Welcome the Understudies to Baseball’s Absurd Theater

So I’m on my way to the office cafeteria when a co-worker says, “Only an idiot would try to make a case for replacement baseball players.”

Hmm.

“Ladies and gentlemen . . . now stepping to the plate from the Los Angeles Times--although they probably disavow everything he’s about to say--’The Idiot . . .’ ”

Idiot or not, I know a thing or two about baseball. Worse yet, I’m one of those purists that cried more often during Ken Burns’ “Baseball” anthology than I ever did during “Sleepless in Seattle.” If the phrases “new-mown grass” and “sharp crack of the bat” appear in the same sentence, I instinctively weep.

Moreover, I’ve been a Pittsburgh Pirates fan since 1958, so my emotional investment in baseball is specific as well as general. Over the years, I’ve traveled to eight National League cities to see the Pirates play. I’m no Johnny-come-lately.

In short, no one loves the game or its history more than I.

Last week my team, the Pirates, used a nurse as its starting pitcher. Another player was a sporting goods salesman at Kmart.

I’m supposed to be furious. People around the country are saying replacement players are making a mockery of the game or, as Woody Allen might say, “a sham of two mockeries of a travesty.”

If I heard TV right, another team--the Yankees, I think--had an outfield consisting of a sheriff, a real estate appraiser and a social worker.

I’m not sure why, but I’m starting to dig it.

The country is going through its normal schizophrenia again. People have been moaning for years about egomaniacal high-priced ballplayers who don’t love the game. Fans say they long for the old-time ballplayer who would have played for free (and practically had to). Now they’ve got them, and they’re trashing them.

Sportswriters who have spent most of their careers talking about what jerks baseball players are suddenly have become their champions. They’ve begged for athletes who won’t take it personally when asked what kind of pitch they hit for a homer; now they’ve got them sitting right in front of them and they ridicule them.

It seems to me that everyone is making the same fundamental mistake. The critics are saying, “This isn’t really major league baseball.”

No kidding? Can’t we all just stipulate that upfront?

Think of it as theater. Theater-in-the-park, if you will.

Making a mockery of the game? What could be more mocking than millionaires on a picket line? If it weren’t real, it would have to be a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

Far from mocking the game, the replacements are doing exactly the opposite. Their presence highlights the ongoing mockery players and owners are making of the grand old game with their inability to reach agreement. Rather than being branded as scabs, the replacements ought to be considered, instead, as understudies--valiant, struggling actors keeping the show on the road until the prima donnas return.

Scabs? I’m sorry. My definition of a scab is someone who takes a crummy job from someone, thereby letting management get away with something. You can be a literalist if you want to, but I refuse to lump somebody who lives in hotels and has their luggage carried for them with struggling laborers of years past.

Don’t think for a minute these striking ballplayers know the meaning of labor-movement solidarity. The only journeyman they ever heard of is a guy who hits .250. They think Taft and Hartley was the double-play combination for the Cubs in the late ‘40s.

“It’s tough managing your money and paying the bills,” one of the new Pirates told the Associated Press last week. “I’ll do what I have to do to put shoes on my kid’s feet. You think this is tough? What’s tough is real life. That’s tough.”

I’m sure I’ll be back in the fold when the real major leaguers return. In the meantime, I refuse to knock the replacements. They’re giving people what they claim they’ve wanted all these years--sports innocence.

Turns out that isn’t what people wanted, after all.

“It wasn’t a hard decision for me to make,” Tommy Mitchell, one of the Pirate replacements said. “I’m not worried about getting ridiculed. They say I’m crazy for doing this? I’d be crazy not to do this. I’m getting money to play a little kids’ game.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.