9402020687
DETROIT FREE PRESS
940915
Thursday, September 15, 1994
METRO FINAL
1A
Photo Color JOHN LUKE;STEVEN R. NICKERSON
Photo BEN MARGOT Associated Press
S:
Amid a sea of silence and empty Tiger Stadium seats, head
groundskeeper Frank Fenneck works on the batters box Wednesday.
But no one knows when a batter will next stand there.
Cancellation of the season gave pause to Tigers general
manager Joe Klein, below. "We're in uncharted waters," he said.
BEN MARGOT/Associated Press
Gen Valderama of Hayward, Calif., breaks into tears Wednesday
after getting a refund for her season tickets to A's games at
the Oakland Coliseum. The procedure for Tigers tickets refunds
is on Page 6C.
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1994, Detroit Free Press
HEARTLESS
BASEBALL BRINGS NO JOY TO AMERICA
There goes your old friend baseball. You remember him from a happier time,
when he walked with his head high, waving at children and swatting home runs.
He is stooped over now, fat and bloated, drunk on his own greed. There is no
saving him. No one even wants to try.
There goes your old friend baseball. The 1994 season is officially over,
tossed away like leftovers, without a climax, without a winner, but with
plenty of losers, a roomful of men who are so interested in getting the best
sound bite on television they never even notice a grand tradition squashing
beneath their feet.
"It is very hard to articulate the poignancy of this moment," sighed a
puppet named Bud Selig, who, in canceling the season, lived up to his role as
"acting" commissioner. "Baseball has changed like other industries. We cannot
continue to do business as usual. . . ."
And minutes later, in New York, the players' mouthpiece, Donald Fehr,
responded this way: "What do you expect from a cartel?"
Who are these men, you want to shout. Who are these navy blue suits and
maroon ties and pasty skins that look as if they've never seen the warmth of
an August afternoon, where baseball used to live? Who are these men? What
right do they have to command something that was once such a part of the
American quilt that sewed together children from Spokane to Providence on a
single summer night, sitting by the radio, marking their blue-lined
scorecards, listening to announcers bellow, "It's a long fly ball, deep to
left! . . . "
When there was nothing else to bring joy to the masses, there was
baseball. When there was nothing else to unite father and son, there was
baseball. When there was nothing for an old man or woman to fill the lonely
night, there was baseball. It was, above all else, a metronome of American
life, an unbroken ritual from April to October. This has always been what
makes it important. Not the latest pitching star, or the newest owner -- but
the assurance that life went on, that the seasons flowed, that players went
from wiping sweat to wearing long sleeves to finally, on the last day,
leaping into a happy pile. It was our nation's growth chart.
Who are these men? They have seized control, and it's like giving the car
keys to a bunch of 7-year-olds. Canceled the season?
Do they know what they've done?
Fall of the Fall Classic
There goes your old friend the World Series. There will be no annual visit
this October. No letting the kids stay up late, no cutting out box scores and
putting them in a scrapbook, no screaming fans, no crowded bars, no soldiers
overseas huddled around a radio, eyes closed, fists clenched, whispering, "Get
a hit . . . get a hit." The Fall Classic has survived so much stronger
adversity. It has filled rosters during two World Wars, when healthy young men
were in low supply. It has filled stadiums during the Depression. It has
endured scandals from the outside and the inside and has even endured
midseason work stoppages and yet, autumn after autumn, it was there,
something you could count on: falling leaves, children in school clothes, a
champion in baseball.
Now the leaves fall and kids are in school and the stadiums are empty.
They've been since Aug. 12, when this strike began, when a union of players
-- not one of them earning less than $109,000 a year, some earning upward of
$8 million -- decided they simply can't live with what their bosses were
suggesting, which was a limit on their salaries.
And so they left. And for weeks both sides postured and posed and swallowed
network air time as if it were chocolate. They spoke passionately, but they
were dedicated to themselves, not the game, and it is their own interests
that they serve today.
"The problem is complex," they will tell you, and they'll prattle on about
indexes and revenue sharing and small markets and cable. But it is all money,
it is only money, and there is more than enough money to make all of them
happy, owners and players, if they were the kind of people who could accept
that no one doubles his income forever.
They are not. This is not even about right and wrong anymore. It's about
respect for the game, the way firefighters respect their job, the way police
don't go on strike. That respect is gone. Anything is possible.
"This is not about greedy owners versus greedy players," Selig insisted.
"This is about two sides trying to make adjustment to economic conditions. In
the end, all will be better off, mainly the fans."
The fans, he said?
You don't know whether to cry, or throw up.
Not one for the books
There goes your old friend history. More than any other sport, baseball
keeps track of its efforts. There were strong men this year who threatened
hallowed baseball records: Ken Griffey Jr. and Matt Williams, rattling the
cage of Roger Maris and his 61 home runs. There was Tony Gwynn, out in San
Diego, knocking on the door of a .400 batting average, something not achieved
since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941.
All that is gone now, wiped like chalk from a classroom board. You need a
season to make a record. You need games to make a season.
Since 1904, baseball has always ended in a city celebration. Some school
kid had his favorite memory made with the last pitch. Some family went to the
parade and took pictures. Who will remember 1994 that way? No one. It might as
well have never existed.
There's a story about this sport that goes back to President Franklin
Roosevelt, who is said to have telephoned Joseph Stalin one night. This was in
the days when America and Russia got along. The call took awhile to place.
Finally, when the connection was made, this is what the president said:
"Hello, Joe? It's Frank. Giants three, Dodgers nothing."
We don't tell stories like that anymore. We don't have them to tell.
Baseball was a heartbeat, and a heartbeat will forgive you, it will let you
speed it up, even skip it for a moment, it will keep on going, and be there
when you catch up, always, forever -- unless you stop the heart.
They have stopped the heart of this sport. And in so doing, they set a
precedent for all the money-grubbers that might own it in the future: If all
else fails, it's all right to cancel the season. The hell with it. That's the
history owners and players make today.
There goes your old friend baseball. You can't help him. You can't reach
him. You can't even recognize him anymore.
SPT; COLUMN; END; BASEBALL; SEASON; STRIKE