Baseball: From bad to worst
Bad, bad, bad … even something as great as America’s pastime can at times leave you feeling emptier than a plastic souvenir mug after the seventh inning. Last week, “A Sporting View” started counting the bottom five moments of baseball history (even though some lasted more than a moment) and this week we finish the task, as sequential order demands.
3) Economics — The modern-day version of the snake-oil salesman is the politician and baseball team owner who vows that the only way to revitalize a moribund downtown is to build a new baseball stadium there. Granted, the cities that decide to tax their citizens and build these shiny, new temples of hardball receive a gorgeous city monument in the deal, but not many of the local populace can afford to spend the several hundreds of dollars it would take to bring a family of four to actually watch a game in one.
As for revitalization? Please … that’s chicken wing economics. The game starts at 7 p.m., most people who have jobs can’t get out of work until 5. By the time most fans fight through traffic and find parking at the downtown stadium, they have about one round in which to “revitalize” the downtown. The game lasts three hours — who’s reinvigorating the downtown after 10 p.m.? My guess is not the kind of people you’d like to see milling around in your backyard, let alone the streetscapes of your urban pioneers.
2) Racism — Let’s not spend a lot of time here. Racism was a national problem — not just baseball’s. And truth be told, even though baseball provided the stage for many players to display their hatred and ignorance to a large audience, men like Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson did more than their share to spark civil-rights reform in this country.
1) Steroids — Yes, gambling, Pete Rose and the “Black Sox” were all very bad moments, but baseball handled those problems right away. In so doing it reinforced baseball’s reputation as an honest sport and turned a negative into a positive. It’s for that very reason why the recent steroid scandal is so disheartening.
All of our lives we’ve watched baseball’s finest compete with wooden bats and cheered when they etched their own marks in the sport’s records books. Then, all of a sudden, we’re watching guys like Sammy Sosa — who weighed about a buck fifty, soaking wet, with rocks in his pockets — turn into a monster overnight, smashing Roger Maris’ home run record only to finish second to Mark McGwire that same year? What we’ve been watching for the past decade or so was a pathetic misrepresentation.
Disagree? Air it out at asportingview@parkvilleluminary.com and we’ll address your concerns in print.