Call to Gather: from Men at Work by George F. Will
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.[1]

Reading: from Season Ticket by Roger Angell
Most of us fans fall in love with baseball when we are children, and those who come aboard as adults often do so in a rush of affection and attachment to a local team that has begun to win. These infatuations are ferociously battered and eroded by various forces--by the schlocky macho posturing and gossip and exaggerations of the media; by the failure of many players to live up to our expectations for them, both on the field and off the field; and, most of all, by the wearisome, heartbreaking difficulty of the sport, which inexorably throws down last year's champions, exposes rookie marvels as disappointing journeymen, and turns lithe young stars into straining old men, all in a very short space of time. Baseball is absorbing and sometimes thrilling, but it is also unrelenting; it is rarely pure fun for any of us, players or fans, for very long. Except in Cooperstown. The artifacts and exhibits in the Hall (of Fame) remind us, vividly and with feeling, of our hopes for bygone seasons and teams and players. Memories are jogged, even jolted; colors become brighter, and we laugh or sigh, remembering good times gone by. But the Hall of Famers themselves, with their plaques and pictures and citations, are the heart of something larger, for they tell us that there exists a handful of baseball players--it comes out to a bit over one percent of the thirteen thousand-odd men who have ever played major-league ball--who really did come close to our expectations. They played so well and so long, succeeding eventually at this impossible game, that we can think of them as something more useful than gods or heroes. We know they are there, tucked away up-country and in the back of our minds: old men, and younger ones on the way, who prove and sustain the elegance of our baseball dreams.[2]

Note: This sermon is written as a letter to Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Though the sermon was originally conceived as a celebration of baseball, I realized in writing it that I had some anger toward the sport. So the sermon turned out to be more of a critique than a celebration of baseball.

Mr. Bud Selig, Commissioner of Baseball

Dear Commissioner Selig:

Even acknowledging the extreme nature of the linguistic root of the word "fan"--fanatic--I can say without a doubt that I grew up a baseball fan. You know: the kind of young fan who long after bedtime has the radio on softly next to his bed, listening to the game in stealthful joy and in fear of getting caught by Mom or Dad. You know: the kind of fan whose great thrill in life was when his parents surprised him by taking him to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. You know: the kind who plays ball for hours alone in the backyard, fantasizing that the game is not a solitary boyish pursuit in the backyard but the real thing at my favorite major league park.

My fantasies of making it to the majors suffered the early and frequent challenge of the stinging reality that I have no talent when it comes to baseball. Early in my elementary school baseball career, I played on a team that never won a game--and I was the back-up right fielder. At that level, of course, no kid could hit the ball to right field except for the very occasional lefty, so it was the perfect place to put your worst fielder. The only problem was when a ball did on rare occasion make it to right field, I couldn't possibly catch it, and once I chased it down, I had a terribly weak arm and couldn't for the life of me get the ball to the infield. That's why I saw infrequent action--even in lonely right field where I could relatively little damage.

A few years later I played on a team that won more than it lost. I was still the back-up right fielder, but I did get quite a few at bats. I went hitless for the entire season, though. This wasn't as bad as it sounds: it was the first year of pitched ball, and I knew that the pitchers had a terrible time finding home plate. So, given my lack of hitting ability, the best bet was to stand up there and never swing. I received many walks, and once on the base paths, could enjoy the one thing in baseball I could do half-way decently: run. I actually scored a few runs.

But it was clear toward the end of the season that the pitchers were beginning to locate the strike zone. My strategy of never swinging became less and less effective. Looking ahead to the next season, I realized it was time to retire. My baseball career turned out to be more like Henry Heitmann's than Henry Aaron's: Henry Heitmann has an entry in the Baseball Encyclopedia that could well describe my youthful baseball career: Heitmann pitched one game for the 1918 Brooklyn Dodgers, giving up four hits and four runs. He got one batter out. And that was both the beginning and end of his career.[3] I must confess that the reality of my utter lack of talent and my subsequent retirement seriously eroded the quality of my backyard fantasy games. My fantasy model had tragically become the hapless Harry Heitmann.

