I don't
believe God is an all-seeing Daddy, and I don't believe in Santa Claus, and I don't believe good always triumphs over evil
because my mom told me so. I stopped believing in these things when I was a child. But I believe in baseball.
I have an aloof
understanding of the game, limited only to what Ive picked up from video games. I played my share of little league--every
American boy plays little league (they make you). My time as a bench riding right fielder only taught me three things:
1) the ball will only be hit into right field if you are thinking about any subject apart from baseball (the Fonz, for instance),
2) if you do not swing at the ball, eventually the pitcher may walk you and you will get to run around the bases, and 3) sometimes
if you don't swing at all, your own coach pitches to you and you get unlimited chances to swing until you either hit the ball
or start to cry, when they let you come back to the dugout to sit down. Sports gave this little leaguer an ulcer.
I wasn't involved with sports much after that.
When
I hit puberty (everyone hits puberty, like a car accident) I got a little more interested in athletics,
for many reasons. I wanted to have more in common with my dad so our weekends weren't completely suffocated in silence.
Dad was fortunate in that he was given a son five years before me. This was my brother Josh. Dad became a father
at eighteen, and for years he didnt feel up to the role. But teaching his son sports was one way for him to be a confident
father. At eighteen he understood little about life, but a lot about football, basketball, and baseball. He got
to live vicariously through my brother, so when I came around we had nothing to talk about.
He
tried to teach me to play catch, but baseballs and I didnt get along. You see, catch is played in four steps: 1) first
party throws ball, 2) second party receives, or catches ball, 3) second party throws ball back to first party, and 4) repeat.
Dad and I could never get past step one. Whenever an object is hurled at me, my body understands that said object is
trying to take my eye out, and promptly cowers as far from the hurled object as possible. I do not begrudge my body
this; I agree with it that it is very important for me to avoid hurled objects, be they bottles, mammals, or baseballs.
Dad
didn't care either. I was his baby boy, and he already had a man in the house to talk sports with. We'd see each
other around the house, maybe watch some TV together and that was that. Until my parents' divorce, when our time was
limited to weekends. Because we only had two days, we always felt as if we should be doing something together, besides
watching TV. Making the most of it, because we never saw each other. But we couldn't. Our interests were
too different, our favorite movies and shows separated by ravines of difference between good and bad taste. The pressure
mounted every weekend, until once, in a Wendys, when I asked him how to read a box score.
I asked because I'd just seen the movie Field
of Dreams. The greatest baseball movie does not have a villainous opposing team, nor a triumphant
late-inning comeback--it simply has an idea. An idea that baseball isn't just Americas pastime: it is America.
Everything we are and will become is tied to the only sport where the defense has the ball, and everyone wants to go Home.
The sports rules and records and styles and statistics rise and fall like Russian dynasties, but the idea has stayed the same.
I have trouble following numbers and technicalities,
but ideas I fall in love with.
So I came to love baseball, and the Cincinnati Reds.
I don't know any pitchers ERA or how many homeruns Johnny Blow hit for the Rumford Whocares in 1954. I dont want to
know if the manager should call a bunt, and I dont want to know what kind of pitch that man just threw, or how a shortstop
raised his average .004 points by digging his foot into the ground a quarter inch more. I want to have faith
in the game. I want Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Larkin to be heroes and not men in uniforms. I want to hold my breath
and have no idea if the ball is landing behind that fence or a hundred feet in front of it. I want to hold my glove
in the air and wish to Jesus for a foul ball landing fifty feet away to hit it. I want to celebrate baseball as I once
celebrated Gods love and Christmas and the sanctuary that my mothers words offered me when I was scared.
I want baseball to make me a child for two and a half
hours.
This year my Reds aren't doing so well. Second
to last in their division, third worst in the major leagues, second losing season since adding hometown All-Star Ken Griffey
Jr. to the roster a couple of years ago. Everyone is sad because our team isnt winning. Shame on us.
My oldest nephew started tee-ball this summer.
That makes me feel like an old man at 21. I went to every game I could, but it took me a while to adjust to their play.
It just kept going. A kid would hit the ball and it rolled and rolled and rolled for a few minutes until a fielder threw
it about thirty feet to the side of the bag and runners kept circling the bases like a merry-go-round. I asked my brother
if they just kept doing this till it got dark.
He said every kid bats and then the next team gets
a chance. No score. There were no earned runs or batting averages, and no one yelled at the umpire. This
was just six year olds playing a game they invited their parents to come watch. Every kid got to field, no one rode
the bench. Where were these rules when I was six? This was the perfect game.
