David Ortiz

One has to wonder about all the hype and the hooplah associated with David Ortiz's first plunk from the Yankees in 1 full season worth of games (162) between the 2 teams. Sure, the Red Sox do tend to hit a lot of Yankees, but is this hatred, crowding the plate, bad pitching or what? And sure, it is the unwritten code of baseball as exacted by great men like Bob Gibson that a certain 17" of plate is mine and that a certain amount of respect is mine. All good pitchers ever knew this. That's why Pedro was so dominant (you gotta love that Gerald Williams hit - it sure did scare Tampa Bay, that's for sure). All good hitters knew this. That's why Barry Bonds wore tank armour on his arm.
Who cares who takes offense to a flipped bat? For years, the Yankees made people put up with their fecal material (as if it didn't stink) because they were winning and they were on top. Now, they are starting to suck. They're starting to get old.
If the best thing that the Yankees can do to trump up to justify CC taking a shot at the sluggi one is that Joe Girardi was worried about the feelings of poor little Hector Noesi (and since the Yankees pitching staff is injured, thin, and brittle in mind and body, they've got a lot of protecting to do), then so be it because it's New York and they'll do what they can to stay in the forefront of everyone's mind - even when they're on the decline.
"Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax," Columnist Mike Royko once said.
We agree. That said, if you haven't seen the following video of Big Sluggi getting nailed by CC Sabathia on  MLBTV's Intentional Talk, then you're really missing out.
In the end, if Sluggi is having a great year and rebounding from the usual early season crappiness and post steroids drought that he has been forcing Boston fans to put up with, then bring on the retaliation towards him - we haven't thought anything about him since Obama ran for president, but hey, if he's 2004 David Ortiz, we'll take that he's going to be a target. For us, Papi can be in it to win it and make the Yankees hate him all that he wants. They still owe him a foot on that game one shot he almost put out of the stadium in the 2004 ALCS (game 1) when the Red Sox started to rally back after Mussina had left them in a stagnant morass. The time has come to pile on the misery to make the Yankee fans remember the 1980s and early 1990s for what they were - a complete joy to all non New Yorkers!
So let Girardi and crew cry. They'll be making us put up with their Jeter 3000 lovefest soon enough, which frankly put, is enough to make us vomit (even if we're doing better with getting over that whole Jeter sucks thing - besides, it's all about hating on A-Rod).

Carlos Quentin

By this point in the season, Albert Pujols should be flirting with .400 - not sitting below .300 with a gap (.033) between the magic mark and where he's at. He shouldn't be breaking a 100+ (105 at bats and 119 plate appearance) at bat streak without a home run. Is it really the year of the pitcher, or are we ushering in a new crop of offense?
Matt Joyce is currently leading the major leagues in batting average with a .367 mark. If I wouldn't be looking at him in his Rays uniform, I would have no idea who he was, but he seems to be part of the new Tampa Bay outlook and his 8 home runs attests that he's not all singles either.
This is not diminishing Jose Bautista, who is still hitting at a .340 clip with 19 home runs (guess I was really wrong on not believing in his salary bonus), but other than that, there are people with about 10-12 home runs, and they're the usual suspects, but there aren't many big time boppers - save Curtis Granderson and his 16 jacks (and 45 strikeouts in 178 at bats).
Matt Holliday has also been solid with his .349 average and 6 home runs, but for the most part, the bats have been silent this year. Big boppers like Adam Dunn who came to new teams with hope for power are striking out a lot more (60) than they are connecting (5). Mad Mark Reynolds is drifting into worse obscurity (.191) as he racks up his usual misses (49) and falls short on his connections (5). It's an ugly affair really.
So when Carlos Quentin hooks me up fantasy style with 3 jacks and 5 RBIs for my 2nd place fantasy team (the Ephrata Green Dragons), I have to give props (that said, I like the acquisition of Jair Jurrjens as well since he's always been good for me and last night, his 4 Ks and 7.2 scoreless innings brought a much needed win to my team, which has been decimated by injuries to Joe Mauer and Josh Hamilton).
Now that Quentin opened up, he's tied for 3rd place with Ryan Braun, Mark Teixera, and Jay Bruce. Yeah... that Jay Bruce, but that's fantasy points as well, so we can live with that. Looking at the home run leaders... you really wouldn't guess many of them. The same could be said for the free swinging strikeout leaders.
And as I heard it said the other day, it's not 1.12 in 1968, but it's a step away from the steroids era home run boppers of years past.

