the innocents of summer : THE WIDE-EYED, BRAND-NEW, LOW-PAID COLORADO ROCKIES TAKE THE FIELD UNDER BASEBALL’S DARKENING SKIES

IN ITS SLY ALLEGIANCE TO TRADITION, WHAT BASEBALL HAS always sold best is a ticket to flee the Here and Now, a promise to the beleaguered that it will deliver them back to the verdant days of their youth, of their heroes, of an America that no longer exists, except within the bucolic fantasy land of ballparks. It is a sport with an eternal hold, above all else, on the loyalties of escapists. Enter Dodger Stadium and maybe you forget for a while about crack babies and carjackings and E. coli. Walk through the turnstiles of Yankee Stadium and, if you are a boomer, in a part of your mind’s eye it will always be 1961, with Roger Maris hitting another home run over the right-field porch, a tantalizingly short 296 feet away.

That Maris is gone and buried, that the porch no longer exists, that Yankee Stadium was renovated into, more or less, a symmetrically sterile park 17 years ago, scarcely matters: The place and game tug you back. It is much of the reason that grown folks journey thousands of miles in winter to the Arizona desert to watch baseball games that do not count. It is why, on this day, elderly people with cacti emblazoned on their souvenir T-shirts walk around Hi Corbett Field in Tucson, tugging self-consciously at worn baseball caps that bespeak their loyalties to teams and eras to which they would gladly run in an instant, if given half a chance. It’s why, in searching for boyish immortals to carry on, they push excitedly toward a dugout railing for the sake of a signature from a 25-year-old unknown in the equally unknown purple and black uniform of the Colorado Rockies, one of baseball’s two new expansion clubs.

“These guys are the new heroes, I kinda think,” says a man wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers cap. “I got a 1951 rookie Willie Mays signature on a ball. I got the original New York Mets on a ball--Casey Stengel and the whole lot of them. This is history. This is pure. These kids are great.”

The subject of his attention at the moment wears the numeral 45, and the man in the Brooklyn cap and some of the other older fans have consulted their exhibition game programs so that they might be able to respectfully address the idol by name when their turn finally comes to proffer baseballs and programs. Pitcher Kurt Leskanic signs everything neatly.

“Hey, yeah, give it to me; sure I’ll do it,” the pitcher says graciously, and takes a black marking pen to the pale forearm of a septuagenarian who has misplaced his program. A year ago, Leskanic lost more games than he won while hurling for Orlando, Fla., and Portland, Ore., in the minor league organization of the Minnesota Twins, and it seems to him nothing less than remarkable that a sub-.500 pitcher without a day of major league experience has been given a chance, albeit a slight one, to make a major league ballclub.

“Hey, I’m here,” he shouts to a grizzled guy chomping on a cigar and wearing a frayed cap bearing a St. Louis Browns logo. “I’m part of the whole thing. Tell us we’re not dreaming.” Leskanic can’t help thinking of the major league minimum salary of $109,000, a vast fortune to him. “One-oh-nine? Yeah, I’d like to know what that feels like. I could do a lot with that. Think of that--One-oh-nine.” Unfortunately, Leskanic will not be with the team on opening day.

The thought of being sent back to the minors haunts some players. In the Rockies’ clubhouse, with eyes glazed, 25-year-old utility infielder-outfielder Jim Tatum, who surfaced last season to play in five games for the Milwaukee Brewers, sits slumped over his locker stall as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders. Although expected to make the Rockies’ regular-season roster (he did), Tatum believes that nothing is certain, that every exhibition game and each of his at-bats is fraught with risk, part of the reason why he agreed earlier to a request of the Rockies’ coaches and manager Don Baylor that he learn the techniques of a catcher as well. “They told me it would enhance my chances of making the club,” he says. “I’m still walking on thin ice.”

Tatum played for an average of less than $30,000 a year during his last four seasons in the minors and, not wishing to make waves, mumbles that whatever the Rockies want to pay him, which would be $112,000, “makes no difference to me. I’m unproven. I just want to show my thanks to the people paying me and the ones buying tickets.”

These innocent remarks capture the anomalous, old-fashioned quality of this peculiar franchise. In their zeal to please the fans and express fealty to ownership, Tatum and Leskanic, like most of their teammates, are throwbacks to that distant era when players signed autographs for free and took what their bosses gave them. It was a period when a front-line pitcher for the wealthy, dynastic New York Yankees, during the club’s run of five consecutive American League championships in the ‘60s, signed for less than $20,000 a year.

