Baseball in need of improvements
I often talk about growing up with baseball.
I don’t know what I would have become if it weren’t for baseball. I wasn’t a star, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort or practice.
There just wasn’t enough practice time to make up for a kid that couldn’t run, jump, throw a strike, or hit a baseball over a fence.
Baseball did do a lot of good thing for me. I got my first job because of baseball; in particular, baseball cards. I would put up with Paul Kinschi demanding an exact angle for his grass being cut just to grab the $1.50 income, rush to Rehm’s Tavern, and buy 15 10-cent packs of baseball cards.
My younger brother, Roger, worked for the local grocer. He earned just under a dollar an hour and never spent a penny. While his bank account grew, my baseball card collection continued to increase. I promised myself I wouldn’t stop buying baseball cards until I had the entire starting line-up of my favorite team, the New York Yankees.
Sadly, I wasted all of my lawn mowing money on getting five cards of Virgil Trucks, a pitcher for the lowly Washington Senators, or Clay Dalrymple, a catcher with the Phillies that was a career .233 hitter.
I had six Clay Dalrymple’s. You would think a Mickey Mantle would show up sometime.
Each time I tore open a pack of Topps baseball cards, I would pop the bubble gum in my mouth and slowly sort through the cards. I had plenty of Dale Longs, a Yankee reserve, but never did a Whitey Ford or Yogi Berra appear. I used Yogi’s favorite phase for motivation, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” All that earned me was empty pockets that lawn mowing money once occupied.
My obsession with baseball took up all my spare time. I have to admit I occasionally pulled a fast one, like the time we put a live snake in the gardening shoes of a certain old lady that always yelled because we cut across her precious garden.
One Halloween, we tried to tip over an outhouse of another old lady that didn’t like kids. She used it to store her gardening tools.
We almost had it over until her screaming scared us off. You see, she was hiding out in the outhouse to protect it from Trick and Treaters. She also hated giving out candy.
Except for those occasional lapses, baseball kept me on the straight and narrow. If I had a choice between smoking behind the garage or spying on a cheerleader getting a tan in the backyard and playing baseball, I almost always choose baseball. I might have snuck a peek at the cheerleader.
As perfect as the game of baseball has always been to me, over the years since my days as a youth, adjustments need to be made.
Like a politician, let’s make baseball great again. I’m pretty sure these adjustments will never make the commissioner’s office, but you never know.
It took a while, but I love the designated hitter. Sure it takes away a little strategy of the game, but who wants to see an overweight pitcher swing weakly three times or stare at the pitches, hoping somehow the hurler can’t find the strike zone.
The American League has it right. Come into the modern ages National League.
I think my major complaint with major league baseball is greedy owners. Since the Kansas City Royals have made the World Series the past two years, people tend to forget what a penny pincher David Glass is, the Royal’s owner.
Every year, parking prices go up a buck. That doesn’t sound like much, but that’s between a seven and 10 percent increase each year. Does the average worker get a 10 percent raise each year? Is inflation 7 percent per year? It hasn’t been since Jimmy Carter was president.
That’s not even getting into the price of a jersey, nearly a $100 when they come off the assembly line, a warm beer that ranges from $8 to $12 or a simple hotdog that goes for $4 and comes with a soggy bun. I’m not a bean counter, but I think you could pay for Alex Gordon’s salary with the increase in parking fees alone.
Personally, I park in a church lot for $5 less, then get a little exercise with the long walk. Also, I don’t even look at the warm beer, although a cold beer sounds really good.
Batting gloves drive me nuts, in particular the Velcro’s straps that keep the gloves tight on your wrists. It would be like eliminating a rain delay if players didn’t have Velcro straps to tighten after each swing. George Brett hands never felt a batting glove. Use that for an example.
One thing that’s hard for me to understand is each league has 15 teams. That means there has to be one interleague game each day if all the teams are playing. Why not expand to two more cities? Does the league office have anyone that can divide by two? It’s not much fun for a team to end their season playing an interleague game when they could be playing a league rival that has an effect on the standings
Bring back double headers and eliminate day – night double headers. The owners don’t need the extra cash they get from receiving two gates receipts for one day’s worth of baseball.
There’s many more, but I’m afraid I would be like writing a bill for Congress. I really think what we really need are more sandlots so kids can just play for fun. They might even catch a Pokemon on the way.