Dave Duncan

St. Louis has always been a great baseball town. Many great players have made it in the city by the Gateway Arch, and many others have resurrected their careers playing in front of the friendliest fans in the baseball universe. From their first World Series win / appearance in 1926 where they beat the New York Yankees, it was on. Now, they have 10 best of baseball awards and 7 more World Series appearance where they came up short.
They've won as recently as 2006, with a team that pretty much couldn't win the division until it inevitably happened (they finished with 17 losses for September - which included a stretch from the 18th to the 29th where they won twice - shades of Philadelphia in 64 and Boston in 78, anyone?). However, with a team that wasn't that great they put it all together. Sure, Albert Pujols was there. Yadier Molina was too, but mostly it was "scrappy" (i.e. short, but tough) David Eckstein (who won the World Series MVP because someone had to), Adam Wainwright in rookie mode, Chris Carpenter, a discontented Scott Rolen, and some guys like So Taguchi, Juan Encarnacion, and Preston Wilson (role players who would soon be cast off). In ending the Tigers absolutely worst to first run in that year of baseball, they made the midwest proud, and life was good again, but since then, they've been squeezed out in much the same way that the Mets were that year when Endy Chavez made the catch only to lose it to 2 things - Yadier Molina hitting a 2-run just enough shot (shades of Ozzie Smith, anyone?) and Carlos Beltran stared at a pitch from Wainwright.
In the end, St. Louis was victorious in the NL and MLB - if not for ability for the fact that Kenny Rogers doctored the ball with a foreign substance and the universe went against the Tigers.
Perhaps it made up for a loss to Boston in 2004 when they went out 4 games to none after the GREATEST COMEBACK IN SPORTS HISTORY. That year was Pujols, a horrible swinging Jim Edmonds (worst swing in baseball history, but damn... that glove was beautiful), and a resurrected Larry Walker brought over from Colorado with tremendous fanfare for the days past (shades of Roger Maris, anyone?).
And maybe this year is another version of 2006. The pitching staff doesn't feature Bob Gibson or anyone like him, but damn... Kyle Lohse, Jaime Garcia, and Kyle McClellan don't want you to tell them that. Carpenter definitely isn't himself. Wainwright isn't even with the campaign, and still, the team is in 1st again. You've gotta love Dave Duncan. He takes a pitcher, makes him the best that he can possibly be, and the Cardinals fans just love them and make them 100 times better than they could be on any other team.
Look at what they did to Lance Berkman! That guy was written off, and now... he's dominating. Look at Matt Holliday! He's more productive than the best player in baseball (Pujols) - at least for now. They're making Stan Musial proud. They're living up to the legacy of love that McGwire brought out of the fans in those glory years (I still remember what it was really like - not what the asshole commentators and baseball revisionists want you to think of it).
St. Louis was and is a great baseball town.
Unless the Reds bring their A-game and their hatred and their imaginary feuds and player posturing, the Cards will be playing in October (and let's just say that we don't believe in Cueto, Volquez, or any other pitcher on the Reds).

