
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 10, 1995                   TAG: 9502100087
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DON PIEDMONT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AFTER THE STRIKE, THE BUMS WILL STILL BE OUT

JACQUES Barzun once said something to the effect that "if you want to understand America, you must first understand baseball." It was something, to be honest, I never wholly grasped, but I suppose it meant that he, like others, regarded baseball as something like a metaphor for America itself.

Perhaps, I suppose, because of its competitive nature, or its striving against odds, perhaps because of its equality on the proverbial level playing field, perhaps because of its inherent bottom-of-the-ninth drama.

All my adult life - at least since I knew who Barzun was and had read his ponderous sentiment - I thought that Barzun's apothegm was merely intellectual flatulence designed to equate us all, in the name of democracy, with the gang in the right-field bleachers, guzzling suds through the lazy double-header days of August. Still, it was not a bad place to be.

But now, I must say - to Barzun's relief, I am certain - that I agree with him: Baseball is a metaphor for America. And why not? We have two antipathetic sides, each bloated with power and money, arrogant, spoiled, stubborn and, frankly, more than a little stupid, caught in the steel bands of greed, incivility, intolerance and - mark this well - waiting for the government or somebody to absolve them of all responsibility for their own intransigence.

Yes, as the old song goes, that's America to me. And we have at the same time some in the government, the perennial meddler, which can't run the Postal Service, saying "it's Babe Ruth's 100th birthday - for America's sake, play ball!"

Ah, bless your heart, President Clinton, I fear, to use the cliche du jour, you just don't get it. For I am persuaded that not many of us really care about the fate of these pampered tyrants of the diamond. I don't, for sure, a sad realization for one who, at the age of 10, was taken to Norfolk's Bain Field by his brother Bill to watch the Norfolk Tars play in the old Piedmont (no relation) League.

And there I saw Rizzuto plain, playing shortstop and Jerry Priddy second, two pitchers, brothers, named Pfeffer - or something like Pfeffer - and a catcher named Ziggy Sears; and in later years, the boy growing and grown, Whitey Ford and Vic Raschi and Yogi Berra, who hit a ball, so they say, over the fence into an empty coal hopper in a train returning to West Virginia (which, if true, is surely the longest home run on record), and Bill Skowron and a center fielder named Dick Tettelbach, who came from Yale, and a guy named John Simmons, who once hit a ball against the face of the clock high up on the scoreboard, and a chattering third baseman named Johnny Boryk, whose cap, I remember, was at least one size too large. And later, even as a Yankee fan who read the daily box scores in The New York Times with a religious fervor, Tom Seaver and Reggie Jackson in the World Series in Shea Stadium.

But now, goodbye to all that. Goodbye to the crisp interplay of speed and velocity, of distance and time, of intersection of glove and ball-in-flight, of wild and beautiful chance all played out on green grass under a blue sky. They have taken it from me, and I just don't care anymore.

So, let the overpaid outfielders go to work for a change. Sell the gold chains to meet the mortgage. Let the owners find another tax benefit. Go fret like the rest of us. I don't care anymore about the Braves pitching dynasty, or consecutive game records - good night, sweet Rip, flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, wherever that might be.

As I do so often, I look to Scripture for comfort in these momentous times and find it in the passage from St. Paul, who tells us about putting away the things of a child; which with a sad firmness, I have now done.

Don Piedmont of Roanoke is retired as director of public relations for Norfolk Southern and is the author of "Peanut Soup and Spoonbread: An Informal History of the Hotel Roanoke."

by CNB