Today’s average major league salary is more than $1.1 million per season, nearly $800,000 greater than in 1985, and no fewer than 98 of the 700 or so major league players will earn more than $3 million this year, the vast majority of them holding multi-year contracts. The Chicago Cubs, the Rockies’ exhibition opponents on this spring day in Arizona, have four millionaires in their infield alone, one of whom, Ryne Sandberg, will collect about $6 million this season.

The Rockies players only dream of such salaries. They are playing for chump change, which is why they have old-time baseball executives talking so wistfully. The Rockies make it feel like 1961 again, when owners took for granted prodigious profits made certain by their ever-swelling revenues and meager player payrolls. The Colorado team has only one millionaire, third baseman Charlie Hayes, whom they signed to a one-year contract for about $1.2 million.

Former Atlanta Braves pitcher David Nied, the Rockies’ 24-year-old Media Guide cover boy and their No. 1 selection in the expansion draft, will play for about $150,000. Eleven players on the 25-man squad will earn $152,000 each or less. At $8.8 million, the Rockies’ player payroll will certainly be the lowest in baseball, less than a third of the major league average. This makes the Rockies an exception in a game where the average clubs look like the Cubs, with a player payroll exceeding $38 million and an average player salary of $1.5 million.

Jerry McMorris is the captain of the new loser on the block, the one whom all the winners envy. “We have a unique position in baseball,” says the principal owner and CEO of the Rockies, who over three decades has built a three-truck family motor-freight company into the largest privately held carrier in the West--NW Transport Service: 10,000 trucks and 5,000 employees strong. “We don’t have all the baggage everyone else carries (with respect to player costs). It’s a little overwhelming.”

A contented McMorris knows that, at least for three to four years, his Rockies will be exempt from the established clubs’ ulcers; that, ironically, during a period when his ballplayers will be at their worst on the field, his franchise is likely to enjoy its greatest prosperity. “We’ve sold more than 2 million game tickets, and we’re only in March,” he says ebulliently. “They (the fans) have a love affair with the Rockies right now.”

Offering fans the opiate of baseball history and the romance of following a fledgling, even floundering expansion team, the Rockies have unloaded an eye-popping 28,250 season tickets, the most in the majors. They sold out their inaugural game in Denver’s Mile-High Stadium, when the 80,220 in attendance comprised the biggest crowd for a home opener in baseball history. After a year of whirlwind promotion and marketing, which included the creation of a TV network that will deliver the Rockies to seven states, and a radio hookup with stations as far east as Kansas and north as South Dakota, the Rockies have become less Colorado’s team than that of an entire region.

During January, in a promotional gambit, the publicity staff took manager Baylor and six players on an 11-day, eight-state, 23-city caravan that included a standing ovation from the Wyoming Legislature in Cheyenne and stops in such unlikely spots as Scottsbluff, Neb., and Rapid City, S.D. In Salt Lake City, Baylor went to a basketball game. Noticing Baylor, a fan excitedly nudged his wife: “Hey, there’s the manager of our new baseball team.”

Our team. Examining the Rockies’ hold on the entranced, analysts forecast that Colorado may draw 3.5 million fans this year, placing the team within reach of the Dodgers’ National League single-season record of 3.6 million and reasonably insuring that, with their local radio and TV revenue, the Rockies will gross something in the neighborhood of $70 million, not including their $15.5-million national TV share. That is a very tony neighborhood for a team expected to finish no higher than in sixth place and, more likely, dead last in the National League’s Western Division.

“Only a handful of clubs will take in $70 million this year,” says a former baseball executive. “And none of those will carry anything less than 2 1/2-times the Rockies’ payroll. Plus, the fans don’t care if you win, not for the first few years, at least. They are ecstatic just to see baseball. The guys running it couldn’t be luckier. There’s no way they can screw this up. It’s a home run today.”

FOR THE ROCKIES, MOST OF WHOM HAVE TOILED INVISIBLY THROUGH their brief careers, the excitement begins at Hi Corbett Field. The adulation of spring comes suddenly, to be soaked up like the Tucson sun, the players emerging from their clubhouse to stride anxiously toward the dugout railing, lifting expectant tanned faces toward the heat of the crowd and waiting. The screams of the fanatics hit in the next second. The players smile and sign baseballs and slips of paper; they’re already addicts to the ritual. “Gimme, gimme,” laughs relief pitcher Steve Reed.

