Talkin’ Baseball

Having been born and living my entire life in Alabama, I realize that in the South, football is king.  And in my state, it’s all about college football.  We declare allegiances as soon as we can speak, and we love our team and hate the other, whether we admit it or not.

Down here, college football has multiple seasons.  Beginning in January, we’re still wrapping up the bowl season.   After the national championship game, we move into the final days of recruiting season, when many fans sit at their computers or sports channel and see which 17 and 18-year-olds have committed to their favorite school, so that they can boast of how they did in the recruiting wars. This is followed by Spring practice and the intra-squad game, followed by a long summer of almost no football (unless you choose to watch one of the many sports channels run repeats of certain games from the previous year as well as the classics).  Finally, August breaks the monotony as fall practice begins and much speculation ensues about who will start at quarterback, and where our favorite teams will be ranked.  And then in early September we begin real football and that keeps us going until the playoffs are set and bowl season begins.  And then the cycle starts again.

And I get it.  I’m as much a fan as anybody.  I buy tickets every year and I have my team’s apparel in my closet.  And though I don’t attend as many games as I once did, I camp out in front of the TV when my team is playing.

But for some of us (and I fear the number is dwindling), the first week of February is not about college recruiting.  It’s the week that pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training.  And while October is the time when football teams are proving their mettle or being exposed as posers, it’s also the time for baseball playoffs and the World Series

Baseball is my favorite sport, hands down.  I love it.  I’m passionate about it.  I’m passionate about the Dodgers.  I have had a deep love for them since 1963 when I watched and read about the Dodgers sweeping the Yankees in the World Series.  Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax were my heroes and their pictures hang on my office wall today.  I also loved Mickey Mantle, even if he did play for the Evil Empire.  And as a Dodger fan, I hated the Giants and still do.  Nothing has pained me more than watching San Francisco win too many World Series and to see former Dodgers play for the Giants or vice-versa.  You can’t trust those guys and if they come play for your team, they will eventually be the cause of your ruin.  I believe that.  Seriously, I believe that.

I never played football.  My high school did not have a team.  We were a basketball school.  But I did get to play baseball as a youth and for one memorable summer before my senior year.  (That was the “Summer of 71” and is the subject of a future blog.)   But while I didn’t play as much organized baseball as I would have liked, I played sandlot baseball and backyard baseball all my life.

I have my first catcher’s mitt on a shelf in my office and it brings back many memories.  I got that mitt with Quality Stamps which Mom got with her groceries at Big Star and passed along to me.  I remember the day I brought it home.  I slept with it.  I fancied myself a catcher and in the “Summer of 71”, actually got to crouch behind the plate for a few games.

We built a first class baseball field behind a house we rented from W. T. Sumeral in my junior high years.  I borrowed his mower and broke the blade when I ran over a large rock mowing the infield.  We strapped an old set of bed springs to a couple of muscadine trees behind home plate.  And, true story, I literally set the woods on fire while burning off a portion of the outfield.  But the field survived.  And every ball hit beyond that large log at the back of the field was a home run.  We hit lots of home runs.

Later, when we moved to Russellville, my summer and fall Saturdays, consisted of walking 2 miles, equipment in tow, along with my brother Danny and friends Glenn and Michael Hodge to Hal Kirby Park, Jr. Memorial Park.  There, we’d play baseball for hours.  Two man teams.  Danny and I against Glenn and Michael.  Lots of inside the park home runs when you only have a pitcher and a single fielder.  We kept impeccable statistics.  We only took an occasional break to walk across the street to the laundromat to get a drink of water and an occasional soft drink.    This was an official two-team, four-man league.  We kept lots of statistics.  We had some pretty high batting averages.  We also had no umpire, so we argued about a lot of ball and strike calls.

Baseballs weren’t always easy to come by.  I am amazed still when I see how many baseballs are tossed aside in a game.  We played for weeks with a single ball.  A new baseball was gold.  And we taped a lot of broken bats.  We also bought rubber coated baseballs so that we could play in the rain.

