All That Once Was Good?
The Reds open tomorrow. Interest isn't raging
We don’t love baseball anymore.
We might like it, the way we like blue skies, underdogs and tax refunds. We don’t love it, not anymore. What once was truly, madly, deeply is now casual. “I love you as a friend’’ is what we’d say or hear in high school, when the breakup happened. It’s like that. The thrill is gone.
We could discuss the Whys all day, but I’m not doing that. It’s been done, and it’s boring. What interests me is, what does baseball’s waning popularity say about the nation as a whole?
Going all existential on us today, Main Mobster? Do we have to scratch our chins?
Every generation believes its time was better, kinder, gentler and — all together now — simpler. Maybe only in sports is that actually true. Maybe especially as it applies to baseball.
Things I saw growing up: Wiffleball, box scores, having a catch, keeping score, knowing the lineup of my favorite team.
Things I see now: None of the above.
Baseball is closer to the time capsule than to our consciousness. Think about that. The national pastime, homeplace of Babe and Willie and the 68-year idyll that was the Brooklyn Dodgers. The game that defined us, same as jazz and Ellis Island. On Okinawa in 1945, Japanese soldiers screamed “To hell with Babe Ruth!’’ in the throes of combat.
How many generations of Cincinnatians saw baseball as a touchstone, an heirloom, a gift? How many people have mentioned that on the West Side, the sound of summer was the Reds radio broadcast? Waite and Joe and Marty, offering hardball lullabies, as their listeners lounged away their evenings on the front porch, a Wiedemann or three in their grasp.
You could walk down any street in Delhi Township and hear it.
We’re a different country without our game. Not worse, necessarily. Getoffamylawn Guy won’t go that far. No doubt, today’s kids and their parents will feel the same about football and soccer, when they make withdrawals from their own memory banks. Life goes on.
Here’s what we’re losing, though. Here’s what baseball offers that we politely decline in 2023:
A respite. A refuge, a constancy that’s reassuring. A pace that begs us to put up our feet and stare at the moon.
We love football. Football is an angry game. After I watch football, I’m worn out. It feels like I spent 3 hours clenching my fists. I’m a little mad, even if my team won. Rest and relaxation? Doing your taxes offers better R-n-R than the NFL. We don’t know how to take it easy anymore. Baseball was a good teacher.
What did Terence Mann say to Ray Kinsella? “It’s money they have. It’s peace they lack.’’
It’s no coincidence (and barely ironic) that baseball’s biggest triumph in ‘23 is to shorten its games. Less baseball is better baseball, evidently.
More scoring is better, too, because attention spans lack. It’s a quaint notion that baseball’s pace allows time for folks to converse while also being entertained. Conversing is what happens when we’re done playing Call of Duty. Which, as we know, is never. Conversing now involves texting and Zoom-ing, about as intimate an experience as watching all those helmet-headed football players.
The season starts Thursday. I’m going to enjoy it for all the reasons most people do not, and that’s a problem if you still love the game. We’re not a nation of front porches anymore, of neighbors and conversations and dreams of baseball. Something useful is being lost. Baseball helped define us.
What defines us now?
Now, then. . .
NOT TO BELABOR THE POINT, but here is James Earl Jones’ soliloquy from Field of Dreams. “All that once was good and could be again. . .’’
ALONG THOSE LINES, some Reds optimism, from MLB.com and Yahoo!
MLB Pipeline rates the Reds minor leagues as 5th-best, up from 15th last opening day.
Reds (15 to 5): Cincinnati graduated its top two prospects (Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo), yet still climbed into the top five. The Reds landed two Top 100 Prospects (Noelvi Marte, Edwin Arroyo) in the Luis Castillo trade with the Mariners in July and two more solid guys (Spencer Steer, Christian Encarnacion-Strande) in the Tyler Mahle deal with the Twins in August. Elly de la Cruz developing into perhaps the most electrifying athlete in the Minors helped, as did adding one of the best young hitters in the 2022 Draft (Cam Collier).
Yahoo! says Spencer Steer is worth watching. The past two seasons, he has hit 47 homers in the minor leagues. Graham Ashcraft as well:
His high-velocity sinker-cutter-slider mix is sort of a nightmare for opposing batters. He struck out 25 batters over 17.1 frames this spring, walking only two and producing a WHIP of 0.87.
THE EFFECTS OF THE RULES TWEAKS:
Stolen base attempts in spring jumped from 1.6 to 2.4 per game, and BABIP on ground balls was up from .235 to .258.
Game length decreased by 23 minutes in the first week of spring games. Previously, spring games lasted roughly three hours, but this season, they’ve been much closer to 2.5 hours.
