Diamond in the Rough

Diamond In the Rough

         Red Sox great Ted Williams once said that the hardest thing to do on earth was to hit a round ball with a round bat. A lot of people nowadays will dispute that, saying instead that the hardest thing to do on earth is to sit through an entire baseball game; but why is that? Why has America’s once beloved pastime become a tiresome nuisance to so many? When did this happen?

         A lot of baseball’s faithful will point an accusing finger at the steroids scandal. That certainly didn’t help, but that can’t be the sole reason. Other’s say it's the constant strikes and blatant greed exhibited by players who put their cleats on everyday more for a paycheck than for their love of the game. And I say, now we’re getting somewhere, because that paycheck is the root cause of the steroid scandal.

         Baseball’s popularity waned after the strike of 1994. Many fans, including myself, walked away from the manicured fields, disillusioned with the sport that was supposed to represent us the most; all the while muttering under our breath that we would never return. Oh sure, we’d play baseball; in sandlots and little leagues and college, but never again would we be suckered into purchasing season tickets for a professional organization whose members surely cared nothing about our loyalty, much less dream of playing with them. “Braves who?” We’d say. “What’s a Cy Young?” We’d ask.

         And a lot of us kept our promise, refusing the prodigal sons of the baseball diamond upon their return the next year. Why shouldn’t we have shunned them when they had abandoned us so easily the season before; when a few of us were clinging onto World Series and Playoff hopes? We were vindicated in our cause when the ratings slipped further and further down over the next few years. We moved onto football wholeheartedly and were rewarded with action and with players who genuinely seemed to love their game. But then came 1997.

         Mark McGuire; his name now rings with an air of phoniness, but he was Jesus in '97 and '98; sent by the father, Bud Selig, to bring all the lost sheep back to Major League Baseball’s peaceful pastures, and he was succeeding. He was on pace to destroy the single season home run record of 61 set by Yankee great Roger Maris. The baseball gods were pleased; the fans we’re returning in droves to see the Herculean figure knock the covers from baseballs that sailed, on occasion, completely out of stadiums. Games were selling out and stands we’re filling up with not only old baseball fans but with a new younger generation of fans who were catching their first real glimpse of the excitement that the game of baseball, even as slow as it is played, can provide. Nobody questioned the juiced baseballs, the lowered mounds, the taboo thought of steroid abuse, because nobody wanted to. What was lying underneath every soaring homerun didn’t matter to the players who were making more, or the owners who were selling out stadiums again, or the fans who were amazed with the sheer power of the act itself. We were enthralled as a nation with the homerun. And it wasn’t just Mark McGuire. There was Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Sammy Sosa, Raphael Palmiero, and eventually Jason Giambi all putting up gargantuan numbers. Many fans who had sworn Major League Baseball off forever quietly returned, albeit grudgingly, myself included; and soon we forgot about ’94 as we were swept up in the hype.

         Now, looking back I think we all feel a little foolish. We ask ourselves why we barely noticed these behemoths five years before, when they were just “good” ballplayers who weighed far less, got more hits than homeruns, and stole more bases. We laugh at ourselves for turning a blind eye to Mark McGuire’s movie-screen-like forehead and face destroying acne, as he blasted his way through 70 homeruns (only to be outdone by Barry Bonds’ 72 homeruns three years later) . We are embarrassed and we should be. Because baseball is more than just a pastime for our country, it is the mirror with which we judge ourselves as a country. Saying that we’re tired of baseball is euphemistically saying that we are, in fact, tired of ourselves and our own ability to be fickle. The performance enhanced homeruns and unashamed attempts to make baseball a more high-scoring game told us exactly who we were as a nation the minute that we bought into them. Thinking that the American public no longer would be satisfied with baseball as a noble and strategic sport, they gave it the professional wrestling treatment; and we bought it (if only for a second), when the whole time all we really should’ve wanted was for the players to love the game as much as we did.




Michael P. Van Dorn