THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF BASEBALL!

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF BASEBALL!

(The Associated Press/FoxSports.com/Frazer Chronicle)

Okay, I can't take it anymore, I mean, trading away entire teams, well, not really, but the Boston Red Sox might as well have, it's for sure that the Sox tossed in the towel for the rest of this year. Sorry Red Sox nation, you'll just have to wait until next year.

 

Baseball is a game for dreamers, it's a game where grown men run around in cut off pants, throw a ball, catch it or run after it, then throw it to a teammate and then start the process all over again. Baseball is the only game I know where you don't want the ball. Basketball is keeping the ball, passing it to other teammates and then throwing it in a hole to score points.

 

Football also covets keeping the ball so that offensive plays can be made to score points, maybe the rules should be changed in baseball, or rather go back to a time when a batter hit the ball with a stick, and the defense caught it and tried to hit the batter with the ball. If the batter was hit, he was out, sometimes "out cold." The game was simpler back then, in fact it wasn't called "base ball," it was referred to as "rounders," and it was played in merry old England.

 

Baseball, as we play it today can trace its roots to England, or American natives who actually used to use an enemy's severed head as a ball and they'd knock it around on horseback with sticks until.....well, the obvious would happen, the head would lose its shape, and the game would be over.

 

As with many things American, baseball, whenever it first appeared came from the east coast, New York State to be exact. Baseball was, in the beginning a rough and tumble kind of leisure game, played on Saturdays or Sundays on pasture-land ground, complete with the occasional tree stump, branches, pile of rocks, ruts, holes and bushes.....talk about your "home field advantage," it was brutal.

 

By the turn of the 20^th century, there was just a smattering of college educated players, major league baseball rosters were made up of farmers, lumberjacks, miners, factory workers, street toughs and your assortment of punks, gamblers and the occasional really, really bad guy.

Baseball had a gambling problem, baseball had a wage problem, and baseball was operated by owners with an iron fist who didn't really care what your numbers were, as long as they could get your services for as little as possible.

 

BASEBALL USED TO BE A BLOCK PARTY:

It wasn't until around 1960 that professional baseball players started to live in more exclusive areas of the towns that they were playing in. Before then, baseball players would live wherever they felt the rent was the cheapest. There was many a baseball player who would hold down an off season job to make ends meet.

 

The corner butcher shop or the grocery store always treated the ball player and his family with special treatment; after all, he was one of the guys, just a working stiff who happened to play baseball. Ball players would congregate on certain blocks, but mostly because they shared some of the same interests.

I read a story that told about PeeWee Reese and Duke Snyder walking to Ebbets Field from their "flats" on many occasions to play a ball game in the afternoon. It might seem strange by today's standards, but it's how it used to be.

 

Ball players and the fans had special relationships, there might be personal conversations, jokes shared, or "how about that hot honey in section 8." Baseball was more personal back then, and I think it was probably more fun.

 

INTO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF BASEBALL!

Television brought America into focus, I mean crystal clear focus, the illusion was gone, the dreamy commentators’ account of play on the field was brought to baseball fans first through a radio, and in the 1950's, by television.

 

I watched a re-play of the 1960 World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees and kept watching for the strikes, balls, outs and the speed of the baseball to flash across the screen, but of course it never did. The picture was black and white and the announcers, I think Curt Goudy did not talk like those nonstop announcers do today.....it was an enjoyable experience.

 

We now come down why I wrote today's blog, the Boston, Los Angeles Dodger trade and the kazillion space bucks that are involved, again, all I can say is wow, I can't even count that high, and I have absolutely no idea what in the hell these guys will do with all the money. Hell, some of these ball players make more than some developing countries entire GDP is.

 

If Don Mattingly, Dodger manager, can muzzle these guys’ egos, the Los Angeles club should go deep into the post season playoffs. Boston, well the promise that was in the spring just vanished with the trade, season ticket holders in old back bay, "Boston," should demand some of their season ticket money back.

 

Whether the deal is good or not for baseball is anybody’s guess, I'd guess short term, yes, but long term, not so much. Adrian Gonzalez, the star of the trade is now playing for his 4^th team, he is one of baseball's top hitters, yet he has been traded alot.

 

Josh Beckett, the other headliner of the trade brings a so so won-lost record to Los Angeles and about 8 ton of baggage. Remember last season in Boston and the locker room barbeque and beer junket, where was that guy’s head.

 

Although not headliners, the rest of the players may develop into sturdy major leaguers, only time will tell. I think that the top three Red Sox's coming to "Hollyrock" California might be bringing a whole passel load of problems with them, and I can only say "good luck manager Mattingly," I feel your gonna need it.

 

For the Boston faithful, remember the cry that well over 50% of baseball fans around the country say every October, "Next year we gonna kick butt."