I learned to pitch by taping a strike zone on the chimney and pitching until my arm felt like it would fall off.  I did a lot of that with a rubber baseball so that it would bounce back to me.  You gotta do what you gotta do.

And I listened to some of the greatest announcers.  Living in the south, we heard the Cardinals, Braves and for a while, the White Sox.  So I knew the voices of Jack Buck, Milo Hamilton and Harry Caray as well as those of my own family.  At night, I could hear Marty Brennaman and the Red’s broadcast.  He hated the Dodgers and that was OK.  I hated the Reds.  On Saturdays, it was Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek.  Later, it was Joe Garagiola, Tim McCarver and others.  These were men who knew the game and loved they game.  Other than Curt Gowdy, I don’t know if the others ever broadcasted other sports.  They were great.  They are all in the Hall of Fame and deserve to be.  We could use more of those guys today.

Full disclosure.  My history with the game has left me pretty much set in my ways as far as baseball is concerned.  So I’ll share my views on a few issues that are a part of today’s game.

Designated Hitter rule.  I hate this rule.  I grew up in a day when the pitchers were a true part of the team and took their turns at the plate.  Don Drysdale and Don Sutton were decent hitters.  Also, Drysdale brushed back and hit a lot of hitters, knowing he would have to stand in the batter’s box and face the consequences.  I think we lost a lot of the strategies and difficult decisions faced by managers when we decided to let someone bat for the pitchers.  I don’t like it.

Sabermetrics.  Nope.  Not a fan.  I love statistics, but I think we are losing a lot of the instinct for the game that players once had.   We have replaced baseball people with statisticians and we are now told that strikeouts don’t matter and that home runs rule.  I love both, but I also like a good sacrifice and a guy that could hit to the opposite field.

Instant replay.  Scrap it.  Slows down the game and they still don’t always get it right.  Play the game.

Suspensions for hit batters and related skirmishes.  Come on.  The players once policed themselves and still could.  Very few times that a brouhaha has resulted in injuries.  And if the hitter wants to charge the mound, just consider what happened to Robin Ventura when he decided to take on Nolan Ryan.  You can find it on YouTube.

I’m not a fan of inter-league play.  My opinion is that it takes away a little of the mystique of the World Series.  And I say that knowing that the majority of the fans don’t agree with me.

And please stop showing the little box that is supposed to represent the strike zone at home plate. All it does is frustrate us because it tells us how many close pitches the umpire missed.  And they always miss more when it hurts my team.  Fact.

Infield shifts.  I don’t know how I feel about this.  I guess I have to be consistent and say let the teams put their men where they choose.  Hitters just need to learn to hit to the opposite field.

Now, having said this, I realize that baseball today is about the money.  And that is the driving force behind pretty much every change in the game.  I get it.  That’s how it is, and most of it won’t ever change.  There’s no going back.  So, while I may visit the past, I don’t live there.  I still watch the games. I still love the Dodgers despite their sabermetric front office.  I applaud them when they’re good and berate them when they’re bad.  But, as Tommy Lasorda said, “I bleed Dodger blue”.

Baseball more than any other game, is a game of memories.  Those of us who love the game can still remember vividly the historic plays we saw or the historic calls we heard by the broadcasters.  I still remember watching Hank Aaron hit number 715 and hearing Milo Hamilton make the call.  I remember seeing Kirk Gibson’s memorable home run in the 1988 World Series and listening to the call by both Vin Scully and Jack Buck.

I could write about this forever.  But blogs have to come to an end.  But my love affair with baseball does not.  And it will not.  I still look through my baseball cards from the 60’s.  I still pick up that old catcher’s mitt and throw a baseball in it.  And I still remember the wonder of seeing my first major league field (Turner Field in Atlanta) when Gail and I went there to see the Braves and Dodgers play on our honeymoon.  Oh, and did I tell you that I fell in love with her when I first saw her throw a baseball?  But more on that somewhere down the line.

Baseball.  An American treasure.