THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 11, 1996 TAG: 9609110645
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Bob Molinaro
LENGTH: 63 lines
I only can surmise that HBO is advertising its interview with Albert Belle under the misguided assumption that somebody still cares that much about a baseball player.
Had HBO really wanted to alienate its thinking adult audience, this ``Real Sports'' segment wasn't necessary.
An Adam Sandler movie would have done just fine.
Let me know if I'm wrong about this, but my guess is that the underlying intent of Spike Lee's interview with Belle is to show that the Cleveland Indians grouch is deeply misunderstood.
Aren't they all.
But does America even want to know anymore what a baseball player has to say?
I think not.
America would be more interested in hearing from the designer of Dennis Rodman's wedding gown.
Rodman, of course, also is misunderstood. Except, perhaps, by Martian life forms.
Recently, another so-called misunderstood athlete was in the news. When Eddie Murray, a Baltimore Oriole once again, hit his 500th home run, it created a thaw in the Cold War between the 40-year-old veteran and the media.
Smiling and relaxed, the usually remote and sometimes difficult Murray gracefully accepted the adulation of the fans and the appreciation of the TV talking heads and newspaper typists.
Murray even came out of the dugout several times to wave to the crowd at Camden Yards. Not exactly Lou Gehrig giving his farewell address at Yankee Stadium, but for Murray it was quite a performance.
By an accident of statistics, Murray is linked with Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, the only other members of the 3,000-career-hits, 500-home-run club.
Murray's quest for this obscure double was helped as much by the designated-hitter rule as by his own perseverance.
Not that anyone, not even Murray, will confuse him with Mays or Aaron.
``It's a neighborhood you don't know if you belong in,'' Murray said. ``You're the third one to do it, but you can't see yourself being mentioned in the same voice with those guys. You say baseball, and you think of those guys.''
No sport is as obsessed with numbers as baseball. Statistics, though, do not crowd out subjectivity. Aaron is the home run king, but as a kid growing up at a time when baseball still mattered to American kids, I accepted without question that Mays was the superior player.
Mays was spectacular enough at the plate, on the basepaths and in the field (who doesn't remember the basket catch?) to make baseball fans even out of today's generation of apathetic children. In my mind, Mays and Aaron lived in different neighborhoods.
Then, one day, I looked up and Aaron had 600 home runs, and was still going strong. People were mentioning him in the same voice with Mays. No way, I thought then. No way, I think now.
Even with the help of HBO, does anyone seriously believe that Albert Belle will generate these sort of baseball debates 10 years or even 10 minutes after he leaves the game?
At his last national forum, the All-Star Game in July, Belle charged that baseball and its media were out to get him. Naturally, his own rudeness and hostility toward the world have nothing to do with his unfavorable image.
To think otherwise would be to misunderstand the man. by CNB