A remedy for fans
Posted: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 2:08 PM
What baseball needs is a fast track to March.
What baseball survives on are the games. They take us away from the increasing cauldron of voices clattering in the growing media universe. The games remind us that baseball is still our best game. Yes, that’s right. Look at attendance. Look at revenues. Don’t look at television ratings -- no single baseball game can ever equal a January NFL playoff game. Baseball’s universe has too much volume. And that’s why we need the games, as a daily reminder for seven months of baseball’s enduring strength. No amount of foolish behavior, by owners or players, has yet destroyed the sport.
So Dan Rather solemnly proclaims on a Sunday talkfest that baseball and steroids was the “most important story” of 2007. The fading anchor sermonized that “baseball will take a long time to recover.” But there was record attendance last year amidst the daily drumbeat of steroid talk. Baseball's revenues skyrocketed despite the home run king facing federal indictment, the feds grabbing a former clubhouse employee who would be certain to talk, and the looming Mitchell report. Yeah, I can really see how it’s going to take a long time for baseball to recover.
We will have some distractions in the two months before games begin. The Hall of Fame voting will produce various degrees of indignation (in this corner included). We await congressional action towards baseball’s leadership. Johan Santana might be traded. And Jose Canseco will pen another book on steroids. Wasn’t that the New Year news most welcome in baseball’s world? Canseco will offer -- as described by his lawyer -- “a clarification of why certain names should have been mentioned in the Mitchell Report that were not mentioned.”
As an Opening Day gift baseball won’t get full focus on the start of a new season, but will get Canseco’s sequel. Players who exhaled when their names were not indexed in the Mitchell Report now face more months of anxiety. With Barry Bonds in legal limbo and his career likely finished, the spotlight turns to the heir apparent -- A-Rod. Except that Canseco told Fox Business Network recently that “I could not believe that his (Alex Rodriguez) name was not in the (Mitchell) report.”
For the next eight weeks those who love baseball will endure more slams, slurs and jokes about steroids. There is a good chance that preening members of Congress will seize their 15 minutes. Roger Clemens kicks off the festivities with his Sunday sitdown (kissfest or confessional?) opposite Mike Wallace.
Honestly, I won’t watch. I will never minimize the effect of the steroid era, but fatigue is settling upon me. No damage from this matter can approach the self-inflicted carnage of 1994-95. And baseball survived. So pardon me if I don’t share Mr. Rather’s pessimism. And excuse me for passing on the Clemens interview.
I lived, with no glee, through the infancy of this in Oakland and its prime years in San Francisco. I have seen it from too close a view. And I have discussed and dissected it ad nauseum. Now, I have had enough. Jeff Novitzky and the top-flight investigative reporters who have uncovered virtually everything we now know about this era will likely continue their work. And they should. Their contributions have been invaluable. But I just want March 1. I want games. I want baseball not Dateline MLB.
