Making Fun of Baseball as the National Pastime

Defending Jimmy Hoffa, the superlawyer Edward Bennett Williams invited boxer Joe Louis to sit near the defense table in hopes that black jurors might notice the champ and draw the proper conclusions. As a bonus, EBW knew the tactic would irritate the U.S. attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, who had guaranteed Hoffa’s conviction. “Or I’ll jump off the Capitol dome,” RFK said.

Well. Upon Hoffa’s acquittal, Williams mailed Bobby a note. He wrote, “You may need this.” The note accompanied a parachute. I’m thinking of EBW because of baseball’s despair. For $12 million in 1979, to his great joy and constant consternation, he became the owner of the Baltimore Orioles. Too soon by far, he despised baseball’s leaders. A players strike threatened his first season. I asked what he thought of Bowie Kuhn, then the game’s commissioner.

He said, “Kuhn would screw up a two-car funeral.”

Almost 20 years later, that impression persists, perhaps even more profoundly melancholy. Could today’s gentlemen get even one car to the graveyard?

Imagine Bud Selig driving.

Selig: “Who’s got the map?”

Don Fehr: “We’re voting on whether or not to give it to you.”

Richie Phillips: “Touch me, I torch the car.”

Wayne Huizenga: “If the city would buy the graveyard and put up a stadium, I’d wear this seasick-green sports coat 24 hours a day.”

Don Ohlmeyer: “Just get us there and back before Seinfeld.”

It’s easy to make sport of baseball. And it’s sad to know it’s easy. Bob Verdi, the Chicago Tribune sage, said, “Why is it that if Jacksonville and Carolina get to the final four of the NFL playoffs, it’s a great thing--but if the Indians and Marlins get to the World Series, it’s a bad thing?”

It’s so bad that Ohlmeyer, a muckety-muck with NBC, which is one of baseball’s biggest business partners, said he wanted a four-game sweep so as not disrupt the network’s Thursday night lineup. It’s so bad that Selig, acting as commissioner, said TV ratings would have been better with the Yankees and Braves, an observation repeated so often that Jim Leyland, the Marlins’ manager, said, “It makes me puke.” After Game 3, Selig knocked his own product. Ugly, he said, of the 17-walk; six-error; 4-hour, 12-minute; 14-11 game. “Through the whole game, I felt the ‘Unfinished Symphony’ had a better chance of being finished before that game ended.”

His criticism included slow play: “We need the umpires to get the hitters in the box and make the pitchers pitch. To have the pitcher circling the mound waiting for a message from God and the batter stepping out of the box after every pitch is nonsense.”

More evidence that baseball people have lost faith in their game came from Huizenga, the Marlins owner, before Game 6: “It’s more important to us to get a new stadium than it is to win the World Series.” Huizenga spoke of the long run. Absent a new stadium, he thinks the Marlins are dead fish in south Florida. No doubt survival comes first. But to say it during a World Series? To diminish the importance of what should be the game’s crown jewel?

Maybe this is rock bottom. Maybe a forgettable Series distinguished by ennui and anger--redeemed by the game’s inevitable magic only at the end--will move baseball’s leaders to do something constructive about the World Series.

They should:

--Take less TV money and play day games. Rex Hudler, the Phillies’ veteran utility man, said, “Sure, play in the daytime. Players want the fans to enjoy the games. What’s a winner’s Series share, $270,000? For some guys, that’s an every-other-week paycheck. We’d take less money.”

--Penalize pitchers and hitters for dawdling. The rules exist now. They only need to be enforced.

--Call the strike zone as it’s defined, a vertical rectangle, not the horizontal mail slot that leaves beleaguered pitchers so frustrated they circle the mound, praying to God for more Eric Greggs.

--Teach the casual fan, as Earl Weaver put it, “This ain’t football. We do this every day.” When Leyland gave the Marlins a day off before Game 6, his guys had played 207 games, spring training through playoffs. Small wonder they might be too weary to be their best.

Late in October, playing in snow, playing past midnight, the wonder is not that a game lasts three hours--the wonder is that an Omar Vizquel yet can do beautiful work, as in the sixth inning of a Game 6 victory. The shortstop took three running steps and dived to his right, flying, to put his glove around Charlie Johnson’s sharply hit ground ball. He then rose and threw out the Marlins catcher, ending the inning when a two-run single would have reduced the Indians’ lead to 4-3. “The most important play I’ve ever made,” Vizquel called it. Marquis Grissom becoming Willie Mays against the wall. Darren Daulton still rippin’ ropes. Sandy Alomar ascendant at last. Chad Ogea twice a wonder/befuddlement. Bobby Bonilla dragging himself to work. Gary Sheffield a hitting machine.

Those images go in my memory book along with a story the likes of which you hear only at a ballpark, this one suggested by the old Indians hero, Bob Feller, a Hall of Fame pitcher who 50 years ago brought serious heat.

Asked about Marlins reliever Robb Nen’s 102 mph fastball in Game 1, Feller harrumphed: “My changeup.” Tim Kurkjian, the TV idol at CNN/Sports Illustrated, once stood in against Feller during a minor league promotion. Kurkjian, laughing: “He’s a hundred years old! Throwing 40 mph! First two pitches, I crack ‘em. Base hits. So what’s he do? Starts throwing me breaking stuff off the plate! If you hit him, you got a certificate. But at the bottom, in big letters, it said, ‘The aforementioned slugger realizes that had he faced Mr. Feller in his prime, the result would have been different.’ ”