Take me out to the ballgame — all over again

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, September 8, 2001

WASHINGTON — I fell out of love with baseball sometime in the early ’70s, after the Washington Senators left town and became the Texas Rangers, which later became George W. Bush’s team, which helps explain why he became governor, which helps explain why he became president.

I’m not sure what explains why I developed disdain for the national pastime. At first, I’m sure, it was just the standard pouting over the loss of one’s home team. But gradually I came to hate the game itself — the three hours it takes for major-leaguers to play it, the abundance of unconditioned athletes a la the now-retired John Kruk ("Lady, I’m not an athlete. I’m a baseball player."), the exorbitant salaries paid to guys of limited talent (baseball is the granddaddy of this ailment in pro sports), the tobacco chewing, the designated hitter, the fact that on any given night you can gaze into the stands of a big-league park and see so few nonwhite faces.

Back in the ’60s, my love of baseball was pure. A buck would get you a bleacher seat, and I’d sit contentedly in the hot sun and wait for one of Frank Howard’s towering homers to find me in the upper deck of D.C. Stadium — then I’d wait after the game for autographs, which were easy to get by today’s standards. Back then, pros were accessible. Some of the Senators — anybody remember Bennie Daniels? — even lived in my neighborhood and would play catch with us kids. How many pro ballplayers play catch with kids today?

Into the ’70s, through junior high school, I continued to play baseball myself, had a Brooks Robinson glove, imagined I was him. Now, I am so far removed from the sport that I’m not sure which of today’s players I would imagine being. I am a basketball-football man.

Over the years I tried to get the love back. I followed the Red Sox for a bit as a student in Boston, but racial tension was so thick in the mid-to-late-’70s that Fenway Park was like a no-fly zone for blacks. So I never went to a game, even though I lived close enough to hear the crowd roar when Carlton Fisk threw someone out at second. I tried again to get the love back in Milwaukee during the 1982 season when the Brewers went to the World Series and downtown turned into a nightly street festival. But the following year I changed jobs and moved, and that was that. I guess I kind of gave up, despite Tony Gwynn, despite Kirby Puckett — two reasons to have adored baseball over the past two decades.

Now, there’s Cal Ripken Jr. and his swan song.

I hadn’t been to a game in years. But I’m a sentimentalist, so I took my sons to Camden Yards recently to see Ripken play before he retires. Ripken has been taking well-deserved bows across the nation, an admired reminder of what the game can be. A guy who played for one team his entire career. A guy who won’t have to go through that ludicrous exercise of figuring out which team cap to wear when he gets inducted into the Hall of Fame. I’m no big fan of the Iron Man’s — only because I’m not a baseball fan at all — but it was fascinating to watch hundreds of flashbulbs twinkling like sparklers every time he stepped into the batter’s box. Fans of all ages, many with cameras, some with baseballs or programs — hoping against hope for an in-game autograph — would inch closer and closer until they were as close as they could get to the Orioles’ dugout. Then they’d try to sweet-talk the ushers into letting them linger, if only to take one close-up shot.

The outpouring of adulation for Ripken around the league makes Richard Zamoff think of Jackie Robinson. "Robinson never got that farewell tour," he says, at least not while he was still playing. The real celebration of Robinson didn’t come until the 1997 season when baseball commemorated the 50th anniversary of his cracking the color barrier.

Zamoff, a sociology professor at George Washington University, teaches a course called "Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports and the American Dream." It is not about baseball, but it is about a baseball player. A player who did more than play a game. "Robinson represents one of the few occasions where sport has led society instead of being led by it," Zamoff says.

There aren’t any more Jackie Robinsons in baseball, and the Cal Ripkens are fading away fast. But being at Camden Yards, amid the bright lights, close enough to gauge the speed of a pitch, got me to thinking: Wouldn’t it be great to love baseball again?

Kevin Merida’s e-mail address is meridak@washpost.com.