This Game Could Use a Presidential Pardon

Bill Clinton, heretofore known as the President who couldn’t save national health care, the Democratic Congress or half his own Cabinet, has decided he wants to be remembered as the President who saved baseball.

Well, there goes ’96.

Does baseball really need to be saved?

Do we want baseball to be saved?

Frankly, these last six months of self-inflicted postponements--”brain-outs,” in the game’s new parlance--have been far more interesting and satisfying than any American League West race. We can watch the Angels finish last any year. How often does the chance arise to see a former national pastime cannibalize itself in full public view, falling in the popularity polls faster than an infield pop fly?

By any count based on 1995 data, instead of 1955 nostalgia, baseball ranks as America’s third sport. Football passed it years ago; the Super Bowl, foregone blowouts notwithstanding, is now bucking Christmas for No. 1 National Holiday. (In America, we rank those, too. In America, we rank everything. That coffee cup you’re holding? Ranks 17th in the cupboard this week. Down from 14 last week.)

Basketball also passed it--either sometime between Michael Jordan’s second NBA title and Shaquille O’Neal’s first rap album or midway through the credits of Ken Burns’ seventh installment of “Baseball” (the “Wayne Terwilliger Years” I believe it was called).

Depends on who you talk to.

Now it’s down to a footrace between baseball and hockey, now that Bud Selig and Donald Fehr won the bet and proved they can hold their breath longer than Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow. And after that, what? Soccer? If Clinton really wanted to get behind a sport with a future in this country, he’d look into this MLS thing. Get them playing some time before the next World Cup.

Then again, analyzing the numbers the way Alan Rothenberg does, Major League Soccer and major league baseball have played precisely the same amount of regular-season games since Aug. 12, 1994.

With Ping-Pong, beach volleyball and American Gladiators gaining momentum, baseball’s wheezing publicity machine has become so desperate that Babe Ruth’s 100th birthday was propped up as A Major News Event. Yes, the Babe would have turned 100 Monday if he had lived. But he didn’t, having died in 1948. Still, sports newscasts dragged out the grainy black-and-white footage and the somber mood music and wondered what the Babe might say about the game of baseball today.

Most likely, the Babe would just roll over in his grave and grunt, “The game and me, we got a lot in common these days.”

So now the ball has been handed to the double-play combo of Usery to Clinton to Gingrich. Somehow, Tinkers to Evers to Chance inspired more confidence. If and when the government fails to bring back baseball as we know it--played by players we have actually heard of--the owners plan to foist “replacement baseball” on us, which stands as another opportunity of a fan’s lifetime.

For more than a century, fathers have been taking their sons to baseball games to witness Herculean feats. Four-hundred-foot home runs. One-hundred-mile-an-hour fastballs. No-hitters. Triple plays.

But how long can you keep doing that?

After 125 years, anything is going to get old.

Visionaries, the owners have already planned for this. So, soon, fathers will be able to take their sons to baseball games and lecture them: “See that left fielder? Your Dad can run faster than him. And that relief pitcher? Your Dad can break off a better slider.”

Across the land, young boys will be stricken with gape-mouthed awe. Father-son relationships will deepen. Cross-generational trust will be restored. Families will become closer. Parental orders will be obeyed.

This country will be a better place to live.

Clinton should back off right now and stop wasting his time. Obviously, the owners know what they’re doing.

Besides, Clinton’s sudden interest in baseball’s future smacks of political expediency and ideological wishy-washiness. Already, Republicans are wringing their hands, citing this as just another presidential flip-flop, one more midstream waffle, a blatant play to the crowd.

Everybody knows that Clinton--personal friend to Nolan Richardson, wearer of molded plastic Razorback headgear--is a basketball man.