A Conflicted Baseball Fan - From David Salinger
Baseball is a part of my DNA. I’ve been surrounded by the sights and sounds of the game for my entire life. My Dad’s love of the game made it impossible to avoid, and the game itself gradually took me into its magical grip.
I attended my first Giants game at Seals Stadium in 1960 (at least that’s my best guess from my memory) and was thrilled. It was unforgettable and followed by hundreds of other trips to ballgames over the next 45 years. Baseball was much more though than actually going to games. It was listening to the radio into the wee hours on the transistor radio in bed, often falling asleep to the sound of my favorite announcers. Every day first thing in the morning, the Sporting Green would be laid out and the boxscores poured over, as statistics are the musical notes of the game. It was Paul and I playing our favorite game, Strikeout, daily, and actually pretending to be every single player on the team as we batted our way through the lineups.
It’s no different now in terms of the passion. The transistor has been replaced by television and the internet and Seals Stadium is now PacBell, SBC, AT&T or whatever corporate merger of the day demands. But the game itself remains pure.
The conflict is in the ever increasing evidence and certainty that the participants in the game are considerably less pure than the game itself. Yesterday’s news of the forthcoming book outlining extensive steroids use by Barry Bonds was hard to ignore. For the last couple of years, it’s been an ongoing distraction. As a lifelong Giants fan, it has been easy to make excuses and turn a deaf ear to the rumors. Clearly most to the national media dislikes Barry for many good reasons and it’s been pretty easy to discount the stories and simply applaud the latest amazing feat from a really great player.
I like to think that I’m reasonably intelligent and given that, it’s impossible to deny what’s being written. I don’t like it, I don’t like any of the implications. Those implications are many. Did Barry break the home run record using illegal substances? Did he gain an unfair advantage? Did he do it because, “hey, everyone else is, including the pitchers I’m facing”. How have drugs in general affected the game? Is this a much bigger issue than Barry Bonds? How many others did the same thing? Does it really matter? What does baseball do now regarding records and such? Is it all just about money? All compelling questions.
Like I do every Spring, I’m getting excited about the coming season. I love to read the reports from Spring training, speculate on how the team might fare. Wonder if the pitching will be better, if we can beat the Dodgers, if that World Series victory I’ve been waiting for since 1960 will finally happen this year.
On opening day, if Barry Bonds hits a game winning home run, I expect I’ll be out of my seat cheering again, because after all is said and done, for me, it’s really about the love of the game and rooting for the home team. I am in truth, just a fan of Baseball and even though the players that come and go, are doing so with less than stellar credentials, I want nothing more than a simple…..PLAY BALL.
I attended my first Giants game at Seals Stadium in 1960 (at least that’s my best guess from my memory) and was thrilled. It was unforgettable and followed by hundreds of other trips to ballgames over the next 45 years. Baseball was much more though than actually going to games. It was listening to the radio into the wee hours on the transistor radio in bed, often falling asleep to the sound of my favorite announcers. Every day first thing in the morning, the Sporting Green would be laid out and the boxscores poured over, as statistics are the musical notes of the game. It was Paul and I playing our favorite game, Strikeout, daily, and actually pretending to be every single player on the team as we batted our way through the lineups.
It’s no different now in terms of the passion. The transistor has been replaced by television and the internet and Seals Stadium is now PacBell, SBC, AT&T or whatever corporate merger of the day demands. But the game itself remains pure.
The conflict is in the ever increasing evidence and certainty that the participants in the game are considerably less pure than the game itself. Yesterday’s news of the forthcoming book outlining extensive steroids use by Barry Bonds was hard to ignore. For the last couple of years, it’s been an ongoing distraction. As a lifelong Giants fan, it has been easy to make excuses and turn a deaf ear to the rumors. Clearly most to the national media dislikes Barry for many good reasons and it’s been pretty easy to discount the stories and simply applaud the latest amazing feat from a really great player.
I like to think that I’m reasonably intelligent and given that, it’s impossible to deny what’s being written. I don’t like it, I don’t like any of the implications. Those implications are many. Did Barry break the home run record using illegal substances? Did he gain an unfair advantage? Did he do it because, “hey, everyone else is, including the pitchers I’m facing”. How have drugs in general affected the game? Is this a much bigger issue than Barry Bonds? How many others did the same thing? Does it really matter? What does baseball do now regarding records and such? Is it all just about money? All compelling questions.
Like I do every Spring, I’m getting excited about the coming season. I love to read the reports from Spring training, speculate on how the team might fare. Wonder if the pitching will be better, if we can beat the Dodgers, if that World Series victory I’ve been waiting for since 1960 will finally happen this year.
On opening day, if Barry Bonds hits a game winning home run, I expect I’ll be out of my seat cheering again, because after all is said and done, for me, it’s really about the love of the game and rooting for the home team. I am in truth, just a fan of Baseball and even though the players that come and go, are doing so with less than stellar credentials, I want nothing more than a simple…..PLAY BALL.
posted by Paul Salinger at 5:58 PM
1 Comments:
I have to admit that it's getting harder and harder to watch professional sports of any kind. Between the constant stories of drug abuse, steroids, the astronomical diproportionate amount of money these guys make compared to productive members of society (think school teachers, for example), the arrests for things like DUI and domestic abuse, it all adds up to just turning me off for the most part.
so, while I will likely continue to watch, because like Dave it's in my DNA from childhood, I'd almost rather watch a good college game or even just go my granddaughter's soccer game and watch kids play just for the fun and the sport of it without any need to care about whether one of them is juiced or how much money they're making.
So, I also say...PLAY BALL - and let's just go watch the kids play instead of the ego driven, overpaid professionals, in any sport.
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