Justin Masterson

Ok, ok... everyone who follows baseball and not just one of the East Coast teams knows who Jered Weaver is, but how many people know who Justin Masterson is?
I'll give you a hint... he's number 2 on wins (5) and number 9 on ERA (the last game was average and he got pulled down a little to 2.18). He pitches for the Indians. In his first few seasons, he was rough and Boston ditched his upside for Victor Martinez (not with the team anymore either), but how many young pitchers make the jump to the bigs and pitch like a star at age 25 (he's 26 now)?
After all, Sandy Koufax was 25 before he went sub 4.00 and 27 when he hit the 5 years that decimated all opposition. At 26, he won 18, struck out 269, pitched 15 completes, and had a 3.52 ERA. Masterson might only have 22 whiffs in 33 innings, but he's getting it together for the Tribe, and that says something.
Bob Gibson was good at 25 (13-12, 3.24, and 166 Ks BUT, he walked 119 batters to lead the league), but he didn't flourish until 26 (15 wins, 2.85, and 208). From there, he was the man and literally stopped everyone cold and dead by the World Series of 67 into the regular season of 68 (that beautiful number that is so mathematically perfect 1.12 - baseball's version of pi or the golden ratio).
Randy Johnson was 26 before he went sub 4.00 for an ERA, and that was the first of 3 years where he led the league in walks - compiling 416 TOTAL walks over that time (though he did fan 194 in the final year). From this point on, he had 1469 Ks in 4 years - to include 204 in the strike shortened season of 1994. In 1993 and 1994, he was still walking 99 and 72 batters (respectively). We can't call the final 72 total that much of a victory since he missed a month and a half and he walked 19 batters in that last month and a half (projected 91 total).
And so Masterson is winning big. He's better than C.C., Roy, Jon, Tim, and James (at least for now). With that, the future is bright. Let's hope he doesn't have to wear shades, because we're in year 2 of the year of the pitcher.
There are so many great hurlers out there. Danny Haren, Josh Johnson, and the aforementioned Weaver (so much better than the mirage of his brother Jeff Weaver that the Yankees coveted and had to have from Detroit... only to have him flop bigger than Sidney Ponson).
Weaver is throwing a .99 ERA. His WHIP is .79. He's killing opponents for a team that just can't beat the Red Sox, but seems to beat everyone else. Like Haren, his other ace starter by his side, his anemic offense doesn't have to do much to support him. They will prevail - unless they play Boston.
What's sick about this (early version of the) season is that there are 3 pitchers better than a .79 and one of them is named Kyle frickin' Lohse (.73 WHIP and 1.64ERA)! This is a man with a career 1.41 WHIP and 4.71 ERA, and yet, somehow he goes to St. Louis and Dave Duncan makes him great! It's time to nominate Duncan for President of the US (provided Donald Trump can't imagine a reason to get him exiled).
And in the end, good pitching is a thing of beauty. That 12 to 6 curve that just falls or the cutter with serious late movement that explodes on the batter and leaves him fearing the sting of a broken bat before it happens (if it happens, and yes, it does... just not always - it's the fear of God factor - ask Mariano Rivera and his bank account). This year, there are 23 pitchers who have more strikeouts than the league sucking batter (31 for Raburn and Fowler). The high water mark is 49 in 45.2 innings for Jered Weaver, but Justin Verlander is making batters look stupid with his 45 (despite a 3.64 ERA). Clayton Kershaw and Matt Garza also have 41 despite very high ERAs. The Phillies big 4 alone has 133 (Halladay and Lee have 39 a piece, Hamels has 34, and Oswalt has the remaining 21).
Nevertheless, Mighty Ryan has given 27 of them back (Ibanez has given back another 24), which only goes to prove that you win some and lose some...
You just have to hope that you win more than you lose!

