A Suggestion That May Be Unspeakable

All right, Miss America, take a letter to the commissioner of all baseball, if you will. Watch out for the spelling of his name. It’s a toughie. Mark it eyes only. Ready?

“Dear Commissioner:

“It’s only fair to warn you that there are some people in baseball that I’m not talking to this season. I’m putting them--and you--on notice.

“I’m not talking to Steve Carlton. George Hendrick. Maybe, Dave Kingman. I haven’t made up my mind yet. Cecil Cooper. A couple of guys on the Rangers. I can’t think of their names right off hand.

“And now, Brian Downing of the Angels.

“This last is kind of tough because I’ve always gotten along well with Brian Downing. Kind of liked him, really.

“I’m still talking to Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson. I ask Steve Garvey how the kids are all the time. With Cecil Cooper, I’m sorry it had to come to this, but, well, Cecil asked for it.

“You see, these are on a list of guys who have announced they are not talking to the press, and I think it’s about time they found out this is a two-way street.

“I mean, you think writers don’t have a slump? You think there aren’t nights when we think, ‘Oh, Lord, do I have to go to a locker and talk to these guys again when they don’t know how it is?’ Only, we don’t have any training room to hide in.

“Let me tell you something, Commissioner. Ballplayers aren’t the only ones who have off-days. The thing is, we can’t take ours out on the press.

“You think there aren’t nights when I can’t get around on a couple of easy adjectives? You think we don’t pop up a hanging adverb? Right in our wheelhouse, and we get under it? You think we don’t dribble a modifying clause back to the pitcher? Get good wood on a transitive verb, only to have it die at the warning track?

“You think our prepositional phrases don’t pull a hamstring? Some columns limp in like Pedro Guerrero. I once got in such a slump I used two semicolons in one sentence. On my bad days, I run out of commas.

“You think it’s tough when a manager comes out to yank the pitcher when he has good stuff? What about when the editor says: ‘Wait a minute, don’t you want to rewrite this junk?’ And you say: ‘Hey, I got good stuff today. I had a no-hitter going when that banjo-hitting predicate was guessing curve on me.’

“We can’t sulk in the shower, can’t get dressed in the trainer’s room and sneak out the back. We got to suck it up and go downstairs and say: ‘OK, Slug, what kind of a pitch was it you hit?’ Or missed, as the case may be.

“I may add other people I’m not talking to as the season unwinds. I’ve got my eye on the whole left side of the Cleveland infield, for example, and one of these days when George Steinbrenner calls, I’m going to say, ‘No comment,’ and hang up.

“I’m fed up with these guys, Commissioner. I never once in my whole life said, ‘Take a hike,’ to an athlete who wanted to talk to me, and this is the thanks I get for it.

“Let me ask you something--let me ask them something: Where do you think baseball would be today if Babe Ruth had refused to talk to reporters? What if you couldn’t find out what Mickey Mantle had eaten for breakfast, what Willie Mays thought of the re-discount rate, how Ty Cobb felt about the infield-fly rule in your paper in the morning?

“I’ll tell you where it would be--about where soccer or softball are in this country.

“Baseball owes a lot to Babe Ruth, but it owes a lot to Ring Lardner, too.

“You think Dizzy Dean would have jammed all those ballparks if J. Roy Stockton hadn’t let the world in on what a wonderfully wacky character we were dealing with?

“Does George Hendrick think all these million-dollar contracts are handed out because the world needs people who can manage 3 hits every 10 times at bat? It may come as a shock to him, but the world doesn’t even need another .400 hitter.

“If he thinks the game itself is so intrinsically interesting, have him drop in on a twilight doubleheader in Visalia some night. Or even a Triple-A game in Pawtucket. Nobody would even notice whom George Hendrick isn’t speaking to.

“Americans have a right to speak or not speak to whom they choose. My point is, there’s this symbiotic relationship between press and player that works well for both--better, usually, for the player. Publicity is part of a player’s pay, often convertible later on in life when he can’t hit the curve anymore.

“But quite apart from that, there is the obligation to the industry. Talk or perish.

“Television gives the game the big bucks. But television cannot make a sport. Lord knows, it’s tried. It did everything it could with soccer. Also, the USFL.

“Without the daily reams of free copy, the daily chronicling of star slugger as a friend of the family, television might as well beam test patterns.

“So, I want it to be known that it’s not that these guys are not speaking to me. I’m not speaking to them.

“And one other thing: I may strike this summer, too. Tell them that. And see how they like it.

Sincerely,

Seasoned Scribe”