That is, it was until my brother, Josh, opened up
his mouth. He instinctually keeps score in his head, the way beavers build dams. He loudly advised his sons batting
stance from the stands, "Get your hands up! Keep those feet apart!" It's a celebrated fact that nothing is more
detrimental to a child's fun than loud advice on batting stances. We were all proud of him no matter how he did, but
Josh wanted his kid to win.
A few nights ago my friend Jeff--who would refuse
a heaven without baseball parks--asks me to go to a game. Its Monday night and they're playing the Cardinals, a
second-place team three games out of first. So Cardinals fans are watching; no one else in America cares.
But I cared enough to go with him. We didn't
have tickets, but that's why Buddha gave us scalpers. I got my five-year old Reds hat, which used to be the color of
its namesake but is now a sickly hue of green from years of grease and man-sweat. Jeff brought a Cubs hat (we both root
for the Cubs if the Reds are out of it), his brand new camera, and even a baseball glove. Just in case.
We talked enroute to the city, about local stuff,
dreams, music--all the business young men near out of college and facing the world are worry over. About halfway there,
Jeff asks me if I'm really excited. I said I wasn't, and he told me he wasn't, either. He confided, "I used to
get so jazzed when I went to games. Now nothing matters." There is a malaise that affixes us after we turn twenty-one,
as we pass the last milestone of adulthood. We're sadly certain that weve outlived the adventures we had as kids.
It's not impossible for us to revisit the playground, run down the slide a few times and flip through the jungle gym.
But do this too often and people will start to talk. I outgrew my magic dragons and pirate ships and superheroes and
maybe a ball game isn't enough to excite me. Because after the game there are still bills to pay, guff to take, and
bombs in Belfast.
Why weren't Jeff and I excited? Why couldn't
a game let us forget all the worries of life? What was baseball missing?
This was my first trip to the ballpark in about a
year, and I was surprised to find that they were building a new park beside the old one. We drove by its skeleton.
Jeff parked the car next to the new Bengals stadium--which I had never seen up close before.
Paul Brown Stadium is larger than the old field.
It's a sleek, sharp looking arena, with high walls that give it the look of a fortress. It's aerodynamic rafters make
the gridiron polished, sheer. From looking at it, I imagined a dark techno-future where gladiatorial competitions
determined who ruled the earth. I saw millions flocking into stadiums to see Deathball. That would be a good name
for my movie. Any man or woman with enough gumption and desperation can enlist in the Deathball League, average life
expectancy: one week. But those that remain get to rule the Deathball League, and hence, the planet. The story
would follow one young man who infiltrates the Deathball League to find a kidnapped leader of the underground resistance.
The leader would be a beautiful woman, and she and the hero would lead the world into a peaceful, pastoral way of life that
fought against the industrial struggles of Deathball. From the ashes of industrialization they would grow an agrarian
culture. In this new world, we will play baseball.
Jeff and I joined the crowd walking up the
catwalk. We ignored the homeless people, while little kids craned their necks to look at them. Peddlers peddled
souvenirs and peanuts. They sell baseball cards in sets.
I collected baseball cards before I ever watched a
game. To me, they weren't real men on the cardsthey were as real as the Garbage Pail Kids. The numbers on the
back the card meant nothing. They were fun to sort, to trade, to leave lying around. In my day, a pack of fifteen
cards ran about thirty cents, including the gum! Not that you could ever
chew the gum, which was made of iron, in those days. I noticed at Wal-Mart recently, two dollars will buy you five high-gloss
cards--I'm sorry--collectors items. I couldn't have afforded that when I was ten years
old. And ten year-olds aren't affording it now. They're playing video games. The only people buying baseball
cards today are thirty-year-old collectors looking to turn a profit. These are the sad practitioners of a forgotten
order, lonely men trying to recapture the fun of their youths by preserving ball cards in albums and hard plastic coverings.
When I was a kid, I constantly checked the new price
guides to see how much my comics and baseball cards were worth, knowing that I would never part with them.
We bought nosebleed tickets for ten bucks.
Jeff and I walked up the ramp; I got too easily winded. We had a spectacular view of the Bengals home. Jeff said,
"They made that stadium all futuristic and Jetsons-like, but they're making the Reds park real old fashioned to match that
bridge there." He was talking about the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge, designed by John Augustus Roebling, years before
he built a similar bridge in Brooklyn. I was glad he told me that. It reminded me of George Carlins comparisons
of baseball and football, when he said that "baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral gameand football is a twentieth-century
technological struggle." Football is now more popular than baseball--the World Series ratings aren't a spot on the Super
Bowl's.
