COMMENTARY : Wonder, Splendor of Sports Inspires Both Love and Hate

I love John Kruk’s batting helmet with the pine-tar goo all over it.

I love Barry Sanders going to daylight, David Justice going deep and Dennis Rodman going up.

Barry Bonds is the best right now, and Ken Griffey Jr. is next.

Round ‘em all up, the butcher, baker and candlestick maker, all the politicians and other dogs, every man, woman, child and autoworker in Detroit. If they allow Tiger Stadium to be torn down, they all should be brought to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, there to be horsewhipped.

I hate Jerry Glanville’s belt buckle.

About women, John McEnroe should just shut up.

The best baseball glove ever made is the Wilson A2000. One sits on my desk. It hasn’t kicked a ground ball in 25 years.

I love the wrought-iron seats at Camden Yards and the red brick warehouse peeking through smoke from Boog’s grill deep in right field. I even love Baltimore’s rain delays because the ground crew does this magical ballet in which (I swear) they fly around the tarp until all the water just disappears.

Terry Pendleton caught a foul pop the other night and placed it gently in a boy’s glove along the left-field line. I loved it.

Basketballs should be red, white and blue. Fans should get to keep every one that bounces into their laps.

I love sports on television.

Even John Madden’s falling-off-the-roof scream.

I hate domes, Don King, dollar signs and that dumpy CBS-TV couch potato who says, “I’m a BIG FANNNNN!

Young guys should bow to the old guys. This summer, Sean Gilbert, 23, a star on the L.A. Rams’ defensive line, met some old Negro League baseball players. Now he honors them by wearing Negro League caps and shirts.

Don Zimmer’s face is a baseball left out in the rain a few years, and I love it.

The wild-card thing is good. Now add the D.H. in the N.L. and go to interleague play.

Give me wonders. Give me the Colorado Rockies.

Give me Will Clark and Matt Williams stepping up in a pennant race.

Give me a right fielder throwing out a fast runner at the plate. Give me a four-pass fast break. Give me the puck touching five sticks so fast you lose track of it.

Give me a shooter who wants the ball at the end.

Give me a quarterback who finds the third receiver.

In my weekend reading, I read again that football is war. Boomer Esiason throwing passes is a man at war. I read that. Football is not war. It’s a game. War is war. Men killing each other, that’s war. Boomer Esiason throwing passes is entertainment.

I love guys who don’t quit. Mark McLemore, a Baltimore career utility infielder hitting .229, was rushed into right field this year, stumbled around until he began to catch everything, hit .300 a long time and loved every minute of it.

The no-quit-in-him champ is Bo Jackson, broken but unbowed.

Smaller than almost everybody but bigger in the important ways, Julie Krone is everything a professional athlete should be.

The magic done by Bill Mazeroski, who moved the ball to first base without touching it (I swear), is now being done by Mark Lemke.

Maz and Richie Ashburn belong in Cooperstown. Basketball ought to forgive Ralph Beard and take him to Springfield.

Denver linebacker Karl Mecklenburg hates field goals. He says get rid of kickers and leave football to real men. This from a guy who plays half the game, if that. Pro football’s last real man was Chuck Bednarik.

You know his name. The one who owns the Yankees. If he again mentions taking the Yankees to New Jersey, someone should take him to Detroit for the mass horsewhippings.

I love Howard Cosell, forever the best at what he did.

Muhammad Ali, forever the greatest of alllll time.

George Foreman should eat, not fight.

Riddick Bowe should fight, not eat.

A recent marketing survey claimed that forms of ice skating and gymnastics are six of the eight most popular sports in America. Give me a break.

College athletics is professional sports. Nothing wrong with that. Just don’t tell me it’s education. It’s education only in that universities teach hypocrisy and greed by perpetuating a lie for the revenue the lie produces.

I love this letter from Todd Carsten, of Ocala, Fla., who first invoked Bart Giamatti’s line that baseball is “the only game designed to break your heart,” and then wrote:

“As I watch my son put on his uniform for his first Little League game, my wife spies his dinosaur undies through his baseball pants.

“This game does break our hearts. It reminds us of parks and fields of our youth that are now surely paved and numbered for parking.

“It reminds us of our first Willie Mays-autograph glove--the one we lost. What we didn’t lose, though, is the memory of the wonder of snagging a liner off big brother’s Louisville Slugger.

“And, in the end, it reminds us that we can never be 8 or 9 or 10 years old again . . . as we watch our own 8 or 9 or 10-year-old slide to beat the tag or whiff on the high, tight fastball.

“What sweet heartbreak, indeed, as Spring shows herself and we all head back to the ballpark, young once more.”

I hate Charles Barkley.

I love Charles Barkley.