THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 5, 1995 TAG: 9506050128
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Bob Molinaro
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
A major league baseball campaign that began late to disappointing crowds and mixed reviews is showing signs of getting worse.
Baseball may or may not be losing fans for all time. But losing two superstars in the span of eight days does not bode well for the rest of the season.
Saturday, San Francisco Giants third baseman Matt Williams, the premier power hitter in baseball, fractured a bone in his foot. He'll be out six weeks.
A year ago, Williams was chasing Roger Maris' single-season record of 61 home runs when the strike struck. This season, he picked up where he left off and was leading the National League in home runs, RBIs and batting average. Williams is this week's Sports Illustrated cover boy. But now, like the magazine itself, he is on the shelf.
Baseball, a game that already suffers from a scarcity of star appeal, cannot replace Williams any more than it can do without Ken Griffey Jr., who is recovering from a broken wrist.
Griffey will return no sooner than August. For the heart of the season, the American League is without its most exciting young player.
The owners and players gave fans many reasons not to care about this season. Now fate has given them two more.
Baseball's latest setbacks come at a time when some in the media have decided that major league games take too long to play.
On TV and radio, you hear a growing chorus of complaints about the tedium of the three-hour game. As if long, tedious games haven't been with us for years.
As if, before now, batters didn't dawdle at the plate while pitchers fidgeted and fretted on the mound. As if every count didn't go to 2 and 2, or 3 and 2 last season.
The criticism is tied to the strike, of course. Nothing could be plainer.
Suddenly in a down cycle, baseball is being closely examined for flaws, real and imagined. For the time being, dumping on baseball is the National Pastime.
The length and quality of games haven't changed. But in the wake of the strike, attitudes have. When baseball was in its ascendancy, the national opinion-shapers composed poems to a game that seemed to exist in their imaginations. If anyone complained about three-hour games, the seamheads were there to make them feel guilty.
If you preferred root canal surgery to a four-hour-and-15-minute extra-inning snorefest, you were lectured by the poet laureates on the timeless qualities of the game.
People who had the nerve to notice baseball's glacial pace were told that the problem was with them. They just couldn't grasp the game's subtleties.
But with baseball in the doghouse, things have changed. Now it's OK to say out loud what a lot of people have been thinking: the games seem to last forever.
In the time it takes to play the final five minutes of an NBA playoff game, you could fly to Orlando and recruit Mickey Mouse to shoot a couple of free throws for Shaquille O'Neal (not a bad idea). But do you hear anyone complaining about pro basketball games dragging on too slowly? Not at all.
With baseball, it's different. Changing perceptions and its own stupidity have helped make baseball a whipping boy.
At a time like this, the game can't afford any more setbacks. The first thing baseball should do is see to it that Cal Ripken takes the field dressed from head to toe in bubble wrap. by CNB