I hate
football.
Our seats were in the last row; we sat far, far below
them. It was a Monday game for a losing team--we didnt anticipate much competition for space. The new seats were
high above home plate--we had nearly the same view as the sportswriters. Jeff said we might be able to catch a dinger
foul ball. He left his glove in the car.
Riverfront Stadium (I refuse to call it Cinergy Field
just because a sponsor wants me to, Riverfront is where Pete Rose broke Ty Cobbs all-time hit record) isn't a pretty baseball
park. Its like sitting inside a funnel, walled in on all sides. It's a holdover from that 70s scrupulous era when
owners started putting baseball and football teams in the same stadium. These captains of industry garnished their players
with the most audacious of atrocities--astroturf. Riverfront has always felt more like a gridiron--designed to hold
the massive crowds for footballs bi-weekly home game. Baseball games rarely attracted huge numbers of people.
Our crowds were smaller, more intimate.
Since the Bengals have left the farmhouse, the Reds
installed real grass on the field. I never watched a big-league game on real grass. Where was Ty Cobb?
The greatest renovation was the subtraction of the
centerfield wall. They had been torn down to make way for the new field. Now we overlooked the river and the Cincinnati-Covington
Bridge, and fresh air blew into our faces. Jeff explained how the new park was laid out and how there would be no stands
in centerfield, so the homeruns would go into the river and into Kentucky. He told me they were calling it The Great
American Ballpark. I said that was a little audacious, but noble. Then he told me it was named after Great American
Insurance and I laughed at the world. Nothing wrong with trying to wring out an extra dollar--if it prevents another
players strike.
The new park would have much less seating, and would
be more like a Wrigley Field or a Fenway. That made me really happy. Then Jeff explained that tickets in Great
American would be four times as much, and a spot behind home plate ran one-hundred and fifty GWs. I hope they put that
green to good use.
You don't go to baseball games to get riled up like
you do basketball or football. In the latter two sports, the action is constant; men are leaping, diving, crushing,
running in all directions like a stirred up hornets nest. Baseball embraces the feeling of a leisurely walk. At
his first game, a friend of mine pointed out, "This is a lot like life. There's not much happening, then its punctuated
by moments of excitement." George Carlin said as much, "In the stands, theres a kind of picnic feeling. Emotions
may run high or low, but there's not much unpleasantness. In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure
that at least twenty-seven times you were perfectly capable of taking the life of another human being." Many of its
critics charge that baseball is too boring to watch. It is easy to be lulled to sleep by the play: not because it's boring,
but because its relaxing. A day at the ballpark demands the same temperament as a trip to the barbershop. You
can easily hold a conversation without missing much of the action.
The fault of most baseball films is that they fail
to capture the nirvana of the game. The large chunks of time are edited out and moments of levity or harsh reality are
emphasized for the sake of action. What I enjoy about Field of Dreams is were never told the score
of a ball game, and the only major league game (attended by Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones at Fenway park) is abandoned
early and we never know the outcome, or care. This film, more than any other, denounces the importance of victory.
The only defeated figure in the story is Shoeless Joe Jacksonand his downfall didnt hinge on a game or a championship.
His punishment was much simpler, known to every kid grounded on a summer day--he wasnt allowed to go out and play anymore.
So winning isnt everything, but it still counts for
something. I love my team, and condemn whomever they're playing. I venomously hate the Atlanta Braves because
they beat the Reds in the 1995 National League Championship. It's okay to hold grudges in sports; it relieves the need
to hold them in life. Jeff and I hoped that we would see the Reds win that night; we weren't there just for the atmosphere
and good company.
When the Reds took the field, we still weren't excited.
Jeff was looking forward to some Skyline Chili after the game. I was tired and had a cough. The best part of a
game is the yelling, and I had to conserve my throat. That made it hard to get into the game as much as I would have
liked.
One of the teams took an early lead; I think it was
the Reds. The game was dragging on longer than it should have because Cardinals Manager Tony LaRussa was very fond of
changing pitchers, which slowed the business to a crawl. We were afraid we'd get out of there too late for Skyline (we
weren't about to leave early). Now, my friend Jeff is the most placid, straight-faced man to walk the earth since Stalin.
He rarely speaks above a mumble, and conserves his words for importance. That night, with his Skyline Time threatened,
he adopted a new countenance I had never imagined before. He shouted--deeply, like he was pulling wind from Hell through
his toes. And when he hollered he cupped his hands around his mouth and twisted his eyebrows at a slant that suggested
a western villain, twirling his moustache. "You suck LaRussa!" I wondered where Jeff kept the Mr. Hyde potion,
and if he might loan me a nip. I was still very, very tired.
