But when I come down from my balcony perch to walk the same beach, I can see that all is not right. I have to skirt around dead fish that have washed up on shore and invisible fumes from the red tide gag me and produce spasms of coughing.
Baseball is like that too. February brings with it the seductive smells of fresh-cut grass and the oil that massages the gloves stiff from winter vacation. For me, baseball too is permeated with family connections from my youth, a reservoir of memories, rituals and emotional touchstones.
But I don’t even have to climb down from my grandstand perch to puncture this fantasy. All I have to do is open my eyes and I can see the dead fish that litter the base paths and spill down the dugout stairs into the locker rooms. There is a stench of something far more corrosive than red tide, a tide that baseball seems, if not indifferent to, then at the very least helpless to stop.
The memories of a stellar post-season are long gone and there are two-and only two-baseball issues rating major coverage in the press these days. Both are huge losers for the game, the sinkhole issues that give lie to the notion that all publicity is good publicity.
The first and worst is, of course, steroids. Baseball finally has a drug-testing program, a token gesture that has been forced on the game only after more than five percent of players flunked a drug test that they knew was coming. But others, retired ballplayers and confessed steroid abusers, have told us the problem is far worse-more than 50 percent, possibly way more.
Of course we already know this in our gut. We know it as we watch a new breed of baseball specimens, the football linebackers with bats in their hands, crush the ball and the game’s once hallowed records. A little more than 40 years ago, the protectors of the game stuck an asterisk next to Roger Maris’s record-breaking 61 home runs, because the season had been extended by a few games. Nobody wanted to knock Babe Ruth’s sanctified name out of the record books when all things weren’t equal.
Now yesterday’s records are so much toilet paper, instantly disposable, with the only punctuation concern being the dollar sign, not the asterisk. So we reveled in the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa record chase and again when Barry Bonds, once a sleek whippet of an outfielder turned Mr. Universe candidate, shattered even their best efforts. And now we will cheer while Bonds pursues and eventually belts another legend, Henry Aaron, out of the record books.
Of course, nobody could have missed the news that Bonds’s personal trainer has been indicted for distribution of steroids and has reportedly told federal investigators that he supplied performance-enhancing drugs to unnamed ballplayers. But we are wed to the presumption of innocence and Bonds has always denied any wrongdoing. Anyway, we much prefer to explain away these unprecedented power surges with bad pitching, smaller ballparks, lighter bats and tightly wound baseballs.
Those entrusted with the game willingly squander its precious history in favor of the carnival sideshow that is today’s home-run race. The records will fall to heroic acclaim, more sluggers will retire prematurely as their bodies break down, their joints unable to handle the muscle buildup and who knows what diseases and other horrors that will be visited upon these abusers in the future. But that is a small price for those striving to be in baseball’s record book-without an asterisk-forever, or at least until the next-best cheat comes along.
That, of course, is the bad news. The good news is that baseball’s best everyday player, Alex Rodriguez, has been liberated from the oblivion of last-place Texas and now will strut his stuff in the bright lights of New York. Who cares about the Rangers fans, if indeed there are any of them left? (I heard a local columnist say the Rangers now rank fifth among local fans-behind the NFL Cowboys, the NBA Mavericks, the NHL Stars and University of Texas football. And he was talking about UT spring football!)
But baseball is such a sorry enterprise these days that even the good news is, at heart, bad news. George Steinbrenner’s relentless acquisitiveness may serve the interest of his Yankee constituency, but it is ultimately a gross disservice to the game. The Yankees have such an abundance of talent that A-Rod, possibly the best shortstop in the game, will play out of position at third base, which is kind of like asking Julia Child to come cook dinner, but only as the sous chef. For those faithful readers who recall my enthusiasm at the prospect of A-Rod winding up with my hometown Red Sox, I remind them that I was unequivocal back then too. I wrote that what was sensational for Red Sox fans was bad for the league and baseball.
A-Rod in New York is even worse, making a joke of any semblance of competitive balance in the league. It doesn’t guarantee the Yankees the world championship, since in a seven-game series anything can happen and pitching is the ultimate determinant. Witness the Marlins and young Josh Beckett last October. What it does do, though, is pretty much guarantee the Yankees a spot in the post-season hunt, a spot that for the first time in a very long time appeared vulnerable to improving teams in Boston, Anaheim and Seattle.
Once again the NFL, with its up-from-nowhere Carolina Panthers, demonstrated how vital the notion of possibility is in sports, particularly to beleaguered fans. And once again, as pitchers and catchers report this week, more than half of Major League Baseball teams have already been eliminated from the post-season race. I can name names, but why depress their fans any more than they already are? The Red Sox are one of the game’s behemoths. Yet the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup, its starting 10, will boast a payroll of about $115 million, or roughly the equivalent of Boston’s entire squad. And the Yankees will have another $80 million or so worth of talent on the bench and in the bullpen, a gulf that should assure that the rivalry remains as one-sided as it has always been.
When I was a younger man and in Florida this time of year, nothing could have kept me away from the ballpark. Now despair trumps nostalgia. I think I’ll go down and walk on the beach, skirting the dead fish and coughing in rhythm with the tides.
