Saratoga News

Point of View

Carl Heintze

The American pastime became a bore

Let's face it; baseball has had it. Nobody, or almost nobody, pays much attention to baseball games except the World Series these days. Baseball parks go unfilled. Players make too much money. The owners are from back in the Stone Age, when baseball had the sports scene all to itself. They can't even agree on a truly independent commissioner.

The World Series is pretty much a ho-hum compared to the Super Bowl, the Final Four or the NBA playoffs. Pitchers don't last more than three innings. There are no Ted Williamses, Babe Ruths or Ty Cobbs anymore, more's the pity. Joe DiMaggio is still alive and so is his legend, but where are his kind on the diamond these days?

Baseball players are just forgettable faces, names and reputations. Either they're Pete Rose--the Shoeless Joe Jackson of his time--or those who pass quickly across the television screen and are forgotten.

Owners ought to be, but they're not.

Managers get fired as soon as their winning average falls off--even before the season is over.

Despite Little League, baseball has fallen out of favor among today's children, who prefer soccer. And American soccer doesn't have superstars.

Even Michael Jordan couldn't give baseball a boost. Reading the handwriting on the wall, perhaps, he went back to the basketball court. So, more or less, has Deon Sanders.

Baseball, far from being America's pastime, has become America's bore. It is in danger of sinking out of sight on the national horizon.

Whatever its national stature, it certainly is not likely to overtake soccer--or football, as the rest of the world calls it--in international favor. The World Cup is a world event. The World Series is not.

That's a shame, for baseball is a distinctly American invention. It has been a part of the American psyche for nearly a century. Its jargon is a part of the national language (three strikes and you're out, for instance), and it once was the aim of every kid on a sandlot to get into the majors. But not any more.

The reasons for baseball's decline as America's pastime are many. Some could have been avoided, some seem inevitable.

Among the avoidable:

* A players' strike in a day when many players make more in a couple of years than the average Joe makes in a lifetime.

* A season that is far too long.

* A system that gives a player who spits in an umpire's face five days suspension after the season ends so he can play in the World Series.

* The free agent's clause, which allows players to shift from team to team so rapidly that loyal fans can't follow them and probably wouldn't if they could.

* The rising price of tickets, although that's a problem for all spectator sports.

* The movement of teams from city to city in search of a better deal for the owners. (The same, it should be pointed out, also is true of football.)

Fan loyalty doesn't count for much. It only did before major league baseball became major league business. Baseball, like all professional sports in America, is a business, and in the true spirit of free enterprise, the guy with the most competitive drive for the buck is the final winner. Ask George Steinbrenner.

Among the unavoidable:

* A game that is just downright dull. Hours of standing time, followed by a dozen seconds or so of intense action. If you lean over you may miss the home run, the double play or a steal to second base. Instant replay hardly substitutes.

* A game that has hardly changed at all since it was invented. With the exception of the designated hitter (a really lousy idea), not much has been added to baseball since Abner Doubleday reputedly got it started.

* Players and managers chewing and spitting, especially smokeless tobacco. Uck! It wasn't so noticeable before the television close-up, but now it just looks repulsive.

Some claim history and tradition are among baseball's charm, that it harkens back to a kinder, gentler day. But that's also its curse. Its charm has evaporated.

But then don't believe me. Instead, check the number of empty seats at the old ballpark. Beginning with the end of the players' strike, a dispute in which both sides acted reprehensibly, the American baseball fan has been trying to tell the players and the owners something which neither seems able to understand.

To wit: The game should be played for neither the players nor the owners, but for the fans. They are the ones who give it life. Without them, it's not baseball.

There used to be some kind of serenity and inner peace in sitting in the stands on a calm afternoon, munching peanuts or popcorn, yelling insults at the umpire and telling the pitcher to tighten up and pitch a fast ball.

Pitching meant something. Pitchers pitched whole games. At least they pitched seven innings.

Where did it all go? What happened? Why can't it be like that again?

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