PROGRAMMING NOTE. . . Always on the lookout for Thursday/Friday Hemingways. Who’ll be the Next Jay Brinker, breakout TML Star? If you’re interested, email me and give me a brief synopsis of what you might write.
Pdoc53@gmail.com. Thanks.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Youse are gonna crush me for this one. I’m unapologetic about most of the bands I like. If you’re not a big fan of 60s Motown, OK. I am. Southern beach music — Drifters, Tams, Embers etc. — is great, to me at least.
But here’s one guy I really like that I really can’t defend. This is a great tune. Sorry.
So. . . any bands/singers you like that have people shaking their heads at you?
In 1972, I was a senior at UC walking back to my Probasco Street apartment one late afternoon in October. The Reds were finishing up the last play off game against the Pirates. As I walked, suddenly I heard cheers coming from cars and from houses, horns blaring. It was like the whole damn city let out a collective gasp! It was incredible! Johnny Bench had hit THAT home run, the one that got us back in the game, a game and NL pennant they would win just a few pitches later. To me…THAT WAS BASEBALL!
One could argue that our society has purposely dumbed baseball down and shortened its length so that it fits into our limited attention spans. And, this observation is coming from one who, from childhood has always had the attention span of a flea. BUT…I have always loved the symmetry that was/is baseball. To sit at a game and watch the formation of the defense on the field. Their stance right before a pitch; their reaction when the bat hits the ball; their movements to an assigned spot…GOD, ITS JUST BEAUTIFUL! There is a beauty in all of that, one that this short attention span kid and now OG loves to this day.
There are some changes being made right now that I like…taking away the shift (although there is a beauty in that as well, along with the appreciation of the thought processes that went into it (even if it was mostly done by AI.). I don’t mind the pitch clock really, in that it makes pitchers pitch economically, the way the late TOM BROWNING once did. I like that. I’ve never liked the DH rule, never have and never will, because it takes the strategy that I love away from managers. But, I accept it now and won’t let it ruin my love for the game.
Yet, the game of baseball is still a game that I truly love. Even today. I’m a born Cincinnati boy who loves the Bearcats and Bengals. BUT…I LOVE MY REDS! I’m hopeless, I know but I can’t help it. As we head into Opening Day, I’m excited. No, I won’t be there. I live in Pa. now. Up until the pandemic, I made it to at least a weekend series every year but have not been to the ball park in at least 3 years. I pledge to do it this year though, no matter how good or bad the team does. Why? Being at Great (or Pretty Good) American Ball (or Small) Park, to me, is truly the essence of Cincinnati. It just is.
I was fourteen/fifteen during the Big Red Machine Days and can still, at 62, name the starting '76 lineup from memory: Bench, Rose, Perez, Morgan, Concepcion, Foster, Griffey, Geronimo. And Sparky managing. All my friends can.
Bob Howsam, an executive hero if there ever was one in baseball, called it possibly the best collection of players ever to play the game. It's hard to believe he wasn't right.
It was before free agency so your favorite players usually stayed with the team for years. (Free agency started after the '76 season ... we lost Pete Rose soon after, and Dick Wagner, the scourge of the Reds, had the gall to fire Sparky. Sigh.) I even remember the blockbuster trade that brought Joe Morgan, Caesar Geronimo, Jack Billingham, and Dennis Menke to the Reds for Lee May and, I think, Tommy Helms. Maybe others. But you could follow your favorite players season after season, and you read box scores every single morning in the Enquirer to see how they did.
As kids we played ball every day after school at the corner lot. Everybody made as if they were their favorite player - I was always Johnny Bench unless he was taken, then I was George Foster. If I couldn't have one of those then I'm not sure if I even stayed to play. Funny think is I never hit the ball very far; pretending to be a home run slugger was the closest I ever got.
The stolen base was a thing then, same as bunting, hitting behind runners, and starting pitchers actually finishing games. We'd listen to the games on our transistor radios hiding under the blankets at night, and opening day was a holiday, with the shadows of Riverfront Stadium dissecting the pitchers mound and home plate towards the end of the game, making what our machine did even more special. It was exciting - every game was exciting. As kids our Reds were our heroes.
The Reds down by five runs in the fifth? No problem - better than even chance they come back and win. Five, six, even seven game winning streaks seemed routine. Sweeping the playoffs and beating the Yankees in the series as the cherry on top of it all. I was among the luckiest kids in the world to have spent my middle teams loving baseball, and having a team like the Reds to love.
It's true, every generation thinks they had it the best when they were kids, and I'm sure I'm biased like everybody else. But it sure seems hard to argue that 1975 and 1976 were anything but the most glorious of glory days. Unless, that is, you happened to be a Yankees fan.
I still love baseball, but I miss the game I grew up with. That said, Go Reds!