Back to the bus leagues
There are a few things that I’m obsessive about – well more than a few, but for the sake of argument – music, politics and baseball. Music is the only one of these things that isn’t consistently disappointing to me. But its baseball season and that means that like it or not, I’m reading box scores, keeping up with the NL leader in saves (Francisco Cordero of the Brewers) and who is leading the AL wild card race (Detroit). As an expat, it’s rare that I get to watch a live game, but mlb.com and ESPN have good highlights clips. And I’d like to point out that my fantasy team is leading the league.
Alex Rodriguez makes $27 million per year (that’s more than $45,000 per at bat). The New York Yankees team salary is over $195 million which is more than the GDP of some sovereign nations and over 8 times that of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. This money differential renders most clubs uncompetitive. MLB has no real consistent enforcement policy regarding steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, and don’t get me started on Barry Bonds and the home run records.
Despite all this, from April to October, I follow along. That’s because I love the game. I love the slow pace and the Byzantine rules and scorekeeping. I love hearing the crack of the bat and the thump of a blazing fastball in the catchers mitt. I love the national anthem and the organ music in the ball park and the seventh inning stretch. My Dad is a baseball fan and he passed that on to me. He’s a Dodgers fan, so I was until I got to the age when you start to disagree with your Dad and then I became a Braves fan. I loved the Braves when they sucked. The 80’s when they wore powder blue and averaged 65 wins per season. When Dale (The Stormin’ Mormon) Murphy was their sole All-Star. There’s something pure about a team that bad, something simple and something loveable. The best thing was that every single game could be seen on “The Superstation” sandwiched between reruns of “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “Dallas”. That glorious 1995 series win over Cleveland made it all worth while, yet their hapless record in the post-season kept things simple. Two other reasons to love the Braves – Chipper Jones, who’s in his 14th season with the club, a true rarity in modern baseball and Bobby Cox, who is one ejection away from breaking the major league record for being tossed as a manager, that my friends is a record!
When I moved to the midwest I began a flirtation with the Kansas City Royals. Columbia, Missouri is equidistant between KC and St. Louis, so the choice of a local team came down to the Royals, who for the last 20 years have been the Braves of the 80’s, and the Cardinals - a slick, big budget successful team. The Cardinals still had the spectre of Mark McGwire and doping and home runs and money hanging over them, so I looked West as young men are want to. The Royal’s Kauffman stadium is one of the best I’ve been to in major league baseball. “The K” is intimate, there’s not a bad seat in the house and the perennial poorness of the team generally means that there are plenty of seats available. I’m sure its days are numbered, but it was a great park while it lasted.
MLB is mostly big money and spoiled players and drugs and just bloated like a tick on a stray dog. I think where you can find the purity of baseball, especially a night at the ball park is in the minor leagues. One of my favorite movies, and the best baseball movie ever, is “Bull Durham”. This film paints a romantic and hilarious picture of minor league baseball and is probably the only Kevin Costner movie that is ever worth seeing. There are 246 minor league teams spread all over the country, thus you are probably not far from a minor league club. Admission is dirt cheap, parking is not usually a problem and in most parks you can sit close enough to smell the players sweat if that’s your kind of things. A lot of these guys make it to the bigs, so you may get a chance to see a player before he becomes a greedy, drug ridden freak.
When I go to visit my parents in Florida, my Dad and I usually catch a game. The Daytona Cubs are a Class A affiliate of Chicago playing in the Florida State League against such perennial powerhouses as the Brevard County Manatees and the Lakeland Flying Tigers. The Cubs play at Jackie Robinson Ballpark which sits on the Intercoastal Waterway. It’s so named because, according to the club website in 1946, Robinson came to town for spring training with the Montreal Royals. He was banned from playing in Jacksonville and Sanford, but not in Daytona.. His first plate appearance came in an exhibition game against their parent club, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson then became the first African-American player in the Major Leagues.
Dad and I go to to watch the Cubs, fill up on bad hot dogs and pretzels, I keep score, we try to catch foul balls and usually come away with some kind of free promotion. We enjoy the Florida summer twilight and do the things that fathers’ and sons’ have been doing in America for over a century. Enjoy a game of baseball. I’ll miss that this summer.
And as Ebby Calvin LaLoush says in Bull Durham: “A good friend of mine used to say, ‘This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.’ Think about that for a while….”
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