Hitting Immortality for a Man Named Fielder?

Baseball in its time has survived its share of crises. It has survived a fixed World Series. It has survived an earthquake. It even has survived an announcer who used as his sign-off:

“This is the old right-hander, rounding third and heading for home.”

The last, in particular, was painful, but baseball survived it.

In an atmosphere of survival, it is surprising most of all that the home run standards of Babe Ruth and Roger Maris continue to survive through the changing times that have followed them.

Ruth hit 60 homers in 1927. Maris hit 61 in 1961. All these years have passed--and the achievement of neither has been matched, not Ruth’s in a 154-game season, not Maris’ in a 162-game season.

And all the while, society has been bombarded with boasts of human advancement in sporting endeavors.

Just the other day, for instance, a guy puts the shot a little under 76 feet. At the time Maris hits 61, guys are putting the shot maybe 65 feet.

And when Ruth hits 60, they are muscling the shot 52 feet.

But home run production for a single season? A bust.

So now the argument begins.

“Do you know why someone hasn’t caught Ruth or Maris?” a scholar asks. “Better pitching by guys helped by modern methods.”

“But if pitching has been improved by better coaching, better conditioning and better living habits,” the pundit is asked, “why hasn’t all this improved hitters, too?”

Any case you want to make here on behalf of hitters isn’t impressive, leading us to wonder today about batsmen named Cecil Fielder and Jose Canseco. Are they working up to something noteworthy, or are they teasing us in April and May?

Fielder is an interesting study. Rising 6-feet-3, at 230 pounds, he experienced an undistinguished start in baseball, calling on such ports as Butte, Mont.; Florence, S.C.; Kinston, N.C., and Knoxville, Tenn., before being given a brief showing in Toronto.

Soon, he is in Syracuse, from where Toronto recalls him for another look. And do you know what it does then? It sells him to the Hanshin Tigers of Japan.

Doing well already on their purchase of Rockefeller Center, the Japanese make another score. Cecil Fielder smashes 38 home runs for Hanshin in 106 games. Folks in the town aim to elect him sheriff, if not lord mayor, but Detroit sneaks in and steals him as a free agent.

Now we are heading for Memorial Day, and Fielder has hit 17 home runs and Canseco has 18.

A right-handed batter, Cecil hits home runs off right- and left-handed pitchers alike. And he hits a lot of bad pitches, which is what it takes to catch Ruth or Maris.

You give a hitter the strike-zone eye of Ted Williams and he isn’t going to swing often enough to punch out 60.

A Detroit spokesman explains: “It is Cecil’s position that any ball leaving the pitcher’s hand has home run potential.

“Does he hit screamers?” the man is asked.

“No, mostly high flies. He does best on outside pitches on which he is able to extend his long arms.”

“Then why don’t they pitch him inside?” the interrogator, a tactical genius, asks.

“They did--until he learned to pull the ball. Now if they pitch him inside, he is able to lift one past the left-field pole.”

At 26, Cecil doesn’t pose as a student of technology, ascribing science to the art of belting homers.

By the end of May 1961, Maris had hit 12 home runs. Ruth, in 1927, had hit 15. You come up with comparative timetables this early in the year and you usually go off a bridge.

But, you presume, it eventually will happen that someone will take the measure of Ruth and Maris, whose records have stood too long.

Could it be Canseco? We see him as too nervous and too prone to injury.

What about Fielder? He is too new for a judgment to be made, but he has wide experience at dispensing home runs in the Pioneer League, South Atlantic League, Southern League, Venezuelan Winter League and Japanese Central League.

Has he recognized that pitching is better in the American League? Sparky Anderson doesn’t think so. But if it is, Sparky pleads with you not to tell Cecil.