and mustard wafting in four-part harmony on a hot August day. It's becoming one with people with whom I might not share any other beliefs.
I've even learned some of the most important lessons in life from baseball. Finding out the hard way that you have to speak up or the guy waiting behind you will cut in front just for peanuts. Realizing that you can be the best one year and knocked off the top the next. Discovering that relationships don't always last forever – that #51 for whom you felt fan-love at first sight is going to leave you to play the field somewhere else. Then when you least expect it he returns and gives his all.
Baseball is history, it's home, it's every neighborhood kid running out into the street to celebrate after the seventh game of the Series. It's ice cream with a wooden spoon and the drama of a Mr. October home run. It's Cal Ripken, Jr. delivering the hope that maybe we too can earn a standing ovation or even a high-five for giving 110 percent on the job.
Baseball is Kirk Gibson doing his Robert Redford imitation, blurring the line between baseball and fiction as he hobbles around the bases with a victorious fist pumping the playoff air. It's red, white and blue bunting, and the magic of your first World Series. It's the players you identify with, the players you idolize and the hero who gave you one ecstatic moment with a screaming fastball, one mighty swing of the bat or an over-the-fence catch to win the game. It's the lump that surges in your throat when you swing through the turnstile at Cooperstown or when all rise for the National Anthem.
All these things are baseball. Baseball is so much more than sport.