It was 2-1 in the bottom of ninth; St. Louis was leading.
Maybe Jeff's Skyline might come, after all. Then Griffey knocked Pokey Reese home with a single, and Wilton Guerrero
collided with a Cardinals infielder on his way to second base. It knocked the wind out of him and he rose up, dazed
but lucid enough to pounce for the bag. The throw from right field was almost there, just a New York minute too late.
The umpire didnt see it that way, and called the runner out. The crowd rose to its feet, either to extol or abhor the
ruling. I love this about crowds: everyone knows more than every official ever born. Reds manager Bob Boone came
out of the dugout to protest the call and LaRussa to defend it. Then, alas, tragedy struck. Guerrero was laying
down on second base. Was he okay? How bad was it? Out came the trainer. The umpires huddled to talk
about the call. Was the Cardinals player in Guerrero's base path?
The twisting tension of the moment and the sinking
revelation that there would be no Skyline Chili tonight got our blood going. We stood up, couldn't help it. I
was getting yancy. We swore curses upon Tony LaRussas head that will haunt him until his children's children's afterlives.
Fans are much ruder to sports figures than we are to each other. I guess a uniform means you forfeit your humanity for
a few hours a night.
Finally Guerrero limped off the field and fans on
both sides cheered him. I also like this about ball game--an injured man plays for both teams. The game ran into extra
innings. LaRussa was out of pitchers and we were out of batters; Boone was pinch-hitting with his bullpen.
In the tenth, St. Louis scored to runs to set the
tally at 4-2. Now the game may end and there would be Skyline, but at what cost? We didn't want to see our boys
fall so that we could satiate our appetites for three-way chili. If we cared as little for the game as we imagined on
the way to the ballpark, then we would have left in the eighth inning. No maam, this was our Cause, and empty stomachs
be damned in the name of liberty.
The Reds tied it up in the bottom of the tenth.
Was I watching a movie?
In the eleventh, pinch runner Lance Davis (a pitcher)
was run down by the catcher when the third base coach made a bad judgment and hesitated to wave him home. We were ready
to welcome the twelfth inning and accepted that Providence did not want us to eat three-way chili that night. We bragged
how we wished the game would last 18 inningsenough for two games. I was entrenched for the night with my spade and hardtack,
so why not? We felt like seasoned veterans of trench warfare. Empty seats stood around us like tombstones.
Then a man became a god.
Humans love gods, love to personalize them by making
them look like us in appearance and possessing human qualities. We are endeared to messiahs, to the heroic ideal.
That a man may rise above us and save us all is the supreme ideal dominating all ideologies. We love sports because
they make gods out of men, one flashbulb at a time.
Ken Griffey Jr. hit a ball deep to the outfield.
Jim Edmonds, the Gold Glove center fielder Jeff had been denouncing all night, misjudged the ball and it bounced off the centerfield
wall and rolled far into left field. It was like watching a tee-ball game.
Griffey rounded the bases and slid Home just as the
catcher caught the ball. Inside-the-park homerun. We erupted and our team poured from the bench and embraced themselves
at home plate, bouncing like monkeys. I looked to Jeff and he smiled and hollered just like me and we couldnt hear our
own voices. We high-fived each other, then high-fived the people around us. Empty seats around us marked the lives
of the people around us who left early to avoid stadium traffic. We were dancing through a graveyard.
So yes, we were happy for a few seconds. For
a bit there, we were satisfied with the bills we had to pay and nonexistent peace in Palestine. But something was missing.
I was sad. The sadness wasnt a reflection of my life; it was a product of the moment. I hadn't done anything:
why should I be happy? What did I accomplish? Nothing that happened would affect my life or change the course
of world affairs. Was my euphoria real? Every junky knows that the fix will bring them back down, even as it lets
them up. You can't touch the sky without shaking hands with Madam Gravity.
I felt like I was forcing happiness, going through
the motions of cheering because sitting still wouldn't do. I was trying to create a perfect moment. A few years
ago, seeing a winning ball team would have been like apple pie to me. Now it wasn't enough. I had a funny taste
in my mouth, and I hoped it was from my cough.
On the way home, Jeff told me about his successful
tee-ball career. He told me, "I once hit a two-run homer with no men on base."
"How did you manage that?"
"They said that I hit it so far it should count for
two runs."