Like my favorite Chicago Cub Ryne Sandberg, I did come out of retirement briefly. After about twenty years went by, I joined a pathetic church softball team in Indiana. I once again saw some action in right field. I didn't hit a ball out of the infield all season, but I did manage to beat out a few of my trademark weak hits. I even scored the winning run in the only game we won: a miraculous game in which we beat an undefeated team by the very unsoftball-like score of 3 to 2. Delighted to go out on top this time, I retired for a second time immediately after that dramatic win.

Mr. Commissioner, all of this is to say my principal connection to baseball has not really been playing baseball. My principal connection has been that of a fan--a fan of major league baseball which you now oversee. I have been a crazed fan of the Detroit Tigers for many, many years.

My early years of baseball fandom were not much more successful than my early attempts at playing the sport. During the mid- and late 1970s, the Tigers typically battled your Milwaukee Brewers for next-to-last place, the loser bringing up the rear of the division. But by about 1978, it was clear that the Tigers had somehow turned the corner. The terrible losing seasons were behind them, and they slowly gathered the nucleus of a championship caliber team. Then, ten seasons after I pledged my undying love and devotion to the Tigers, they won the World Series.

The highlight of that remarkable year was a remarkable at bat in a game fairly early in the season. It was a Monday night game--back when a major network actually broadcast Monday night baseball and you didn't need cable TV to get it. The visiting Toronto Blue Jays and my Detroit Tigers were all tied up in the bottom of the tenth inning. With two men out and two on board, back-up first baseman Dave Bergman came up to the plate. Bergman worked the pitcher to a full count: two strikes and three balls. Then he started fouling off pitch after pitch. Seven fouls in a row. Then, in the words of Tiger manager Sparky Anderson, who called this the greatest at bat he had ever seen, Bergman "picked (a pitch) practically off the ground and drilled it into the upper deck in right." The Tigers won 6 to 3. It was going to be a magical year.

My fanaticism rewarded with the sweet pleasure of a championship run, I thought that baseball would forever be a center of my life. I was wrong. Sixteen years later, I have to admit I am hardly a fan of major league baseball anymore. It's been several years since I attended a game, and close to ten years since I watched a whole game on TV. I still listen to snippets of Brewers games on the radio because Bob Uecker is so good, and I still occasionally glance at the standings and the box scores in the newspaper. But that's about it. I've watched more football in this meaningless preseason than I have baseball all season long. I don't even watch the World Series much anymore. I'm a Packers fan far more than I'm a Tigers fan. I no longer keep very close tabs on which players play for what teams--even for my once beloved Tigers.

What happened? Well, the terrible player strike five or six years was the major blow. That's where you and your fellow owners and the players' union really lost me, Mr. Commissioner. That strike was the pits. I was already losing some interest, but that labor dispute really put me over the edge. I'm one of those fans who left and hasn't really come back.

Of course as bad as it was, it wasn't just the strike that nearly severed my tie with baseball. There's more. I don't like the Designated Hitter rule and other significant departures from the tradition of the game. I don't like that the umpires have shrunk the strike zone. I don't like the huge emphasis on offense and the terrible quality of most of the pitching. You see, I'm a traditionalist who likes nothing more than a low-scoring, close pitchers' duel. I don't like artificial turf. I don't like wealthy team owners shaking down taxpayers for new stadiums. I don't like that my beloved Tiger Stadium--home to the Tigers since the late 1800s--has been replaced by Comerica Park (named for a bank).

But you know, I can live with all of these things. The new ballparks are interesting and capture the old glory far better than the ugly parks built in the 1950s and 60s. I was taken a few years ago by McGwire's and Sosa's run at the single season home run record. I could probably even get over the strike. But there's a more significant complaint I have, and even more than the strike, it's at the heart of my disaffection for baseball. It's the utter lack of competitive balance between teams.

