Owners’ Tampering Might Be the Death of Baseball

Baseball owners come out of another realignment meeting and look like clowns tumbling out of a car at the circus. They keep trying to fix baseball and one of these days they are going to finally fix it to death. Once this wild-card system was their cure for everything. It was very new and cutting edge and was going to save September. We can all see how that worked out.

The only September that matters in baseball is one as old as the game. It is the September that still has a couple of guys chasing 60 home runs, even as they run out of games and time.

Better than that, it is the September that has the Giants and Dodgers again. Winner makes it to October. Loser goes home. I guess only baseball purists would ever root for something tremendous like that.

Whether Mark McGwire and Junior Griffey make it to 60 or not--isn’t it interesting how 60 is still the magic number?--they will command our attention all the way until Sunday.

When McGwire hit No. 54 Friday night against the Pirates, it gave him 106 for the last two seasons. To find a right-handed hitter who did that before him, you go back to Jimmy Foxx. Babe Ruth was the last man to hit 50 in back-to-back seasons. Not a single trick or innovation to this. Just a big man scaring pitchers half to death and chasing 60. A ballplayer who seems to have stepped out of some baseball time capsule.

This is baseball pure. The way the Giants and Dodgers have always been pure, at Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds and on the West Coast. Across the years, across the country, somehow the rivalry has held, as if there is some kind of subway running from Chavez Ravine to Candlestick Point.

Somehow it has held through the playoff system the baggy-pants owners have given us. One week to go. The Giants and Dodgers are in sudden death again. Isn’t that the way things are supposed to be?

McGwire and Griffey. Giants and Dodgers. And here was Barry Bonds this week, after a season that has been a personal disappointment, reminding us that he is still the best all-around player in the game when he is at the top of his game, one of the great players ever. Home run to beat the Dodgers Wednesday. Three-run homer on Thursday that tried to bust the game open. Another home run Friday night as the Giants win again.

Even in a year when he doesn’t have the numbers, or the batting-order support, he goes for 40 homers and 100 RBI. Bonds still hasn’t had an October worthy of his talent; the way he can carry a team. But this is some September for him. Again: Not something just for purists. Just baseball pure.

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Did Capt. Messier say he was the victim of a smear campaign or a shmear campaign?

I just think he sounds this crabby about everything now that it’s sunk in that he really is a Vancouver Canuck.

Here is a bulletin for Messier: Writing that he did this for the money -- and not at gunpoint--isn’t a smear campaign.

Just the truth.

Even if that upsets Messier’s heroic vision of himself.

Just about everybody around here turned his exit into a four-hanky job, but that wasn’t enough for him, he wanted unanimous crying.

Another one in sports who took a much better offer but wants to be more noble doing that than Nathan Hale dying for his country.

The Mets weren’t good enough to make the playoffs in the end.

It wasn’t because Joe McIlvaine was asked to leave, or Lance Johnson.

They didn’t have enough.

Period.

I don’t just admire Barry Bonds’ skill, by the way.

I have also gotten to know the guy, and like him.

So I am always amused when people feel as if they have to explain to me who he is, or what he means in baseball.

The Knicks should find a way to bring Willis Reed back into the organization, because that’s where he belongs.

Everything I am hearing is that CBS will be back in the pro football business when the next television contract is written.

The Jets-Patriots game and the Yankees-Orioles game started the same time last Sunday night, 8 o’clock.

The football game went into OT.

And when the Pats finally won it with that field goal, a nine-inning game was still being played.

I’m still wondering why Notre Dame kicked the extra point against Purdue instead of going for two last Saturday.

They’re inside the last two minutes, they’ve just scored the touchdown to make it 21-16, they know they’re going to only get the ball once, and that’s if they recover the onside kick.

Autry Denson has just been called for unsportsmanlike conduct in the end for spiking the ball after the touchdown.

Dumb rule.

But Notre Dame gets moved back 15 yards on the extra point anyway, and kicked the ball instead of passing it.

Except 21-17 is no better than 21-16 in that situation.

Rookie mistake by the coach, right?

Or maybe this South Bend math is just too complicated for me.