COMMENTARY : ‘Why I Love Baseball’: the Things Kids Dream

Tom Lee, a baseball fan, was fed up with the owners and the players. So he decided he wouldn’t go to any more games. He wouldn’t read the sports pages; he wouldn’t listen to baseball on the radio; he wouldn’t watch television. The game had been part of his life for 30 years, but no more. Enough of this petty bickering by the rich and arrogant. Get outta here.

No small thing, that decision.

Baseball had been the background music to much of Tom Lee’s life. He can tell you about riding his bicycle to college games in Miami and coming home with broken bats that he and three brothers used on a rocky ballfield they cut out of an empty lot behind their house.

Maybe a dozen times, he read Babe Ruth’s autobiography. He loved the movies “Damn Yankees” and “Pride of the Yankees.” He was 12 when he went to California on a family trip and there in the hotel were the Minnesota Twins: Harmon Killebrew, Mudcat Grant, Tony Oliva. Shortstop Zoilo Versalles, the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1965, took the boy Tom Lee to lunch.

“I have all the autographs--somewhere in the attic,” the man Tom Lee said. He’s 40 years old and a project manager for a telephone company. His father, a retired judge, has a picture of Tom as a Little League first baseman standing with Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax.

At that banquet, Tom Lee even spoke to his hero, Mantle. “I told Mickey to tell Joe Pepitone I was going to take his job someday.”

The things kids say.

The things kids dream.

Tom Lee was small and had a bad knee and he never played as much as high school baseball. But somewhere in his attic is Carl Yastrzemski’s autograph and Tony Conigliaro’s. In 1974, while in college, he sat in front of a television set until Henry Aaron hit his 714th home run. In 1988, after moving to Atlanta, Tom Lee went to a major league game for the first time in 20 years.

As his father had taken him to games--even as his father had taken his grandfather, born in another century--Tom Lee took his children, Stephen, Eric and Karen, to the ballpark.

At the time, Eric Lee was 3.

In the seven years since, Eric has become a Little League catcher and a hockey center/left winger. He likes the catcher’s equipment. He still misses the old Atlanta scrapper, Greg Olson. With his father, Eric plays catch in the backyard; they also go to a batting cage not far from home.

Eric became the family’s baseball reporter, keeper of the stats, reader of box scores. This is what he likes about ballgames: “The hot dogs.” Second: “All the noise.” Mostly this: “Going with my dad.”

All Eric knew about the strike was the only important thing to know about the strike. They weren’t playing when they should have been.

Tom Lee was disgusted. With Atlanta’s rise to power, he fell again for the romance of the game. As his office’s group leader of ticket-holders, he made it to as many as 20 Braves games each year, including all the 1991 playoff and World Series games.

Then they stopped playing. “I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me,” Lee said. “Regardless of who was to blame--I’d go back and forth, blaming first the owners, who paid the salaries to begin with, and then the players, who walked out--I just wanted to see the game. I didn’t care about this petty stuff.”

August 1994 became September became October without a World Series. “As it dragged on, it became clear they wouldn’t go back,” he said. “I felt for the young players who had such great seasons going, like Griffey Jr. and Matt Williams. But I was so fed up. It was like seeing a movie three-quarters of the way and you don’t get to see the end. I just wanted the game to crash. And when the replacement players, who had taken such great risks, were replaced by the real players, that made me even madder. I began to see the players as villains. I had turned 180 degrees.”

So one night last week, Tom Lee went to Eric’s room to tell him what he had decided about baseball.

“I told Eric, ‘If you want to read the papers and if you want to listen to the games, that’s fine. You don’t have to do what I do. But I’m not going to do any of that. And we’re not going to any games this year.’

“I could tell he was upset, but all he said was, ‘OK.’ I kissed him good night, and as I left his room, my wife, who had overheard the conversation from the hallway, said I needed to read something Eric had written at school.”

Mischa Lee rummaged through her son’s book bag until she found a little story Eric had written in his fourth-grade class at Craig Elementary School. The title was, “Why I love baseball.”

Eric Lee wrote:

“I love baseball because I love going to the games with my dad. We wrap up hot dogs in aluminum foil and bring Cokes in a cooler. The smell of hot dogs makes my stomach growl on the way to the game. I love to cheer the Braves on, especially when they make a good play. I like to watch the fireworks when they win. I like to ride MARTA or ride in my car. Any way is OK with me. Whether I am watching it on TV or even playing it, I love this game.”

By the time Tom Lee read the story, the boy was asleep. The next morning, before leaving for work, Tom went to Eric’s room again.

For a minute the father had forgotten what was important about baseball. Contempt for owners and players isn’t important. Hot dogs and Cokes and lots of noise are important. Families walking through the parking lot together is important. “Eric,” the father said that morning, “we’re going to go see baseball.”