Tag: World Series

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From My Seat Sports

Pandemic Baseball Day?

CREDIT: Jj Gouin/Dreamstime

Be careful what you wish for in a sports column.

For the better part of two decades, I’ve written in this space about the need for National Baseball Day, a holiday to recognize and celebrate this country’s longtime national pastime. The day would coincide each year with Game 1 of the World Series, Americans from coast to coast would be allowed to stay home with family and friends and — should they choose — watch the Fall Classic together, with the first pitch at 3 p.m. Eastern time, early enough for the youngest baseball fans to see the final out. How is it that a country so devoted to sports and leisure doesn’t have a day on the calendar to formally salute the rewards of recreation? National Baseball Day would check that box nicely.
Jj Gouin/Dreamstime

So, here we are in 2020, and more people will be at home for Game 1 of the World Series — by choice or by pink slip — than in any other year of our lifetimes. A pandemic has slammed doors shut both on business and recreation, those of us fortunate enough to be able to work from our dens and living rooms doing so, while those unable to earn a salary without gathering crowds and cheering audiences . . . endure the best they’re able.

As for the World Series, all games will be played at a neutral site (a “bubble” in pandemic terms), Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. Major League Baseball and the state of Texas will allow small “pods” of fans to scatter safe distances within the ballpark. So, yes, there will be some cheering when the Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Dodgers take the field Tuesday for the 116th World Series. (Alas, the game is still scheduled to maximize ad revenue. So, first pitch will be in prime time.) In a year with so much on hold, can baseball’s showcase lift a nation’s spirits?

For anyone with a modicum of affection for baseball history, 2020 has been an absolute kick in the teeth. Al Kaline — for many, the face of the Detroit Tigers franchise — died in April. Tom Seaver — for everyone, the face of the New York Mets franchise — died in August. The two greatest World Series heroes in St. Louis Cardinals history — Lou Brock and Bob Gibson — died within four weeks of each other, just as this year’s postseason arrived. Earlier this month, Whitey Ford died, the most decorated pitcher in New York Yankees history. Three days later, Joe Morgan passed away. Playing for the fabled Big Red Machine of the 1970s (a team that feature Johnny Bench and Pete Rose), Morgan was named MVP after each of Cincinnati’s championship seasons. All of these men were Hall of Famers, all of them World Series heroes from a time that seems further away in 2020 than it did 12 months ago. A packed Busch Stadium cheering Gibson’s 17th strikeout to close Game 1 of the 1968 Series? That’s an image from a dimension we can’t seem to reach, one we now wonder if we’ll ever see again.

The 2020 baseball season was abbreviated, of course. Reduced from 162 games to 60, the campaign was more of a sprint than baseball fans are used to, and 16 teams — six more than has been customary — made the playoff field, an attempt to make sure a rightful champion doesn’t get erased because of the sliced schedule (and yes, more televised playoff games to pad the sagging bank accounts of MLB owners). But the games have indeed been a happy distraction, particularly in the climate of a national election taking place in the most divisive America many of us have seen. The bitter debate over a Supreme Court nominee not your thing? Tune in to see former Memphis Redbird Randy Arozarena slug cowhide for the Rays. Worn out by a U.S. president downplaying a virus that’s killed almost a quarter-million Americans? You gotta see the exuberance Dodger outfielder Mookie Betts brings to the diamond. British writer Charles Kingsley said it best: “All we really need is something to be enthusiastic about.”

My enthusiasm for National Baseball Day is unabated. The sport needs new life, younger life, and it’s getting it on the field in the form of Acuna, Washington’s Juan Soto, and San Diego’s Fernando Tatis Jr. But young fans? Casual fans? They’re diminishing, turning to more modern distractions (many requiring screens and an internet connection). But we can find baseball again, when we find our new normal. Sitting in a ballpark — under sunshine — is my happy place. I’ve missed it in 2020. Which means I’ll appreciate it in ways I haven’t since I was a child, the next time I stare at grass the way God meant it to grow. For now, let’s enjoy a Texas World Series with no teams from Texas. (Hey, the Houston Astros are done. So, the year ain’t all bad.) Cracker Jack tastes good on a couch, too.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

National Baseball Day

Maybe a World Series in our nation’s capital will make the difference. Maybe when the Washington Nationals host the Houston Astros in Game 3 of this year’s Fall Classic — scheduled for this Friday night — enough power brokers will be in attendance to see what those familiar with this column have known for years: America needs National Baseball Day. Sure, the World Series steals a few headlines from football in late October. But it can do more for our country. As for fans turning their attention to the NBA before baseball’s champion is crowned . . . they’re a lost cause on this mission. For the believers out there, though, those who remember moments on the diamond when natural shadows were cast, read on.

