Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 28, 1995 TAG: 9504280028
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Baseball has returned from passed-out cold to national pastime.
Again.
Some of us are in a celebratory mood. A friend of mine from Radford has been chirping like a bird on a dewey spring morning ever since making arrangements for herself and her husband to make their annual summer journey to see their beloved Orioles of Baltimore.
Her joy was touching , her innocent loyalty genuine.
Elsewhere, they were crowing about the ``the sellout'' in Miami for the season opener involving the the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Florida Marlins. Maybe there were a lot of people wearing orange at that game, but on television, it just looked like empty seats.
The next day, the papers carried pictures of ballplayers from both teams lining up to tip their caps to the audience in that Florida football stadium disguised by potted ferns. Were they thanking everybody because only a few of them booed?
In suds-washed Milwaukee, 31,426 showed up for the Brewers opener, the smallest curtain-lifting gallery there since 1973. Later Wednesday, 18,587 caught the second game of the Dodgers-Marlins series. In Miami? With all its baseball-crazed Caribbeans? Must not be baseball weather in South Florida yet.
Reports have been coming out all spring of baseball's marketing plans to get its lost fans back. The fans aren't lost. They're out mowing the grass.
As for the players, everywhere we look, they're signing autographs. For free, we're told. Imagine that. Guess the bottom kind of fell out of the market for pay-per-autograph.
The owners are contrite, too. With every photo op, they give us the fake smile of an ineffective politician.
Say this for the lot of them. They make for terrific daytime TV. Anybody who could lose $1 billion for their industry and accomplish absolutely nothing deserves to be telling the sad story in front of a studio full of rubberneckers and a national cable audience.
Peter Angelos, the owner of the Baltimore ballclub, has met with some acclaim because of his blustery assertions that he wouldn't use replacement players. Angelos can afford to take the high road. The dough spent taking a family of four to Camden Yards for one day could feed a family of four in sub-Saharan Africa for a month.
If you get the idea that I'm disturbed by both the owners and their overpaid serfs, not really. They're too dumb. Besides, I'm just bending to the political breezes.
The folks who are really disturbed are your neighbors going out Virginia 42 near the Craig County line, the guy putting in snap beans in Fairlawn, the lady behind the counter in Allisonia.
So I'd say these ballplayers and owners have some work to do. Some suggestions:
Bud Selig, the owner of the Brewers and the strawman major league ``commissioner,'' could wash windows of parked cars at the next Milwaukee homestand.
Cecil Fielder could wear a tutu to the plate.
The owners could say they're sorry to the umpires, take them out to lunch, and sign a fair contract. The umps working now are OK, but Little League and JV games have been a mess.
Matt Williams could let little kids rub his bald head for luck.
Barry Bonds and Deion could give their gold teeth and chains to a poor church in the wretched part of town.
Every single owner, manager, coach, and player should be put in one room and forced to listen to a G. Gordon Liddy filibuster until an ironclad labor and revenue-sharing agreement is signed.
A smarter guy than me had some thoughts on baseball.
``Baseball is a game played by nine athletes on the field and 20 fast-buck artists in the front office,'' he wrote. ``It must have a constitution like iron. They can't kill it. They've kicked it downstairs, dumped it in the river with cement on it, cut holes in its tires and poisoned its tea.
``It won't turn up its heels. Cities have gone in hock for it, poets sing of it, intellectuals adore it. Only its own try to slip it a mickey.''
Almost 30 years ago was that written.
by CNB