Baseball Is America’s Grand Ol’ Game, and It Will Never Change

Baseball again. The nostalgia game. Where it is always 1910, and we’re young, and life is simple, and it’s root, root, root for the home team and if they don’t win it’s to be expected.

It’s the game that rhymes, metaphorically, with apple pie and open trolleys and homemade fudge and taffy pulls and harvest moons. Our forefathers’ game, a link with our past, an heirloom game, one that changes slowly or not at all.

It’s not a television game, a betting game or a point-spread game. It’s a game for people who are not in a hurry, a game to savor, a game grandfathers take grandchildren to.

It’s a game of more innocent times--canoeing in the park by the light of the silvery moon, two-a-days at the Bijou, Main Street, USA.

It’s a happy game. A family game. Rated G, all right. A game you smile about when you think back 20 years from now. There is joy in Mudville.

It’s a game of heroes. Larger than life. Their names go into the language. A great cook is the Babe Ruth of chefs. A man can be the Babe Ruth of any specialty, so long as he is good enough at it.

It is America’s game, never mind what the basketball people tell you, the TV people tell you. Congress adjourns for it. Presidents throw out the first ball. Even the Constitution can’t touch it.

What other sport do they write poems about? Songs about? “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” means a baseball game. The saddest words of tongue and pen are Tinker to Evers to Chance, baseball players.

Even Ernest Hemingway himself was a baseball fan. It was a man’s sport in his man’s world.

What other sport has such heroes? Willie, Mickey and the Duke. Cobb. Rose. Hornsby. McGraw. American soldiers in World War II flushed out German spies in Warner Bros. movies by asking them who Lou Gehrig played for. A real American would know.

It is an evocative game, as much a part of the culture as a train whistle in the night.

You don’t have to be 6-6 or 7-6 to play it. You don’t have to weigh 300 pounds. You have to be swift, sure and graceful. David, not Goliath. You have to be strong but not brutish. You have to be part artist, part warrior.

Even baseball’s records are leisurely. They resist change. They turn back assaults like an old fortress, an entrenched religion.

It’s 1985 now, and baseball this season will be new, yet old. What won’t happen will be as important as what will. For instance:

--For the 55th year in a row, no one in the National League will bat .400. Bill Terry’s .401, set in 1930, will stand.

--For the 34th year in a row, no one in the American League will bat .400. Ted Williams’ .406, set in 1941, will remain.

--For the 48th year in a row, no one in the National League will win the triple crown--batting average, home runs and runs batted in. Ducky Medwick’s 1937 achievement will stand.

--For the 18th year in a row, no one in the American League will win the triple crown, leaving Carl Yastrzemski’s 1967 achievement untouched.

--For the 81st time in the 83 summers of baseball, no one will hit 60 home runs. Roger Maris’ 61 in 1961 will remain where it is. So will he, ignored by the Hall of Fame for committing an aberration. Ruth’s 60 in 1927 will not be challenged.

--For the 24th year in a row, no one will hit even 50 home runs in the American League, leaving Maris and Mickey Mantle as the last. It will mark the eighth year for the National League, unless the Mets’ George Foster can duplicate his 1977 feat, which is not likely.

--For the 5lst year in a row, no National League pitcher will win 30 games as Dizzy Dean did in 1934. No American League pitcher will match the 31 games won by Detroit’s Denny McLain in 1968.

--For the 44th year in a row, and the 82nd year out of 83, no one will hit in 56 straight games as the great Joe DiMaggio did in 1941. No one is likely to hit in 44 as Pete Rose did in 1978.

--For the 77th year in a row, no one will win 40 games as Big Ed Walsh did in 1908. For the second year in a row, no one may win 20 in one league.

--For the 65th year in a row, no one will come close to Babe Ruth’s slugging percentage of .847 in 1920. No one will even come close to Rogers Hornsby’s more modest .756 set in 1925.

--For the 76th year in a row, no one will hit 36 triples to break Owen Wilson’s mark set at Pittsburgh in 1912. In fact, no one will break Kiki Cuyler’s mark of 26 set at Pittsburgh in 1925.

--For the 40th year in a row, the Chicago Cubs will not win the National League pennant.

--Making baseball history, Pete Rose will break Ty Cobb’s record of most hits, 4,191. Presumably, Pete will also break Cobb’s record for most popups, most groundouts to second and most foul tips to the backstop.

--For the second year in a row, Reggie Jackson will break the all-time strikeout record every time he comes to bat and misses or takes a third strike.

--For the second year in a row, Nolan Ryan will break the all-time strikeout record every time he fans a player and/or Steve Carlton doesn’t. He will also break the record for walks with no threat from anyone.

Only a very great game can thrive on a thread of non-accomplishment the way baseball can. Only a very secure sport can root contentedly for its ancestry. Only a great civilization secures its future by honoring its past. Baseball is nothing if not civilized.