Here’s how National Baseball Day would work. On the day Game 1 of the World Series is played — typically a Tuesday — Americans would get to stay home in honor of the sport that gave us Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and a craving for Cracker Jack. No one plays like we do in the United States. National Baseball Day would bridge the holiday gap between Labor Day and Thanksgiving while celebrating an act of recreation.

The game would start at 3 p.m. Eastern, allowing every child from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, to see every pitch, hit, stolen base, and replay review (ugh) if he or she so chooses. Families split across time zones could connect via smart phone and share in the exploits of the latest October hero. Extra bonding time for friends and families around a baseball game. Imagine that.

If you’re not a baseball fan, stop the eye roll. This holiday is for you, too. Take a hike (literally). Grab your rod and reel. See a movie you’ve been meaning to see, and with the right person. Have a picnic lunch. Enjoy a day of leisure, courtesy of the game of baseball.

Television will resist this movement, of course. Those at Fox or TBS or whoever happens to hold the rights to the Fall Classic will rope themselves to the mast of prime-time ad rates. Instead, they might consider another sporting event that does rather well as a stand-alone happening, begun before prime time, with most families together at home: the Super Bowl. Savvy ad execs will recognize their audience for National Baseball Day.

You wonder why kids aren’t wearing Mookie Betts jerseys (outside Boston) or collecting Alex Bregman baseball cards (outside Houston)? It might have something to do with their recent World Series heroics happening after the kids were in bed. One of the most famous moments of the great Derek Jeter’s career was a World Series home run he hit after midnight in New York City. Among baseball’s eternal charms is its everyday quality, 162 games played by each team over six months. But its showcase — its primary sales tool for the next generation — must be the World Series.

National Baseball Day is the first answer to baseball’s woes. You say a holiday requires an act of Congress? Then this is the year you can make a difference. Email your congressman and attach this column. Remind them that what they saw at Nationals Park would have been that much better if an entire country was watching (and those in attendance, squinting) together. Better yet, ask your kids (or grandkids) to write their congressman. It’s more than a sport we’re saving. It’s a country.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

FROM MY SEAT: Don’t Look Now, But…

• The Memphis Tiger football team is two wins from bowl eligibility, and with three of their remaining four games at home. Ask anyone other than coach Tommy West if he or she felt the 2007 squad would be fighting for a bowl berth after their 36-point loss at UCF on September 22nd and you’ll either see a head shake or know you’ve found a hopeless dreamer. The fact is, the first and most important step for West’s program to take toward national respect is to compete in Conference USA. Which means they have to beat the likes of Rice and Tulane, even on the road. Saturday’s win in New Orleans � on a last-minute touchdown pass by Tiger quarterback Martin Hankins � is precisely the kind of game Memphis is notorious for losing.

This Saturday at the Liberty Bowl the U of M will host the one team they trail in C-USA’s East Division. And they’ll be underdogs against the East Carolina Pirates. But consider these numbers: the Tigers have outperformed the Pirates in total offense (419 yards per game to 355) as well as total defense (428 yards allowed per game to 437). With a 1 pm kickoff and the home team playing for first place, Saturday’s attendance will say a lot about the Tigers’ hold on this region’s football attention. Mark this down: the team with the fewer turnovers wins.

• John Calipari isn’t the only University of Memphis coach recruiting well beyond the Mid-South region. Women’s soccer coach Brooks Monaghan is fielding a team this fall with players from 12 states and three countries. I saw a terrific match Sunday between the top two teams in Conference USA, the Tigers (now 12-3-1 overall) dropping a double-overtime affair to UCF at the Mike Rose Soccer Complex. With two regular-season games to play, Memphis is now 5-1-1 in C-USA play, trailing only the 6-1-1 Knights. Junior Kylie Hayes has already broken the 13-year-old program’s record for career goals with 34. Only four of Monaghan’s 30 players are seniors, so this is a team that should challenge for an NCAA tournament berth for years to come.

