8502060189
DETROIT FREE PRESS
850911
Wednesday, September 11, 1985
METRO FINAL
1D
Photo
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1985, Detroit Free Press
BASEBALL HAS NEVER COME OFF SMELLING LIKE A ROSE
The way I see it, the Great Baseball Fan in the Sky is trying to tell us
something.
Why else would we have Pete Rose going for baseball's all- time hit record
the same day Yogi Berra's son is confessing a cocaine habit to a judge?
Why else would teams in the thick of pennant races have to excuse players
to testify that they made drug deals in their hotel rooms?
Why else -- when else in history? -- would a TV newsman promo the sports
this way: "Pete Rose catches Ty Cobb, the pennant races tighten up, and the
drug scandal continues! More on those stories, after this . . . "
Maybe it's fate. Maybe coincidence. But I know we are at a critical
moment, one never seen before.
Today we are standing at the intersection of Dream Street and Reality
Avenue, seeing baseball for all it is, all it can be, and all we have
mistaken it for over decades, sweet decades.
Glove, ball, pitch, home run.
Vial, razor, line, drug.
There is something here. And it's time to face it.
The good, bad and ugly
In "The Natural" -- the book, not the movie -- there's a scene in which Roy
Hobbs, the baseball hero, is shot by a woman in a hotel room. As he sees her
pull the trigger, he instinctively cups his hands in front of his waist, as
if to catch the bullet. To his shock, it has already entered his body.
I keep seeing that image: The hero falling, still thinking baseball makes
him bullet-proof.
How bittersweet a picture for today, when baseball is at its most magical
and its most mortal.
On one hand, we have Rose, the ultimate dugout munchkin, who lives Over the
Rainbow in a world of innings and at-bats and singles up the middle. The
game. It's all he talks about. It's all he does. And how many of us, in
younger days, wished we could be like him -- at least for a few seconds --
rounding first base as our hat falls off?
He is baseball.
The dream to its core.
And at the same moment, we have ball players -- Keith Hernandez, Enos
Cabell, Lonnie Smith, Dale Berra -- dressed like lawyers, ties choking their
necks, as they sit in a courtroom and name names. This one did drugs. And so
did that one. And so did I. Forty percent of the league? Fifty? More?
They, too, are baseball.
The reality to its core.
Don't you see? The game is both. For years we've believed that one
excluded the other -- to be a baseball hero was to be beyond human frailty,
and to succumb to human frailty would cancel your reservation at baseball's
table.
So when a man showed the former, the latter would be ignored. Look no
further than Babe Ruth. A home run hero, drunk and cursing? The press turned
away. People didn't want to know.
Now we know.
And it doesn't cancel Pete Rose. It doesn't erase the thrill of the
pennant race.
What it does is drive the truth home with a sledgehammer: On the field,
ball players can be magnificent beyond us, and off the field, they can be
just like us, sometimes worse.
The real-life Roy Hobbs. Heroic. And vulnerable to the bullet.
It's high time for the truth
Now, I don't mean to be an ant at history's picnic here. And yes, Rose is
making history, just as his peers are doing in Pittsburgh.
But when our kids ask, "Who's that man at home plate?" we ought to
remember today, this intersection of fact and fantasy, before answering.
Sure, some people ignore the whole seedy side of baseball. Just as others
say the game is dead, because they don't want their kids looking up to drug
addicts. Neither answer is very smart.
Remember when Kansas City star Willie Wilson, convicted on cocaine
charges, answered the question of being a role model by saying: "I didn't ask
to be nobody's role model."
He's right. We asked.
Now it's time to withdraw the request.
Baseball the Babysitter has grown up. Gone to the curious world beyond.
Time has come to take responsibility for our kids' impressions.
So tell them. Both sides. Tell them about Rose, his hits, his hustle, his
love of baseball.
Tell them also about Hernandez, his nose bleeds, his sudden weight loss,
his playing a game while high on cocaine.
Remember that baseball is not a cleansing rinse, that players towel off
into mortal form when the final inning is over. That it can contain the best
in us, and the worst in us.
That it is a game, one that has never been in sharper focus than today.
Pete Rose. Drug scandal. Glory meets grimness, sliding into second base.
Tell them that. Tell them all of it. It's time.
COLUMN