THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410140231
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUDY PARKER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
I've always been specially proud that I don't throw a baseball like a girl. Never could throw a decent underhand pitch with a softball. But even as I journeyed into middle age, I could toss a pretty decent pitch. Even got clocked once with a 70 mph fastball.
One afternoon a few summers back, a friend and I were driving through the Midwest. We happened on a small-time carnival set up on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi in an empty field in Dubuque, Iowa. There was one carnival attraction I couldn't resist. The chance to find out just how fast I could throw a baseball.
For a buck, I got to let fly three pitches at a faded and tattered, black, white and red plastic bull's eye hung on a chain-link fence. The digital face on the speed-gun, just like the ones used in the majors, flashed 70 . . . 70 . York Mets baseball cap as my prize. The moment I had it at just the right angle over my eyes, childhood recollections of backyard baseball games with Jenny Sue, Terry, Billy, and the other neighborhood kids came flooding back.
I love baseball. Always have. Always will love the game that I first saw as a 4-year-old on a 13-inch black and white Motorola. Didn't know the teams then, except for my mother's hometown Brooklyn Dodgers, and I certainly didn't understand the rules all that well. But, like baseballs grabbed and tucked securely in the webbing of a leather glove by players in the calibre of a Brooks Robinson, Willie Mays or Kirby Puckett, after my first few games, I was hooked.
Any doubt that I was fully committed to the game was dispelled when I, risking the parochial discipline of Sister Mary Matthew, snuck a transistor radio, complete with tiny plastic earphones, into eight grade so I could listen to Danny Murtaugh's Pittsburgh Pirates nip Casey Stengel's New York Yankees for the 1960 World Series.
The next year, I was a television captive as Roger Maris battled for Babe Ruth's crown as single-season home run king.
When professional baseball returned to Portsmouth in 1963, I finally got a chance to cheer in person for safe hits, stolen bases, and the thrill of rundowns between infielders and base runners.
Sure, Frank D. Lawrence Stadium was a bit decrepit. The hot dogs were often cold and undercooked, and if you didn't bring a cushion, you might go home with a few unwelcome pinches and splinters. But the peanuts were great and the players hustled.
Besides, what other stadium would let you bring Charlie Browne, your wire-haired fox terrier with you to watch a game. Mom and I would buy front-row seats, between home plate and first base. Balanced on his hind legs and stretched over the cement wall separating the fans from the playing field, Charlie would quietly watch players warm up.
Once the home-plate umpire roared ``play ball,'' Charlie became instantly possessed of an uncanny instinct to recognize a bad call when he saw one. And he'd let the umpire know it. But his barking always stopped as soon as the ball was back in play.
I've seen lots of other games since in legendary parks like Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, and Fenway Park. Even games watched in newer, non-descript facilities such as Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium, New York's Shea, or Milwaukee's County Stadium . . . which lost any claim to novelty when its home-run celebrating, overflowing beer stein towering over right center field was tapped shut . . . were games played on Elysian fields as far as I was concerned.
Even now, a decade later, when I see a Boston game and television cameras pan that venerable stadium, I instantly recall the late April night in 1984, when I sat chilled, growing steadily hoarse as the Red Sox, my favorite American League team, lost an early season heartbreaker in the ninth to the upstart Seattle Mariners.
I don't recall the score because scores don't really matter. It's the game that's important, and it's the game that makes the memories.
Memories of the 1994 season however, will be tie-dyed in a range of emotions ranging from anger to frustration to indifference. For many fans of the game, there might even be an everlasting impression that the behavior of the players and owners feigning attempts at strike and lock-out negotiations, has been akin to sitting through a Samuel Beckett play where the characters prefer to grunt, groan and growl with each other rather than communicate.
Baseball isn't a morality play complementing America's social ills and successes.
It's a game. A game where players earning an average of $1.2 million, swing finely shaped pieces of ash wood at 90-mph fastballs, and are acclaimed to be a success, even though the top team batting average in 1994 was the New York Yankees .289. Success would not be the adjective to describe any other profession in which its employees fail to do their jobs two-thirds of the time.
But despite its outrageous salaries and profits, despite its inflated egos and the immaturity of its `boys of summer,' it's mid-October, and there ought to be playoffs on television. And the World Series ought to culminate at month's end in a seven-game, pride of Ohio, sudden-death showdown between Cincinnati and Cleveland.
Sure, it's only a game. But I love it. And I miss it. ILLUSTRATION: TALKING BASEBALL
Do you have a favorite memory of major league baseball? Step up
to the plate. Take a swing at putting on paper your memories of
major league baseball. We'll try not to let you strike out. If the
volume allows, we'll run through what should have been the seventh
game of the '94 World Series.
Write us at The Currents, 307 County Street, Suite 100,
Portsmouth, Va. 23704 or fax us at 446-2607.
by CNB