• A few observations from the 2007 World Series:

This year’s Series was the sixth straight to feature a former Memphis Redbird on the field. Adam Kennedy played for the Angels in 2002; Braden Looper pitched for the 2003 Marlins; Albert Pujols was among several former ’Birds who fell to Boston in 2004; Cliff Politte was in the bullpen for the 2005 White Sox; Yadier Molina and 11 other Cards won last year’s championship; and J.D. Drew played rightfield for the 2007 Red Sox.

• It’s a shame the country was denied seeing one of the hottest teams in baseball history take on the mighty Red Sox when the Series opened last week. Having won 21 of 22 games � a streak unmatched over the last 70 years � the Colorado Rockies had their sizzle turn to fizzle by an eight-day layoff between their sweep of Arizona in the National League Championship Series and Game 1 of the Fall Classic in Boston. It’s just not right to see a team penalized for dominating its opposition in earning a pennant.

So here’s the solution. When I’m general manager of a pennant winner someday, and my team has as many as three � let alone eight! � days off in October, there will be a roundup in our farm system. Twenty-five players � of my manager’s choice, based on our club’s scouting reports of the potential Series opponent � will report to our home stadium for a series of exhibitions. The teams will play daily, with free admission for fans. Concessions open with as much championship gear as we can sell. We’ll set up our starting rotation so our ace is on track for Game 1 of the Series, and these games will be played to win. Keeping score, strategy, platoons, bullpen activity, the works.

As simple as the notion seems, it’s a profound truth: to play baseball well, a team must play baseball games. The Rockies may as well have been playing in February when the World Series opened. And it showed.

• There’s a famous story of Marilyn Monroe returning from a tour of overseas performances at U.S. military bases. When she gets back, she tells her husband, Joe DiMaggio, “You’ve never heard such cheering!� The Yankee Clipper pauses a moment before replying, “Oh yes, dear, I have.�

In watching and reading media coverage of “Red Sox Nation� and its adoring relationship with Boston’s baseball team, one gets the impression that no such love affair can be found west of Fenway Park. That no fan base has such an appreciation for its team’s history, legends, successes and failures like those � primarily in New England � who cheer on Manny, Tek, and Big Papi. That no one has experienced the profound visceral joy of witnessing greatness in the home team’s uniform like that in Beantown.

I lived four years in Boston, but I’ve spent 38 as a member of Cardinal Nation. And yes, Boston, we have.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

FROM MY SEAT: Pitching a Holiday (Again)

Someday
Major League Baseball will get it. And, importantly, so will the U.S. Congress.
Someday — hopefully in your lifetime, dear reader — the World Series will again
be played under the sun. (For those curious, the last daytime game played during
the Fall Classic was in 1987 . . . and it was under a roof in Minneapolis. The
last time natural shadows were actually cast at the World Series was in 1984.)
The time has long come not only for daytime baseball during the game’s signature
event, but for an actual holiday devoted to our country’s definitive pastime.
Let’s call it National Baseball Day.

For
years, now, I’ve argued that America should take a day off in late October —
midway between Labor Day and Thanksgiving — for a holiday where we can remind
ourselves how integral sports in general, and baseball in particular, have
become in the way we conduct our lives as Americans. I’ve made the case — until
this year — that this holiday should fall on the Wednesday when Game 4 of the
World Series is played. With the MLB powers that be having changed the Series
schedule, the holiday would still fall on a Wednesday, but it would now coincide
with the opening game of the Series. Even better, in my eyes, and an indication
— my fingers firmly crossed — that baseball is, in fact “getting it.”

Why
close schools, government offices, even banks(!) for a lousy baseball game?
Because leisure, friends, is what Americans do . . . and do better than any
other country on the planet. Enjoy Labor Day for what it is, a nod to the hard
work that pays your mortgage, your rent, your car note, those ever-inflating
utility bills. But take National Baseball Day as a reminder that Americans work
not to pay bills, but to play.

These
days, the argument could be made that the NFL and NASCAR have supplanted
baseball as America’s most popular spectator sport. But holidays are earned with
history, folks, and baseball was shaping Americans’ downtime long before Joe
Namath saved professional football or Richard Petty gave us an appreciation for
trading paint. And baseball remains singular in its reflection of our country’s
behavioral trends, from Babe Ruth roaring in the Twenties to Jackie Robinson
knocking down barriers in 1947, from Roberto Clemente adding a Latino flavor in
the Sixties to Ichiro Suzuki turning the sport global, indeed, in 2001.

