When It Comes Down to Baseball: I Glove You, Man

I love baseball.

Not like some numbers-addicted stat freak might or an over-the-top writer trying to find poetry among the balls and strikes. It’s not fashionable these days, but I love baseball for what it is: a game.

I won’t join a rotisserie league. Or read George Will’s ludicrous writings on baseball. But I still love watching the games, reading the box scores in the paper and wondering who will win the World Series.

I don’t wish I was a major leaguer. I never played anything that would resemble organized baseball. I’m not sure why, but I was always better at basketball or running long distances. I guess it really doesn’t matter now. I don’t envy big leaguers’ talents, rather I pity their endless travel and lack of ordered home life.

My home is not stocked with baseball memorabilia. There are a few books, reference stuff for work, but no signed balls, bats, jerseys or pictures. Somewhere in a closet there is a glove. It belongs to my wife, who has needed one far more than I in recent years. The last ball I caught in a press box I handed over to a nice young boy in the Metrodome during an Angels-Twins game last summer. Hey, he asked politely.

I don’t consider myself a purist. If they said they’d start playing with 10 guys a side and for only seven innings, I’d say, “Fine, what time’s the game start?” It might be better that way, which brings up another point:

I like the American League better than the National.

I think the designated hitter is a great idea. I love the old ballparks and the quirky new ones and the wild, four-hour games. I can wait for interleague play, but when it happens, I’ll be rooting for the AL teams.

I love the Texas Rangers (all hitting, zero pitching) and the Seattle Mariners (Ken Griffey Jr. and a ballpark so incredibly bad it’s almost good). I love Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Jacobs Field and Anaheim Stadium when it was a real ballpark.

I also like Albert Belle of the Cleveland Indians. I realize society would be better off not worshiping at his feet because, let’s face it, he probably should be doing time. But can he smear a baseball or what?

If there’s a role model to be found in today’s game it’s Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles, boys and girls, moms and dads. A work-ethic like Ripken’s will take you far, in any field.

I hate the troll who owns the Cincinnati Reds. Too bad the Unabomber didn’t send greetings to Joe Robbie Stadium, home of the Florida Marlins. (When it was empty, of course.)

Artificial turf makes me want to vomit. Thank God the Cardinals yanked that crap out of their stadium this year. What took so long? And why haven’t the Reds, Phillies and Pirates followed suit?

Some jabber on about the superiority of the National League, about its tradition. To me the NL’s tradition has always been stuffy, tired, boring, dull.

Sure, Connie Mack wore a suit while managing the Philadelphia Athletics, but somehow, someway he seemed gentlemanly rather than snobby.

Many of the game’s great characters have ties to the AL: Mack, Babe Ruth, Bill Veeck, Bill Lee, Rex Hudler.

The ’27 Yankees were from the AL. Ruth and Hank Aaron finished their careers in the AL. Ty Cobb played in the AL. So did George Brett, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. You don’t need me to tell you how they could hit.

So where did this all come from? How did I come to fall for baseball and the American League?

It’s my father’s fault.

Weekly, it seemed, we would go to see the Phillies play during the summers of my youth. First, it was at ancient, crumbling Connie Mack Stadium in its ancient, crumbling North Philadelphia neighborhood. Later, it was at Veterans Stadium in South Philly, bigger, safer, easier to get to, but cut from the identical mold as Riverfront in Cincinnati and Three Rivers in Pittsburgh.

That was probably the beginning of the end for me. They tore down almost all the great ballparks in the NL and left us with artificial turf and dancing waters.

Between visits to the Vet, there was always a whiffle ball game on our street in Center City Philadelphia. Raw. Basic. Kids from the neighborhood gathered on humid evenings, screaming in high-pitched voices after each hit, arguing balls and strikes. Once in awhile, adults would join us after their work day.

In spring, before the heat and humidity turned the city into a blast furnace, there was street hockey, an energetic game better suited to cooler temperatures. In fall, we played touch football. In winter’s snows it was tackle.

Summer was perfect for the slow-paced movements of baseball, the endless games lasting late into the evening.

“OK, we’re winning, 102-101, now,” somebody in the gathering darkness would announce during a marathon game, followed by a mother’s voice, “Alex, come in now. It’s late.”

At game’s end, there would be a quick dinner and then I was off to listen to the Phillies game on the radio. Or to watch on TV, if they were on the road against a hateful rival such as the Mets or the Expos.

My father, a high-jumper in high school and college, was always patient with me. I think he knew I would never grow big enough or strong enough to attract the interest of major league teams. He didn’t seem to mind and by age 10, I don’t think I did either.

So, we went to the games and watched the Phillies fumble and bumble their way through the seasons. Loyal fans.

When our family moved to Southern California in the mid-1970s, I tried to like the Dodgers, to accept them as my team. Didn’t work. Same with the Angels.

In 1980, the Phillies beat Kansas City in the World Series and the deal was clinched. I was no longer a fan, merely a faithful observer. I knew I could die happy. The Phillies had at last won.

Instead of rooting for one team I began to root for one league. The AL. My league.

The Orioles, Red Sox and Yankees were to be feared as much as hated when they came to Anaheim Stadium. Kansas City became a big Angel rival. Today, it’s Seattle. Oakland, once powerful, then awful, then strong, then weak again, seemed to ebb and flow with talent--some years it was there, some not.

Those teams seemed more interesting, more entertaining than the Dodgers, Giants, Astros and Padres.

Today, I cannot say I have the greatest job in the world. I love baseball, but covering it for a newspaper is not quite the same as watching from the stands on a carefree summer night. A reporter would be better off hating the game because surely he or she will by the time he or she is done with even one season’s endless grind on the beat.

Personally, I find myself detached, worried about making deadline, about remembering to check for notes and fodder deep within stories.

I don’t see the players as I once did. Some are nice, normal people, but they are not my heroes.

Their play does not inspire me to compare their feats to, say, a single parent who works his or her tail off to provide food, clothing and housing for a family. Players’ lives simply are not reality for the rest of us.

And yet now that it is summer again, I am happy.

Neither the dolts who run it nor the punks who play it will ruin baseball for me.