Down the right-field line, along the Rockies’ bullpen, relief pitchers, catchers and extra players unable to secure seats in the small dugout languidly lie on the hot grass like a pride of sleepy young lions, stretching, quelling yawns, acknowledging teen-age girls in halter tops with lazy predators’ smiles before staring blankly at the distant outfield wall. The wall has been covered with advertisements for everything from supermarkets to cigarettes, the most notable sign belonging to a local television station that has a picture of Bart Simpson seemingly taunting--”Hit a homer, man.” Among the players, interest in Bart takes a back seat to that of a fried-chicken company’s bull’s-eye high upon the left-field wall. Hit the bull’s-eye and win a thousand bucks, the company promises. “I’m gonna get me that grand if I get the right pitch,” chuckles a player ticketed for the minors. “Boy, that’s some serious change.”

Serious change is never far from their thoughts. A player like minor league infielder Jason Bates might talk reverently about his first encounter with a superstar: “I field this grounder and I’m going off the field and (San Francisco Giants first baseman) Will Clark says, ‘Nice play.’ . . . Will Clark! “ Yet, most of Bates’ teammates hold in awe only the rewards to be realized if they make it big. “(Eric) Karros got $435,000,” one kid says of the second-year L.A. Dodger first baseman, after which a teammate chirps that he heard that Dodger shortstop Jose Offerman got “over three”--as in $300,000. That number hangs there in the dry desert air. Silence. “Three,” the kid repeats. The others bask in this number and the sun’s rays, their chatter ending, an edginess creeping into the air as the game and perhaps their chances to impress approach. “Gonna get me that bull’s-eye,” the aspiring fence-banger jokes, chuckling to relieve the tension. “ A thousand dollars ,” the kid sighs.

The veterans on the Cub side of the field would have blushed with embarrassment for the rookie. A big league star makes ten grand at a measly autograph show. If a Roger Clemens gets suspended for cursing an umpire, he loses $30,000, a single day’s pay at his level.

Baseball owners and their chief labor negotiator, Richard Ravitch, have a habit of portraying the players’ agents as greedy scoundrels holding guns to their heads, but the truth is that the owners’ profligacy has mired them in this mess. Some clubs--like the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose 1992 player payroll of $43 million was higher than all but two teams (Toronto and Oakland)--have responded by trimming their payrolls by more than 10%. Yet others continue to plead a rich man’s-styled poverty while spending wantonly.

On one hand, this past winter, the new ownership of the deficit-running San Francisco Giants declined to match the $115-million offer of a Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., consortium seeking to buy the club. On the other hand, after the National League barred the Giants’ move to Florida, the club offered a record-breaking $43.75 million, six-year contract to Pittsburgh Pirates superstar Barry Bonds, making it likely that the Giants will struggle financially for years to come. With few owners willing to exercise fiscal restraint in the era of free agency and arbitration, player salaries rose 51% in 1991 over 1990, and 21% in 1992, a rate nearly double baseball’s estimated revenue increase--numbers that, if unchecked, point toward disaster.

A consensus of owners and players’ association representatives indicates that at least eight of baseball’s 28 teams have been losing money, prompting labor negotiator Ravitch to complain: “A very few big players and their agents are taking most of the available money, extraordinary money; it’s hurting everyone.”

The game faces escalating troubles and strife. The commissioner’s office sits empty, its last occupant cut loose when he wouldn’t relinquish the office’s long-standing authority to intervene in disputes between players and management. The owners and Ravitch have indicated that, when the current labor agreement expires at the end of this season, they will insist upon limiting the players to a specific portion (anywhere from 40% to 50%) of the teams’ gross revenues--in essence, placing caps on aggregate player salaries. Their determination raises the specter of a players strike or an owners lockout next year.

The players’ association and its executive director, firebrand attorney Don Fehr, assure that they will resist salary caps until the owners put their own house in order. Fehr and the players want the well-financed clubs to aid their struggling brethren, specifically those franchises that blame the extravagance of rich, big-market teams for salary escalation. Small-market franchises, such as Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, with less television, radio and attendance revenue, have advanced a proposal for revenue sharing that fat-cat owners, while supportive of the concept, declined to adopt at their last winter meeting. “The game has problems that won’t easily go away,” says McMorris, the Rockies’ owner. “Things could get worse before they get better.”