For
National Baseball Day to happen, the money-making fat cats that run the
television networks will have to put aside their appetite for ad dollars in
favor of a big-picture view of their most critical commodity: fans. The
10-year-old boys and girls going to bed before the fifth inning of World Series
games in the eastern time zone will be the 25-year-old ticket-buying demographic
more familiar with football and stock-car racing — events held largely during
the afternoon! — in just a few years. If baseball and TV want to capture (and
hold) an audience, they should take a lesson from cereal companies and (sadly)
beer distributors: start young. Game 1 of the Series would start at 3 p.m.
eastern time, so every kid from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, could
watch every pitch if he or she chooses. (And if you think advertisers will run
from an afternoon sporting event on a weekday, tune in to the NCAA tournament
next March.)

“I don’t
give a whit about baseball,” you say? Have never watched a game, and never will?
That’s fine, too. Take the day and do something — with leisure in mind — that
you couldn’t otherwise on a regular Wednesday. Take your significant other to a
movie. Walk your dog in a new park. And if you have them, make your children
smile with an excursion (if, and only if, they don’t have a team to cheer in the
big game). However it is you catch your wind, just remember that baseball helped
the cause.

More
people bought tickets to Major League Baseball games in 2007 — almost 80 million
— than in any other season in over 120 years. Yes, Americans still love
baseball, still love the World Series. It’s time for baseball — and the World
Series — to love us back.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

St. Louis Spirit

CREDIT: AP

Let’s start this week with a time warp. Think back to when you were 13 years old. Try and pinpoint a moment from your 14th year that you can close your eyes and envision today. The setting, the time of day, the people you may have been with.

I was 13 in 1982 when the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series in seven games over the Milwaukee Brewers (Harvey’s Wall-Bangers, that crew was called). That was the Cardinals’ last world championship until they shocked the sports world two weeks ago by upsetting the Detroit Tigers and winning the 2006 series after the fewest regular-season wins (83) by any champ, ever. I watched Game 7 of that ’82 Series in the living room of my family’s apartment in Northfield, Vermont. It was a Wednesday night, when Bruce Sutter — just this year inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame — struck out Gorman Thomas to clinch the championship. It was the ninth world championship for St. Louis but the first of my lifetime and the franchise’s first in 15 years, what seemed like an eternity at the time for my father.

I remember trying to out-smile my dad as a mob of fans stormed the artificial turf at “old” Busch Stadium. And I remember thinking, surely, this would be the first of many such celebrations.

It was twenty-four years — almost a quarter century — before my heart again pounded the way it did on October 20, 1982. We don’t get all that many 24-year cycles in a lifetime, so I’ll be relishing the Cardinals’ 10th championship for as long as I can share the memory. But how different, this celebration.

What’s happened since 1982 — age 13 for me — besides the hundreds of Cardinal games I’ve seen and listened to? High school happened. College. A wedding. More than 130 issues of Memphis magazine hitting the streets with my name next to “managing editor” on the masthead. Best of all, I’ve welcomed two daughters since 1982. (They’ll remember this World Series, let me assure you.) And worst, my dad isn’t here this time to try and match my smile.

Amid the glow of merely winning, Dad would love the improbability of this championship. St. Louis managed to win the World Series in five games with merely two RBIs from baseball’s “perfect” player, Albert Pujols. (Last week, the Elias Sports Bureau announced that Pujols is only the sixth player since their ranking system was devised in 1981 to score a perfect 100 for a season.) How perfectly appropriate that the Series MVP was a player — 5’7″ shortstop David Eckstein — whom Pujols could eat for lunch. Smallest player on the field; the player with the fewest “tools”; a castoff from a team with which he won a championship, but a team that felt it could improve without him. Nice way to acquire your first new car, Mr. Eckstein. (That yellow beauty, though, needs a coat of red paint.)

This is the second of at least 52 weeks during which the words “St. Louis Cardinals” must be prefaced by “world champion.” The joy I recall from my days as an 8th-grader has lost some context as I’ve gained adulthood and all the rites that come with it. I wonder, with a pounding but heavy heart, just where my dad might be now, knowing how happy this long-awaited victory would make him. This is where I gain a little faith and, with inspiration from a certain Disney movie starring Danny Glover — a Murtaugh, it should be noted, in another of his popular roles — a speculative theory on what happened as the Tigers botched one play after another in the sloppiest Fall Classic we’ll see in years: Perhaps, Cardinal Nation, just perhaps, St. Louis had a little help from its own angel in the outfield. Imagination — no, belief — has a life span much longer than 13 years.