When the calendar gives a reading of November 1, a sense of hopeless gloom settles over many Americans. In these days, that gloom also includes Cubans, Venezuelans, Canadians, Dominicans, and all of those who pursue the wonderful game of baseball. As a diagnostician of many years’ standing, I can tell you that the hopeless gloom that afflicts so many people of this earth is related to the final put out of the final game of the World Series. Those of us who are baseball junkies know that it will be five full months before another meaningful major league game is played. While baseball enjoys its winter snooze, we are left to endure the violence of the National Football League as well as the National Hockey League. In addition, there is the National Basketball League populated by seven-footers who could play catch well above my head. I get no sense of satisfaction from watching hefty men collide with each other as in football or hockey. Similarly, I take no satisfaction from the roughness that now pervades professional basketball. And so until the crack of the bat is heard again in the following spring, those of us who enjoy baseball games are left in a period of hopeless gloom.
In my case, I became hooked during the World Series of 1926 when I was four years old, when the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees. This was a true David and Goliath match up. But the Cardinals prevailed, and did so with the heroics of people such as Jess Haines and Grover Cleveland Alexander. Haines threw his knuckle ball until the blood from his fingers prevented him from gripping the ball properly, at which point he was relieved by Mr. Alexander, who was allegedly recovering from a terrific hangover. Alexander had won the sixth game of the World Series and believed that he was entitled to a day off. But Rogers Hornsby, the Cardinal Manager, summoned him from the bullpen in the seventh inning to pitch to the slugger Tony Lazzeri, whom he struck out, and to hold the Cardinal lead through the eighth and ninth innings.
I still maintain my allegiance to the St. Louis Cardinals, who are my home-town team. But in the meantime, I have rooted for the Kansas City Blues, a minor league team when I worked in Kansas City. Following that, I rooted for the Chicago Cubs, the New York Giants, the Washington Senators, and in later years the New York Metropolitans, known as the Mets. The teams that I have rooted for do not always make it to the World Series. Many of them do not even qualify for the playoffs, which is a relatively recent innovation. When one of my teams fails to make it to the World Series, I ordinarily root for the National League team because they play an unadulterated form of baseball. The adulterated form of baseball is played in the American League, where they have the designated hitter. The designated hitter bats in place of the pitcher. That is an abomination which demeans the wonderful game of baseball.
And so it is that for 82 years the period between November 1st and April 1st has been a period of hopeless gloominess. About the only thing that can be said for the way baseball is now constituted is that in the old days, when the final put out of the World Series took place on about October 10th and the new season did not start until April 5th, 6th, or 10th, is that the season of hopeless gloominess lasted a little bit longer. But I am here to assure you that as a child, a young man, and now as an old man, the period between November 1st and April 1st is an unpleasant one.
Baseball today is an international sport and I am having great trouble keeping the Latino names halfway straight. There are Martinezes, Ruizes, and Rodriguezes, as well as a host of other Latin names. For my money, that is good for the game because Latin players are able, in many cases, to practice all year round and are very skilled. I am happy that I am not a baseball announcer because I fear that I would have trouble keeping the Martinez’s separate from the Rodriguez’s.
Another point in the discussion of baseball is that, like so many other sports, it has been consumed by greed. Professional baseball at the major league level has sold out, clearly and obviously, to television interests. The games are played at times that will attract the largest television audience. That means that the games in the playoffs and the World Series are played at night, often in inclement weather up until the first of November. In the current World Series of 2008 between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays, three of the games were played in Philadelphia starting at 8:30 PM with the most recent game starting in a howling wind and rain, with the temperature in the 40s. That is no way to play a baseball game. In former years, the games were played in the middle of the afternoon when there was natural sunlight and some degree of warmth from the sun. That of course is no longer the case. Greed has taken over and the games do not start until television is ready for them to proceed. This is a travesty.
And so it is that in the case of your old essayist, 82 years have been consumed in watching and listening to baseball broadcasts and enduring the off-season which is a period of hopeless gloom. It does not take a Rhodes Scholar to know that in the end there comes the eighth and ninth innings. In my own case, I hope to be around when the new season opens in the 2009 campaign, which for a fellow of my years is sort of an extra inning game. But it does not matter to me that, if I hold on, my life will be finished in extra innings. If I can hold on until the twelfth or thirteenth or even the fifteenth inning, that is fine with me. And so it is that the winter is filled with gloom but hope springs eternal and that rock and the hard place will again lead us to a new baseball season.
In the new season to come, I will be glued to my XM radio, a gift from my New York grandchildren, to follow the fortunes of the Mets, the Cardinals and from time to time, the Yankees. It is a delicious irony that as a child before television was invented, I listened to radio broadcasts of baseball games. Now when my life is in extra innings, I have returned again to listen to radio broadcasts. I must say that those who follow the games on television are missing a great deal because the radio broadcasters supply many more details than the TV announcers. In any event, I look forward to another baseball campaign because it is a matter of great joy to me.
E. E. CARR
October 28, 2008
Essay 341
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Kevin’s commentary: Pop’s baseball essays tend to be highly dramatic. They’re full of words like “abomination” and “travesty” and have titles like “SO ENDETH THE LONG NIGHT.” Basically what I mean to say is that they are excellent and you should check out more from the baseball tag.
Now I know Pop’s not really up to a whole lot of essay writing these days, but I do hope he’ll explain to me what makes the designated hitter so awful. Oh, and it makes me wonder — since having a designated hitter allows you to have a better pitcher, do American league teams win the world series more than the National league ones do? Whose rules do they play under, or does the American league have a designated hitter and the National league does not? I suppose the Internet could help me here but it’s late and Pop could probably give me a better answer than Wikipedia.