Keeping in Touch With Those Joes

We were on the phone the other day with Jose Canseco, the star outfielder for the Oakland Athletics. Of course, we weren’t actually talking with Jose, but he was on the other end of the line and we were listening to him go on. At least his recorded voice was on the line. Dial a 900 number, press some buttons, and you get Jose--we feel it’s OK to call him that now since we’re more or less acquainted--holding forth on a few selected subjects: the previous day’s game, how he feels about steroids, speeding in one of his cars, things like that. To be honest it’s not terribly exciting, but it does provide a kind of vicarious intimacy.

Talk may be cheap, but listening has its price. It costs $2 for the first 2 minutes to talk with Jose, $1 for each minute after that. In 5 minutes you’ve paid the equivalent of the admission price to most ballparks. We don’t know how many calls Jose is getting or what his cut of the fee is, but it’s a good guess that come next season other star players will also be telephonically cashing in on their celebrity.

That’s well and good, but we have an idea for a better mousetrap--so to speak. Listening to recorded talk is OK, but it doesn’t provide much chance to interact, to structure a meaningful relationship, to have a full and frank exchange of views, as they say in the locker room. So here’s our idea: cellular phones , for every player on the field.

Could anything be more exciting, more involving, than calling up a major leaguer in the middle of a game to get his incisive personal outlook on how things are going? Technically, there’s no problem. With available miniaturization, a ballplayer can have a two-way phone built right into his cap, or even implanted under his scalp, allowing you , Joe and Josie Fan, to be right there on the field with him, whispering into his ear and getting his feedback. Forget about calling up the guys you like; think about the fun of bugging the ones you hate . If this idea isn’t a four-bagger, we don’t know what is. We’re on our way to the patent office with it right now.

Oh, and if Jose calls back, put him on hold.