There is such an incredible disparity between the haves and the have not teams in baseball. And the owners and the player's union have both been too stupid to figure out any effective ways to level the playing field. This year the hated Yankees will spend about $115 million on player salaries and benefits, while the bottom-dwelling Minnesota Twins spend $20 million. My beloved Tigers are much closer to the bottom dwellers than the top, even with their fancy new taxpayer subsidized stadium. This means that the Tigers and the Twins and the other have nots year after year after year put out teams with about one-sixth of the talent of the Yankees and other rich, large-market ball clubs. When the Tigers do get a good player, it's usually a young one who bides his time until he can leave as a free agent or force a trade. Either way he's gone, and we're back to the usual no-name, motley crew. There is almost no way such a team will ever contend for the championship. The only thing we can get excited about in Detroit (or Milwaukee or other such towns) is that our team might be good enough one year, somehow, to win as many games as it loses. Oh, once in a blue moon a usual bottom dweller threatens to have a good year, threatens even to compete for the playoffs. But it's usually short-lived, and even if the team makes it to the playoffs, you know their good players will head for the lucrative exit of free agency just as soon as they are able. The window of contention will close in a year or two at most.

So every year, my team starts with only the remotest possibility of contending for, let alone winning the championship. Look ahead a year or two or three, and there's still no chance of the Tigers escaping this hopelessness. The fantasies of spring training, where I used to believe that my team would have at least a shot at contending, are about as close to reality now as my boyhood fantasies in the backyard.

Oh, Mr. Commissioner, you threaten every now and then to do something about this problem. You lament that your beloved Brewers are even worse off than my Tigers. But nothing happens. You just appointed a Blue Ribbon Panel to study major league baseball's problems, with the likes of George Mitchell and Paul Volcker and George Will on it. But their tepid recommendations will be just as ignored as every other effort to fix this problem. The possibility of greedy, large-market owners like that Yankee scoundrel Steinbrenner agreeing to the kind of revenue sharing that keeps my Green Bay Packers competitive in football is nil. So major league baseball slowly dies while you twiddle your thumbs.

I don't need my Tigers to win a championship every year. I don't even need them to contend for first place every year. I just need them to have more than a snowball's chance in hell once very three or four or five or ten years. That's all I need. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is.

A funny thing is happening this summer, though: a spark of my old love for baseball is rekindling in the most unexpected of places. This rekindling is not happening in Detroit or Milwaukee or even out at the Timber Rattlers park. It's happening once again in my own backyard. I've found myself playing baseball in the backyard a lot this summer with my kids--especially my seven-year-old son Ian. It hasn't been anything I've initiated or even encouraged. But all of a sudden, I've got a kid who's crazy about the game of baseball, who can't get enough of it. He's even getting into following the Timber Rattlers and the Brewers. And as he discovers baseball, his enthusiasm is rekindling my once innocent love for the sport.

One day a month ago, Ian said he needed a baseball glove. I took him out to the garage, and we rummaged through some seldom used sports equipment kept out of the way on a high shelf. There I found the glove I bought with saved allowance when I was seven. It fits him perfectly.

One of the most fun parts of our trip this summer was a game of baseball we played in the grassy field outside Amy's family cabin in northern Michigan. The game took parts of five days to play. It was a high scoring affair. The lead see-sawed back and forth, until it was my turn to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning. Down by about six runs, I started a furious rally. I closed the gap to one run and had runners on base. But then, with victory almost in grasp, I weakly hit the ball to Ian on the pitcher's mound. He fielded it cleanly and raced over to first base, just beating me to the bag for the third out. Ian won 36 to 35. And he promptly wanted to start a new game.

For me, Mr. Commissioner, that's where my love of baseball lives right now: in the backyard fields of dreams I now share with my children. I hope you and your associates can straighten out professional baseball. But even if you can't, I know now that baseball is not dead for me. In my family, we are creating new bonds to the sport and new memories. Somehow, in spite of all the problems that plague your sport, the torch of baseball is being passed once again, in its own unique way, from one generation to the next.

In peace and hope,
 

Roger Bertschausen

Copyright 2000 by Roger B. Bertschausen. All rights reserved.

[1]George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1990), p. 294.
[2]Roger Angell, Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1988), pp. 405-406.
[3]Will, p. 320.