Baseball is life

Gene Steinmeyer

“Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona.”

That came out of the mouth of political analyst George Will. He didn’t say it about an election, a national crisis or Washington DC. I’m pretty sure George got it right and describes the way I feel about the sport.

I know I have spent a good share of my disposable income getting my 16-year-old son, Sam, into Royals games, trips to spring training or taking annual August trips to cities I have never visited just to see a week’s worth of baseball.

During those trips, we have toured stadiums and seen a lot of baseball. The only museum we ever visited is the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore. The only historic place we have toured is Ft. McHenry. The only reason we ventured out into the harbor is because Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner at Ft. McHenry and teams play it before every baseball game.

Baseball is always with us. How many times have you heard someone say, “Hope springs eternal?” If I thought I was failing a class in college, I’d utter those words. If we were behind by 20 points in a basketball game with five minutes left, I might call a timeout and say that phrase.

“Hope springs eternal,” comes from the baseball poem “Casey at the Bat.” The actual line goes, “The rest clung to hope which springs eternal in the human breast; they though, if only Casey could get but a whack at that — they’d put up even money with Casey at the bat.”

There’s so many comparisons to other phases of life that starts with baseball. Leo Durocher, Jackie Robinson’s first major league manager said, “Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.”

The late comedian Phyllis Diller had a great comparison. “If it weren’t for baseball,” Diller said, “Many kids wouldn’t know what a millionaire looks like.”

Some people looked at baseball’s likeness to combat. Ty Cobb, the Hall of Famer for the Detroit Tigers, said, “I have observed that baseball is not unlike a war, and when you come right down to it, we batters are the heavy artillery.”

Tug McGraw, the late father of country superstar Tim McGraw, was a relief pitcher, mostly for the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies. He coined the phrase, “You gotta believe,” during a Mets World Series run. His combat theme was life and death. “Some days you tame the tiger. Some days the tiger has you for lunch.”

The famous mystery novelist Harlan Coben saw baseball as the battle between good and evil. “I like to see the difference between good and evil as kind of like the foul line,” he explained. “It’s very thin, it’s made of something very flimsy like lime, and if you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair.”

To pitcher Christy Mathewson, evil came in the form of an umpire. “Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as sort of a necessary evil to the luxury of baseball like the odor that follows an automobile.”

Sam now plays baseball on Maryville’s junior varsity team. His appearances on the mound are a little scattered, but I need to be in the stands so I don’t miss one. In truth, I want to see all the innings of the Maryville varsity and junior varsity teams. This week I sat on cement bleachers for 4.5 hours. The night ended with a one-inning appearance by Sam. That made it a good night, even though I had to be almost carried to my car because of stiffness of those cement bleachers.

I think that’s why I like the players who really loved the game and could express it in terms I easily understood. Pete Rose may have gambled his way out of baseball but he loved the game. “Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal,” Pete said. “I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.”

The great Negro Leagues pitcher Satchel Paige had my kind of philosophy of life. “Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common,” Satchel said. “I ain’t ever had a job. I just always played baseball.”

My absolute favorite baseball philosopher, Yogi Berra, agreed with Satchel. “If I didn’t make it in baseball, I won’t have made it workin’. I didn’t like to work.”

Denny Mathews, the voice of the Kansas City Royals, has a favorite Yogi quote: “In baseball, you don’t know nothin’.”

Yogi was thinking of me when he said, “Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.”

I guess I bring all this up because Major League Baseball started this week. We have to face the hard truth that the Kansas City Royals won’t win 162 straight games. Also, even the best Spoofhound hitters will fail almost seven out of 10 times and Pembroke Hill will always have lousy bleachers. I’ll just to have to ice my back and be glad I’m not working.