Bob Gibson

There's something about watching a pitcher dominate a game that really says what a baseball game can be. I can still remember Pedro Martinez coming in to Baltimore in May of 2000 and annihilating the Orioles in a 15 strikeout 2 hit masterpiece complete game shutout (this became Bill Simmon's "Pedro and the Pantheon" in the book Now I can Die in Peace). The Orioles fans were gone, and Pedro was on mop up duty for that one. However, Pedro's best game was his perfect game that wasn't - June 3, 1995. He was still an Expo (and there still were Expos in baseball at the time). He made it 9 innings and 1 batter into the 10th, he let up a hit. Like Harvey Haddix, he was betrayed by an equally great opponent (Joey Hamilton, who let up 3 hits). However, his Expos won. Haddix's Pirates... not so much. Lew Burdette went 13 innings of shutout ball (and 12 hits, no walks) to win a shutout while Haddix let up 1 hit and 1 walk - enough to lose the greatest game ever pitched (registered trademark).
Larry Walker, an Expo at the time, said it best about Pedro...
"You just don't expect a guy weighing ninety-seven pounds to throw ninety-nine miles an hour. He's just very aggressive. I never really watched Bob Gibson pitch, but I get the feeling he's like a Gibson. If he has to throw one under your chin, he'll do it."
And Pedro was a man who owned the plate in the same way as Gibson did. My favorite Pedro moments involve him riling up his opponents. I still contend Don Zimmer got what he asked for. However, the fight with Jorge Posada... classic Pedro. But the best Pedro was starting a game off on August 29, 2000, by smashing a ball into Gerald Williams' hand. Williams got PO'ed and came after Pedro and wailed on him, but for all the anger that he had, the Devil Rays imploded for 8 full innings until God intervened and brought the no hitter (save the hit on Williams' hand) to an end after Pedro's cross necklace broke and he let up a double.
Gibson was much the same way. He owned those 17 inches. Roger Angell said that he was the most formidable and scary pitcher of all time when he spoke about Gibson for Ken Burns' Baseball. He once hit his former room mate high on the chest to show him that they weren't on the same team anymore. In 1968, he had a 1.12 ERA, but somehow went 22 and 9. How a man can do both of those things boggles the mind (save the Cardinals offense). In 1967, he won the World Series on the strength of a home run that he hit - finishing the World Series 3-0 with a 1.00 ERA. The man was a machine and a class act all around.
Summarizing what baseball meant, a pitcher has to get batters off his plate. Be it Pedro, the Big Unit, Bob Gibson, or Sal "The Barber" Maglie. As the Baseball Project sings... "high and inside."
In a game where Barry Bonds could wear tank armor on his arms in getting all of the advantage for home runs, we need something to take the edge away from hitters...
A little chin music will do nicely.

Ford Frick

In Saving Private Ryan, he was the sniper casually shooting Nazis at will until he got rushed and got blown up - taking out more than one could count. In 3, he plays Dale Earnhardt Sr., the badass legend of racing, in all of his glory. He's in a lot of other  movies... sometimes in more prominent roles, but mostly as the guy who rounds out the group of guys that he's with... i.e. Will Smith's confidante in Seven Pounds (a rather horrible movie if ever there was one - that guy just needs to redo the Fresh Prince or Independence Day).
But there was a moment of shining glory... an underappreciated gem from Billy Crystal of all people (well, actually not since Crystal is a Yankee drooler and it was right after the time that Mark McGwire was captivating the world and ESPECIALLY ME with his home run race to beat Sammy Sosa to 61 and make it to 70) that changed the possibility of what baseball movies could be.
That movie was 61*, and it's still one of my favorites. Sure, it was sentimental, and sure, it painted Ford Frick as a villain with the ghost of Babe Ruth as some unmovable slug (and in a way, that's about what he is - other than his larger than life big kid persona that hit a lot of home runs, was a great pitcher in his day, and all that yadda yadda yadda pap) in the way of a man's record setting greatness.
And perhaps, I can't say it as well as Bill Veeck in Veeck as in Wreck to talk down on Frick's destruction of the greatest story in baseball in ages (the tale of 2 men for the record with Mantle chasing as well for most of the season), but what this whole story really boils down to isn't an asterisk - it is just that: the fact that only 23,154 people saw the home run live because Frick doesn't understand baseball promotion. Baseball could have embraced the story, remembered its past, as it did with Maris throughout the entire 1998 season (he's still at the top of my all time favorite list of players with McGwire, Pedro, and Gibson). How many books have and will be released on Mr. Maris?
The point is that we don't need our heroes to be one dimensional. Some of them can suffer from having their hair fall out due to stress (I can relate to that - and I can relate to premature white hairs in my chin patch). We can relate to staring down the system that doesn't appreciate us. We can relate to a wife who supports us through thick and thin. We can feel the urge to walk away - but not doing so. We can feel the urge to bunt if it helps us win a game rather than to swing for the fences. Most of us are Maris.
The myth of Babe Ruth is an inflated pile of hooey. Mickey Mantle may have been the boyhood hero of his time, but a certain other center fielder had to leave the game first. There will always be room on the wall for the heroes. They come from a time and place, and they should be revered and respected at something more than old folks / timers days and as a great newspaper story 37 years later (as opposed to being portraryed as an uncooperative jerk to the media at the time).
These are the things that Crystal captured... well, that and the Ball Four side of Mickey Mantle, but that's neither here nor there. Tracey Stallard's price on the banquet circuit went through the roof, and he was a Red Sox pitcher, and yeah... it was a time and place that the rivalry wasn't, and the record wasn't worth watching, and Roger was hitting 2 extra shots that didn't matter since they were after 154 games.
That's the thing about the movie. It makes you want to understand why the media of that day went out of their way to kill the potential idol of the day. It makes you want to go to Fargo and pay respects to the man. It reminds you of why we play the game and live our lives strong. It tells the life of Roger Maris in a way that showcases the season of change for all of us.
Thanks Billy! Great movie

