The Game We Know Needs Nurturing

One warm, blue-skied day soon, with the last frost behind us and while the air is still crisp and alive, we are going to have to talk about baseball.

We have to, because for a generation or so, the game has been changing. As have we all.

Those of us who remember have an obligation to talk about baseball, about the game we knew, because much of it still exists. It needs to be dusted off and nurtured.

Money has changed the game, but money has changed us all. Saying the players of yesteryear weren’t concerned with salaries is like saying each of us would be willing to go back to that first job out of college and live on what we made then.

Once, it seemed a lot of money. Once, it probably was.

But in 1990, Will Clark’s agent will make more money than Ted Williams earned in his career. And the New York Yankees have a 12-year cable television contract worth $485 million.

We need to talk baseball before we begin to think of it as just another American industry. And before our children do.

We need to talk baseball before batting gloves. Before baserunners wore sliding gloves.

We need to remember baseball when Pete Rose hustled on the field, not off. When all stadiums were outdoors and all grass was real.

We need to talk baseball without Fehr and loathing, because what is happening now isn’t the fault of the game. And when today’s owners and today’s players are gone, the game won’t be. Not if enough of us remember it. And talk it.

Talk baseball when Bob Gibson threw a purpose pitch and when Frank Robinson got back up, dusted himself off and stood in the box glaring at the mound, bat high.

Talk about a game with players like Yogi Berra, who took comic books on team trains, loved kids and thought most of a newspaper was something to wrap the sports section in.

Once, the uniforms were flannel and so baggy a man might get blown off base in a good strong wind.

Once, Don Drysdale went into Buzzie Bavasi’s office to talk contract figures--and Bavasi wrote down different figures on scraps of paper, then told Drysdale to pick one.

Drysdale did and went away happy.

Talk about baseball before trading cards were investments, when they were collected because a guy had a great sounding name, or just because he played for Pittsburgh.

Talk about the baseball that drew men, women and children to its parks wanting to watch the game, not drink beer. When a kid in the upper deck wouldn’t hear words he’d have to have explained.

We live in complex times, and that has been hard on a simple game. Greed isn’t new. Nor obstinacy.

And perhaps what we see at baseball’s bargaining table these days is merely what we see elsewhere. Greyhound buses are being shot at--with a lot less money at stake.

And perhaps that is why we need to talk baseball. To get the game back where it belongs, in our imaginations, our memories.

We need to honor a game and forget, at times, those who dishonor it. With luck, baseball will survive commissioners without courage, owners who feel they answer to no one and players who want a lifetime of opulence for a few years of work.

We should talk baseball, because in remembering what was, perhaps we will see that much of that same magic remains.

Eventually, baseball will return. And if we view it the way owners and players are viewing it now, the game will have lost more than a few months. It will have lost all those reasons we ever talked baseball.