Last Call: Losing Touch with Baseball
Pleszczynski, Wlady
lasT call Losing Touch with Baseball by Wlady Pleszczynski I I t’s been building for some time, but the clincher came with this July’s All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium. I was...
...What will New York allow next...
...Oh, well, you heard it here first...
...Finally, mercifully, someone reached third base with one out...
...I knew who’d be coming to town during the current home stand and what cities the Dodgers would visit on their next road trip...
...and a rightfielder I’d never seen or heard of threw a lame twohopper to home too late to get the runner who’d tagged up and trudged in from third...
...Lo and behold, it was past one in the morning and the game was still in progress, well into extra innings, with neither side showing much remaining life...
...Game over...
...I do know true fans who maintain that kind of commitment to their favorite team to their dying day, though usually at some cost, such as developing an interest in anything else—the NFL, say—or being able to keep up with baseball’s expansion, which has nearly doubled the number of major league teams since 1960, many to places that continue to have triple A or spring training written all over them (Denver, Seattle, Florida, Arizona, Tampa “Bay...
...Soon enough we’ll have National League teams playing their entire schedule against American League teams...
...I was working late and hadn’t watched, so only as an afterthought did I check for the score and some highlights...
...A new, taller cathedral next to St...
...I knew their entire roster and the minor league record of every player, not to mention the rosters and histories of their league opponents...
...And where one once could have specialized in one of the two leagues, today’s growing reliance on inter-league play to generate fan interest in the regular season has erased their distinctiveness as well...
...For every two players who wash out, there are three coming up to replace them (some aren’t even from the Dominican Republic...
...My 82 THe aMeRIcan sPecTaToR sePTeMbeR 2008 only problem is that I no longer feel any compelling need to keep up...
...I was certain the game would be over...
...As for Corey Hart, the two-bounce artist in question, I still have no idea who he is...
...Within days the NFL would be opening its training camps...
...All those things were very important then...
...Last time I checked, today, a Saturday, Yankee Stadium was filled to the rafters again, as the homeboys defeated the Los Angeles Angels...
...The days were long, one’s obligations minimal, and there was time every blessed day to listen to Dodger games on radio...
...Mind you, these frustrations are all mine, not necessarily baseball’s...
...anyway, we didn’t have a TV...
...Think anyone will notice...
...I grew up living and breathing the Los Angeles Dodgers, mainly thanks to America’s most treasured announcer and teacher, Vin Scully...
...They were never televised except when the Dodgers visited rickety Candlestick up the coast...
...But the clincher was that right-fielder’s awful heave...
...Who’d have imagined that when the phrase “you can’t go home again” was coined, the truism would extend to the baseball of one’s innocence...
...a shortstop who played for my alma mater (UCSB) and now plays for President Bush’s former team, hit a quick fly to right...
...All my frustrations with baseball were right there...
...Patrick’s, to allow for more luxury boxes...
...Roberto Clemente would have thrown the runner out, without looking...
...Night after night on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight one can catch the ten greatest plays of a given day, all brilliantly pulled off, even if not one of them is by Corey Hart...
...The world back then made automatic sense...
...Dave Parker too (though on a direct fly, of course...
...Like our economy, the pool of talent out there is ever expanding...
...lasT call Losing Touch with Baseball by Wlady Pleszczynski I I t’s been building for some time, but the clincher came with this July’s All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium...
...If the last day of school produced unbounded joy, the last day of the baseball season was an occasion of deep sadness (particularly since the school season would continue indefinitely...
...A weeknight game still ongoing well past midnight, in a half-empty ghost of a stadium that won’t be in use next season...
...End of season, too...
Vol. 41 • September 2008 • No. 7
