When the Characters Really Had Character

Baseball has become Hollywood, big business, a commercialized bore, full of money-hungry, colorless, carefully spoken, briefcase-carrying suburbanites who talk only of tax shelters and futures instead of baseball, baseball, baseball.

More disgusting than anything is the press, trying to eke out colorful characterizations from this insubstantial breed of moody, misunderstood prima donnas, religious nuts, image-conscious do-gooders, and confused and pathetic druggies. Give me one good boozer of the likes of Ruth, Mantle or Dizzy Dean, a lunatic like Piersall, a loudmouth like Durocher, or at least one guy with a real chaw, like Nellie Fox.

DELL FRANKLIN

Shell Beach