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Baseball: The Summer Game
| Article
# : |
10178 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1986 |
6,389 Words |
| Author
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Harold Rosenthal
Harold Rosenthal is a sports columnist for the New York City
Tribune. |
Many years ago, as a young baseball reporter gazing in wide-eyed wonderment at such stars as DiMaggio, Williams, Hubbell, and Feller, I was treated to a dollop of unabashed flattery by an older colleague.
"Remember," he said, "that you are now recording history. Every little thing that happens on the field, even if it's only a ball or strike, is a part of history. It's something that can never happen in exactly the same way again." This was, of course, an oversimplification. Nevertheless baseball, which has known many wide and wild swings, does provide an amazingly accurate reflection of the seesaw moods of the American public. What you see may be a ballgame, but what you get are the latest attitudes of Mr. And Mrs. America and their children. A short time later that same colleague asked whether he could borrow five bucks until Friday!
Baseball's well-nigh irresistible appeal goes well beyond the game's geometrical patterns and delicate balance between offense and defense. Purportedly, the goal of every kid who ever shut his eyes in terror at the approach of a fast curve and then proceeded to spit defiance - just as the major leaguers do so capably on national television - is to gain immortality by being enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The hall is located in Cooperstown in the upstate New York leatherstocking country made famous by James Fenimore Cooper in his saga Last of the Mohicans.
Another group will enter the hall early this August. Joining the pantheon, whose occupancy now numbers close to 200, should be Willie McCovey, Bobby Doerr, and possibly Ernie Lombardi. Lombardi was a ponderous catcher with a murderous
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