June 3, 2020
The 73rd Year
Day 76
America needs baseball!
Big league baseball: the Mets, White Sox, Astros, Nationals even the lowly Marlins, Royals and Pirates. We need them in our living room every evening all summer long.
Little league baseball. We need to head to town to see our grandkids move from T-ball to parent-pitch to the watch-out-a-10- year-old has the ball and is on the mound league!
Ok, I need this. I need the diversion. I need to remember or at least, I need a reminder. This is summer.
Summer is about baseball.
How can it be summer without baseball? For me, it is unimaginable. My 73rd summer, no baseball.
As you read this post do not look for any more subtle or blatant metaphors linking my ramblings to the Covid-19 pandemic, the growing unease in our streets or the idiot in the White House. I am putting those horrors aside for one day; giving it a rest as my adult kids have suggested. This post is not exactly upbeat but it is not open-up-a-vein reading either.
This post is only about baseball.
Major League baseball without fans will do. TV and radio broadcasts are fine. Streaming will work too.
We do not need gimmicks like canned crowd noise or off-the-field side shows between innings. The sounds of the game are enough like a hard hit line-drive exploding off a wooden bat or the satisfying thud of a well-oiled catchers mitt swallowing a high and tight fast ball.
We have kitchens; we do not need concessions. Let’s face it a Fenway Frank is just a $7.25 hotdog and a 12-ounce, $8 ballpark-beer is well just a beer worth about two bucks.
We do not need any special rules to make the game more lively. The games do not have to be shorter; nine innings over three hours is just fine. I love the pace of the game, slow and sleepy one minute, explosive and heart-stopping the next.
We have time these days; lots of it.
We need the rivalries: the Yankees and the Red Sox, the Cubs and the Cardinals and the Dodgers and the Giants.
If we have major league baseball, we can have fantasy baseball too. I drafted my team so long ago that I do not know who is on it. I do recall it was not going to be very good. Fantasy baseball is a bonus.
We need players; pitchers, catchers, fielders and hitters, 25 or 30 on each team, a dozen more on the extended roster to step up when our superstars go down with a pulled hamstring, a torn oblique or a bum rotator cuff.
We need someone to heckle so we need the boys in blue, the four to six pudgy, middle-aged, far-sighted umpires who officiate every MLB game.
Mostly we need a season then later a postseason and eventually a world series champion. Ideally it will be the Red Sox but there has to be a world series champion.
Twenty five years ago there was a strike and no world series and thus no world series champion.1994 was a dark year!
As this is written, we still do not have a MLB season. The owners and the players, greedy bastards all, have resolved the health and safety issues that derailed the season. But they are still fighting about money. If we do not have baseball this summer it will be because a handful of fat-cat owners and 1,200 or so millionaire ballplayers love money more than the game.
Organized amateur baseball from Little League through the Cape Cod League is lost for 2020 but kids can still play this summer. We used to call it sandlot ball. Baseball was designed with social distancing in mind and with a few tweaks it can be played safely on fields everywhere.
The bases are 90 feet apart, the pitcher 60 feet from the batter. No problem. If you need an umpire, put him behind the pitcher, back up the catcher and make every fielding out a force out. This should eliminate contact on the bases.
Oh yeah, spitting has to go too. No sunflower seeds. No spitting!
It’s a small sacrifice.
If there is a MLB season, here is what I am excited to see:
* Mookie Betts in an LA Dodger uniform. As a Red Sox fan I mourn his loss; as a baseball fan I wish him well.
* Fenway without Betts and Alex Cora, the well-respected manager who resigned before being fired for illegally stealing signs while working in Houston and perhaps Boston.
* The world champion Washington Nationals! Can they do it again?
* Balls disappearing over the monster onto Landsdowne Street. Four baggers at Fenway never disappoint.
* The Yankees! May they play well and lose regularly.
Play ball!
Be safe!
The 73rd Year
Day 76
America needs baseball!
Big league baseball: the Mets, White Sox, Astros, Nationals even the lowly Marlins, Royals and Pirates. We need them in our living room every evening all summer long.
Little league baseball. We need to head to town to see our grandkids move from T-ball to parent-pitch to the watch-out-a-10- year-old has the ball and is on the mound league!
Ok, I need this. I need the diversion. I need to remember or at least, I need a reminder. This is summer.
Summer is about baseball.
How can it be summer without baseball? For me, it is unimaginable. My 73rd summer, no baseball.
As you read this post do not look for any more subtle or blatant metaphors linking my ramblings to the Covid-19 pandemic, the growing unease in our streets or the idiot in the White House. I am putting those horrors aside for one day; giving it a rest as my adult kids have suggested. This post is not exactly upbeat but it is not open-up-a-vein reading either.
This post is only about baseball.
Major League baseball without fans will do. TV and radio broadcasts are fine. Streaming will work too.
We do not need gimmicks like canned crowd noise or off-the-field side shows between innings. The sounds of the game are enough like a hard hit line-drive exploding off a wooden bat or the satisfying thud of a well-oiled catchers mitt swallowing a high and tight fast ball.
We have kitchens; we do not need concessions. Let’s face it a Fenway Frank is just a $7.25 hotdog and a 12-ounce, $8 ballpark-beer is well just a beer worth about two bucks.
We do not need any special rules to make the game more lively. The games do not have to be shorter; nine innings over three hours is just fine. I love the pace of the game, slow and sleepy one minute, explosive and heart-stopping the next.
We have time these days; lots of it.
We need the rivalries: the Yankees and the Red Sox, the Cubs and the Cardinals and the Dodgers and the Giants.
If we have major league baseball, we can have fantasy baseball too. I drafted my team so long ago that I do not know who is on it. I do recall it was not going to be very good. Fantasy baseball is a bonus.
We need players; pitchers, catchers, fielders and hitters, 25 or 30 on each team, a dozen more on the extended roster to step up when our superstars go down with a pulled hamstring, a torn oblique or a bum rotator cuff.
We need someone to heckle so we need the boys in blue, the four to six pudgy, middle-aged, far-sighted umpires who officiate every MLB game.
Mostly we need a season then later a postseason and eventually a world series champion. Ideally it will be the Red Sox but there has to be a world series champion.
Twenty five years ago there was a strike and no world series and thus no world series champion.1994 was a dark year!
As this is written, we still do not have a MLB season. The owners and the players, greedy bastards all, have resolved the health and safety issues that derailed the season. But they are still fighting about money. If we do not have baseball this summer it will be because a handful of fat-cat owners and 1,200 or so millionaire ballplayers love money more than the game.
Organized amateur baseball from Little League through the Cape Cod League is lost for 2020 but kids can still play this summer. We used to call it sandlot ball. Baseball was designed with social distancing in mind and with a few tweaks it can be played safely on fields everywhere.
The bases are 90 feet apart, the pitcher 60 feet from the batter. No problem. If you need an umpire, put him behind the pitcher, back up the catcher and make every fielding out a force out. This should eliminate contact on the bases.
Oh yeah, spitting has to go too. No sunflower seeds. No spitting!
It’s a small sacrifice.
If there is a MLB season, here is what I am excited to see:
* Mookie Betts in an LA Dodger uniform. As a Red Sox fan I mourn his loss; as a baseball fan I wish him well.
* Fenway without Betts and Alex Cora, the well-respected manager who resigned before being fired for illegally stealing signs while working in Houston and perhaps Boston.
* The world champion Washington Nationals! Can they do it again?
* Balls disappearing over the monster onto Landsdowne Street. Four baggers at Fenway never disappoint.
* The Yankees! May they play well and lose regularly.
Play ball!
Be safe!
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