The big-team owners are likely to demand that any agreement with the small-market clubs on revenue sharing be linked to players’ support for salary caps. It is expected, too, that the more powerful owners will seek to reform, if not altogether abolish, salary arbitration, which, says Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, is “the bane of our existence.” Arbitration is the current system whereby the player and his team can present an arbitrator with proposed salaries for a one-year contract, with the arbitrator compelled to choose one of the two figures. Owners usually try to avoid arbitration at all costs, viewing it as a stacked deck in favor of the players: If one player’s agent can persuade an arbitrator or owner to raise his client’s pay, that new salary generally becomes the standard for similarly experienced players at a particular position.

These days, most cases are settled away from the arbitrator’s table. For instance, among those eligible for arbitration this past winter was the Dodgers’ Ramon Martinez, an 8-11 pitcher in 1992, with whom the Dodgers hastily settled for nearly $1.8 million after an arbitrator awarded San Diego Padre Andy Benes, a 13-14 pitcher, $2.05 million. “I don’t think the system is working,” Reinsdorf says curtly. “I don’t think lunacy usually works.”

Analysts forecast that the economically foundering franchises will face still greater peril when the current national television contracts expire at the end of this season. In the face of declining ratings for baseball’s regular-season and League Championship Series games, CBS, which paid more than $1 billion in a four-year deal, has indicated that it will ask baseball to accept at least a 30% cut in any new deal. That’s a figure which, along with expected cutbacks from ESPN, could translate to a per-team revenue slash of about $5 million from this year’s $15.5 million.

“For revenue-poor franchises like Montreal, Seattle, Pittsburgh and San Diego--all of which have had difficulty competing financially--the loss of national TV money could make it that much more difficult in the absence of fiscal reform,” says former Seattle Mariners owner Jeff Smolian. And it is generally conceded that another four or five teams are in such trouble that they may struggle for financial survival once their TV revenue is reduced.

McMorris, who agrees that some clubs are in hot water, seems to relish contrasting his team’s fiscal strategy with that of the National League’s other expansion club, the Florida Marlins. The Marlins have agreed to shell out $11.6 million on five players alone, which will drive up their overall payroll past $18 million. One, former San Diego All-Star catcher Benito Santiago, will make $3.4 million; another, ex-Angel bullpen standout Bryan Harvey, will get more than $4 million in 1993. “The Marlins went after more big-ticket players,” McMorris murmurs, smiling. “It’ll be interesting to see which approach works best.”

The Rockies’ owner leaves the impression that he has already answered his own question. From his financial perspective, in outfitting a non-contending team, acquiring a .250 hitting outfielder with a below-average salary makes more sense than opening the vault for a mega-millionaire like Barry Bonds. McMorris admits that he has no need for a superstar in the near future--that the Rockies should enjoy a four- or five-year “double-honeymoon” with their faithful since, in 1995, the team’s new 43,800-seat stadium, Coors Field, will be opened.

MAYBE OWNING AN EXPANSION TEAM BRINGS ON ITS OWN TYPE OF ULCERS.

On a Sunday in spring, McMorris takes his customary seat behind the first base dugout at Hi Corbett Field, just in time to see one of his infielders botch a grounder. “Hmm,” he mutters, blinking furiously, a frown spreading across his face as the guilty player compounds his error by throwing the ball into the dirt. He sighs and pulls himself back to a more pleasant subject, that of his molding a club on an economy budget. “No question that (most players’ lack of arbitration eligibility and free agency) was a factor in our drafting process. We wanted to keep the player payroll under $15 million.”

That was not difficult, given that the established teams had made available to the expansion clubs only marginal major league players and youngsters devoid of any big league experience and, consequently, any serious bargaining rights. Colorado ultimately supplemented its selections with six free agents, including pitcher Bryn Smith, outfielder Dale Murphy and first baseman Andres Galarraga, former standouts and members of baseball’s millionaire club, whose stock had precipitously dropped after a string of mediocre years.

The 37-year-old Murphy, once a multimillionaire star and twice National League MVP, now part-time outfielder and pinch hitter, agreed to a one-year base salary of $225,000 after being released by the Philadelphia Phillies. The Rockies acquired Galarraga, who had made $6.85 million over the last three years, for a single season salary of $600,000. Smith signed for nothing more than an assurance that, should he last a season with the Rockies, he would make about $250,000, less than an eighth of what he earned only a year earlier with the St. Louis Cardinals.

“Time to face facts,” Smith says. “The money’s gonna be different for a lot of us. Owners are figuring they can get by with less, and this beats my other options. The rules have changed.”

