The Written Word
for October 7, 2001

Well, it isn’t quite like making the Hall of Fame but Wendy and I have shared a bit of baseball history – we saw one of Barry Bonds record breaking homeruns, this last Spring against the Cincinnati Reds – a game which also, to the great glee of the fans, saw Ken Griffey Jr strike out in a critical situation. Both moments went all for naught as the Reds won the game.

I can’t believe how much baseball has changed since I was a boy, But before I get into reminiscences let me say that the game is far better played now. The players are bigger, stronger by far and in much better shape. Babe Ruth would have a tough time making the Yankees today because he just wouldn’t be able to move that beer belly far enough in the outfield. He could be the designated hitter, of course – an abomination that has changed the game for the worse. The strategy of baseball when you have a pitcher hitting compared with when you don’t is dramatic. That’s one big change.

The biggest change by far happened in 1947 when, after leading the Triple A International League in hitting, one Jack Roosevelt Robinson opened the season at first base with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was, as we all know, the first black to play modern "organized" baseball, a euphemism for the whiteness of the game until then. We now recognize that the Negro Leagues were major league ball themselves and affirm that fact with a special category for blacks from those leagues to enter the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York which, incidentally has dick-all to do with baseball. Neither did Abner Doubleday. But that’s another story.

Back in 1961, when Roger Maris beat Babe Ruth’s home run record with 61, then Commissioner Ford Frick decreed that an asterisk appear next to the number in the record book because Maris has a dozen or so more games in which to do it. I think there should be an asterisk on all records compiled before, say, 1960, when there was finally a fair complement of blacks in the game. Would Joe Dimaggio have hit in 56 consecutive games had he faced the great black pitchers of the game like Satchel Paige?

Come to think of it, given the rise to prominence of Japanese players with Suzuki winning the American League Batting championship, there may be the need for yet another asterisk to mark the very long era that Americans considered Japanese ball players inferior.

I used to think that Lou Gehrig’s record of 2130 straight games, Ty Cobb’s lifetime hits and Babe Ruth’s 60 homers in a season were unassailable. All three records have not just been beaten, they’ve been shattered. Just the way hockey records have been shattered. And golf’s. And Football’s. As the man said, records are made to be broken.

The equipment is better, the players are better and playing conditions have improved. Moreover when you think about it, it would be hard to sustain interest in a game where a fat, out of shape white waddler set an unbeatable home run mark nearly 75 years ago.

Yet for all that, there was something about sitting in the bleachers of Cap Stadium, back in the 1946 sunshine, watching the old Class B Capilanos playing against Spokane, or Tri Cities, or Victoria, where the only thing that mattered was that there was lots of Cracker Jack and that the home team won.