NEITHER STRIKE, LOCKOUT NOR ... : A Fan’s Hedge Against Baseball’s Rainy Days

Let them toy with a strike. Let it snow. I am impregnable.

I had watched and listened Tuesday as the baseball strike took shape. I was perfectly confident that, no matter what, I could go home after work, pour myself a glass of lemonade, tear open a bag of Bell’s salt-free potato chips and fire up a baseball game on TV. It’s of no consequence now that the work stoppage lasted only one day. My careful plans had left me as impervious to baseball deprivation as El Capitan is to attack by woodpeckers.

You see, in June I began taping ballgames in the event that baseball would be snatched off television. Implementing my VCR defense proved more difficult than it might at first seem, but my technique may still be beneficial in the future. My reserve of games can now sit, serving my mental health in the same way a heaping pile of nuts may reassure a squirrel in late fall.

My preparations began weeks ago with the first realization that the owners and players were unlikely to avert a strike--whenever it might occur, and for however long it might last. I wondered how many others there are like me, closeted in our homes with the technological means to resist the worst conceivable calamity that could befall a summertime: the absence of baseball from the airwaves. Televised baseball is important to the preservation of sanity for many reasons, most of which are tied up in the unique pace and style of our national pastime, which lends itself peculiarly well to being viewed on our national medium.

One can read The Times or the Wall Street Journal, catch up on correspondence, hold coherent conversations with one’s wife and perform countless other necessary activities with baseball on the tube comfortably coexisting, never intruding. The crack of the bat is a gentle signal to attention. A summer, a winter or even a few days without it would be unthinkable.

I’d taped the World and League Championship series for the last two years for use during the long winter. Sadly, though, there is nothing staler than a warmed-over baseball game whose outcome already is known. To solve the problem, I made several ground rules. I would only tape games that I didn’t watch live. The day the game was to be played, I would take no account of lineups or the like.

When I taped a game, I would studiously avoid box scores and league standings in the next morning’s sports section. If I was driving when KNX ran one of its twice-an-hour sports updates, I would quickly turn down the car radio. Only by following this demanding regimen could I be certain that the game--saved for emergency or off-season use--would be as pristine as the real thing. It had to be an adequate pool of virgin videocassettes.

Selecting teams was not as difficult as it might seem. Taping local games would have been a problem because of inevitable difficulty avoiding the results. Fortunately, I detest both the Angels and the Dodgers (not to mention their insufferable broadcasters). For the last 16 years, I have been an ardent fan of the New York Mets because, by winning the league championship and the World Series in 1969, they became the only baseball team in modern history to materially affect elective politics.

This was accomplished by the Mets inviting into their clubhouse to have champagne poured on his head one John V. Lindsay, who, in the absence of a miracle, was about to lose the mayoral race in New York City. Fortunately for the mayor, the Mets won and Lindsay--his head still damp--was swept back into City Hall.

Voila the solution! Superstation WOR from New York--Mets television--which I pick up by cable. By the start of last week, I had a pile of eight Mets games (and the All-Star game, to which I had paid no attention anyway). That is enough for a long siege or a whole winter, since a single game can be nursed on the VCR and last three or four days.

To prevent cheating in a moment of weakness, I made no note of the specific date of each game--marking only the month and the opponent on each cassette. I can’t go back and find out the scores now, even if I want to.

So I know the Mets will be playing the Braves, Cards, Astros, Reds and Pirates. But I won’t know who’s pitching until Ralph Kiner and Tim McCarver tell me, and none of the games, as Yogi Berra would say, will be over until it is over.

DR