McMorris sees those rules as dictated by ledgers. Romantics should never forget that this game is no less a business than is a trucking company. Sentiment has nothing to do with it, and failure usually comes at the speed of sound--the dull thud, say, of a grounder being kicked by a clumsy foot, or, as now, the harsh crack of a bat upon a hanging curve ball. From his seat behind the first-base dugout, a frowning McMorris watches as 28-year-old Jim Neidlinger, a former Dodger pitcher fighting to make the Rockies’ staff, serves up a towering home run to center field, the climax of a dreadful outing that leaves Neidlinger’s shoulders slumping.

The ball’s flight has yet to die when McMorris casually turns to his friends and offers his judgment with the sort of clipped finality that he might have given to the matter of a broken axle on one of his trucks. “Ah, he’ll be on the minor league roster tomorrow. They’re shelling him. After this, come by; we’ll have some lunch, OK?”

His mind has already shifted gears, thoughts of Neidlinger having been jettisoned, as indeed the player himself would be before long. The owner is thinking of the big picture again, musing about baseball’s financial struggles and small-market franchises’ losses and his own challenges, emphasizing that he and his limited partners have concentrated upon recouping a hefty investment--a franchise fee of $95 million to major league baseball and start-up expenses of $25-$40 million. “There aren’t many people who could play with these numbers,” he observes, “and have this still be a hobby. I’m hopeful that we’ll have a new economic system in baseball very shortly. There are four or five teams that can’t wait. The day will come when we will need it, too, when we’ll start winning and our players’ salaries will inevitably rise.”

Arbitration hasn’t worked well, he says; free agency has been even worse; baseball needs a union between owners and players--”revenue (participation) with a salary cap.”

Management seldom confesses to the real motive for the salary caps: to protect the owners from themselves, to put a lid on their own spending. Still, even some notable player agents grudgingly conclude that the caps are inescapable. “I know that the players’ association and Don Fehr will probably hate me for saying this, but the system is going to need some form of cap, or everyone loses,” observes Boston sports attorney Bob Woolf, who over the last year has secured a $30-million, five-year deal for Oakland outfielder Ruben Sierra and a $25-million, five-year pact for Braves Cy Young Award-winner Tom Glavine.

Salary caps are not yet in place, but changes are on the horizon. In March, with TV’s waning enthusiasm in mind, baseball tentatively approved plans for interleague play, to be implemented during the 1995 season. Also, with a nod to the National Football League, they exchanged positive thoughts about a realignment of the teams that would create three geographically oriented divisions in each of the two leagues and wild-card playoff games. Television was largely unmoved.

“Baseball has never understood that it is entertainment, and that entertainment is personality-driven,” one television executive, who requested anonymity, complains. “Other leagues have developed and marketed big stars. What national celebrities does baseball have, besides Nolan Ryan and an injured Bo Jackson?”

Instead, all too often, management has bad-mouthed its own product. “We offered a three-year contract to (shortstop) Dick Schofield for $6.5 million, and he’s dumber than we are--he turned it down,” Angel manager Buck Rodgers reportedly sniped this winter. Such acidic rhetoric has raised concerns among some executives that in demeaning the players, management may be dancing on its own grave, shutting the coffin on the last of the game’s romance.

IN THIS KIND OF AN ATMOSphere, the Rockies appear to fans as throwbacks to more innocent days. In his box seat, McMorris winces as a young Rockies infielder swings feebly over a curve ball. The Rockies’ owner signs an autograph for an older man in a Red Sox cap, who exclaims: “Nice to see such hustling kids. Takes you back.”

Cynics wonder if the Rockies will break the 1962 Mets’ 40-120 record for first-year futility. The Rockies start by losing two in New York. Then it’s home to the Promised Land, and, as if dictated by some shameless script, leadoff man Eric Young hits a home run. The Rockies romp over the Montreal Expos, 11-4, with Bryn Smith becoming their first pitcher to notch a victory. It becomes the start of a dream weekend for McMorris, one during which the Rockies break a 45-year-old major-league attendance record for a three-game series, drawing an average of 70,820 per contest.

No matter that on Sunday the youngsters crash down to earth, committing five errors and losing 19-9--or that the standings after two weeks find the Rockies next to last in their division, ahead of only the slumping-but-strong Cincinnati Reds, who will certainly improve. McMorris’ grand plan has had an auspicious beginning. The trucking man has sunnily issued a pronouncement: “It doesn’t get any better.” Being the league’s whipping boy has never felt so good.