Bermuda Shorts - James Patterson [40]
My point is that baseball has always been popular. Consequently, it has always attracted large crowds. Large crowds attract money, gamblers, wheeler dealers, and confidence men. It’s astonishing how similar today’s baseball issues are to those that have arisen over the last 150 years.
On Opening Day 2003, the New York Times pointed out that from 1901 to 1994, ten men hit fifty or more homers in a season eighteen times. From 1995 to 2002, the Times went on to remind us, ten men also hit fifty or more home runs in a season eighteen times. What once took ninety-three years to accomplish now takes seven. Clearly, something has changed. Is there a Watergate waiting to happen over juiced balls and TV money? Power and greed can corrupt and ruin anything, maybe everything. But they don’t have to.
Our culture and its custodians should take care to not despoil such a well-made thing as baseball.
The game, whether played by anonymous souls whose names we’ll never know, or the big-money-making star athletes we’ve become so suspicious of, maybe such a part of who we are that even the clown princes of America can’t screw it up for very long. Just teach your kids to play, and the tradition will survive. And if it survives, perhaps those things that could heal baseball’s problems—doing your job, making a sacrifice—might just heal some of America’s problems, too.
Meanwhile, look at the pictures of the crowds. I’m that little speck of color in the upper deck, and happy to have a seat there, right where I belong.
The Mayor of 417
“Old School!” the young man shouted.
His voice came from the middle of the crowd as we herded toward the escalator at the F Street Metro after a Washington Capitals hockey game. It took me a second to realize he was shouting at me. He and his pals were reacting to my classic white, star-spangled Dale Hunter hockey sweater—and, I assume, my gray hair—as he called out again, “Old School, man!”
You would have loved this guy, and his friends—early twenties, beefy, unkempt, a bunch of ragtag rabble-rousers for sure. The speaker was wearing baggy shorts despite the cold winter night, a floppy knitted cap with a ball hanging from the top on a thread, and a New School Caps sweater in black. It took me a second to remember that I’m fifty years old, and yes, looking more and more grizzled myself these days.
I turned. Everyone moving along between the young men and myself was expecting a reply; everyone seemed to be somewhere in age between his and mine. So I said, “Every school is ‘Old School’ sooner or later, my friend.” The words rolled off my tongue, and the crowd had a chuckle. But as I made my way home that night, I thought, “When the hell did I become Old School?” and even more importantly, “Is that a good thing?”
My personal confrontations with mortality aside, it’s kind of nice to hear a bunch of young turks laying out some props for anything called “Old School.” I’ve spilled a lot of ink attempting to connect what has been good and memorable in my forty-plus years of being a sports fan with what we experience as fans today. The evolving relationships between fans and the sports they follow, and the changes in the games brought about by design or default, are all grist for my mill.
One thing I know for sure: I can’t be a couch potato sports fan. I’ve got to go to the games.
Contrary to popular wisdom, I don’t think football is perfect for television. On TV, you can’t see the secondary fan out as the receivers penetrate the zones, while simultaneously the pocket forms, as the defensive linemen battle their way to the quarterback.