John Roseboro

Baseball learned from its violence and stupidity. Sure, we still have guys who want to start fights - class acts like Jose Offerman who have since been banned for life for attacking opponents with a bat, but yeah... we've learned.
We don't play our game to kick the tar out of our opponents. Sure, we have to be more like Bob Gibson and own those 17 inches of plate, but besides being afraid to pitch inside to brush back a batter that is crowding the plate (whether or not he has Barry Bonds' armor on or not), but that doesn't mean that we need to go beyond retaliatory pitching if our players get hit by a frustrated jerk of a pitcher.
The NHL on the other hand hasn't even learned from the NFL about what it takes to stop cheap hits. In the wake of their quest to be tough manly men that are pretty much only broadcast on hunting / fishing networks, they have decided to not eliminate head shots, which are all too often cheap shots to take out an opponent. They have said that out of 55,000 hits, only a small percentage result in concussions, so it doesn't matter what league leader and mega star is out with one now (Sidney Crosby). It doesn't matter than the Canadians want to go after the guy who took out Max Pacioretty (Zdeno Chara). But alas... be it legal because it's part of the game (like the WWE) or because it keeps things fast paced and physical, we never learn.
We don't let our players go all Pete Rose on Ray Fosse in the All Star games, but we want fast paced action - even with millions invested in play and development of stars. We want our cake and we want to be able to eat it too. We want to call it the integrity of the game, and we want to make sure that the nanny state doesn't take over, but sometimes, we just don't think.
Cheap attacks aren't cool. Even in the WWE, we're supposed to hate the heels that purport them on the babyfaces.
And if we look back to baseball's darkest moments and remember Juan Marichal at the plate getting so angry that he picked up his bat and used John Roseboro's head for a target after he threw too closely to Marichal's head on a couple of return pitches, we see dark and ugly. But such is a baseball feud between 2 teams (Los Angeles and San Francisco OR Boston and New York). Sure, there are other teams that hate one another, but for the most part, it's agression and the game. Coming up behind a player a slamming him into the boards and glass to the point where he is laying on the ice unable to contemplate what century he is in is a completely different story and for that, we don't need to pretend and call things manlier than they are.
Sometimes, we just need to step up and do what's right.

Kurt Bevacqua

Every once in a while, I get a hankering to buy baseball cards again. I'll look for them on e-Bay in hopes that there will be something cool and cheap. The two don't often go together. I do have a Pedro Martinez and Bob Gibson jersey card that I got for under $10 with shipping. I don't care about the real value. I just like that two of my favorite pitchers of all time are memorialized on one card with their jerseys fashioned into the card itself.
Cards like this are what makes collecting nowadays special. I never pulled a card like that from a real pack, but I did get some cards that were above and beyond the sets themselves. That said, other than ones of Mark McGwire's numbered home runs (especially #55), I really don't think much of any of them.
Baseball card companies today had to go back to the concept of something special to set them apart. For example, there's a 2007 Topps Derek Jeter card that also features George W. Bush and Mickey Mantle. That's a cool card. Really.
However, it's not the 1976 card that features Kurt Bevacqua of the Milwaukee Brewers blowing a huge ass bubble to win the Joe Garagiola / Bazooka Bubble Gum Blowing Championship. Things like that don't happen nowadays.

That said, it took a whole different era to respect Garagiola since he was the guy who spiked Jackie Robinson back in the day. A large part of his life was spent explaining away how he wasn't a racist until he eventually turned into a voice of the good things in baseball.
But that's not why this card is so cool. Kurt played from 1971-1985 for 7 teams. He finished with a .236 average and 27 homeruns. He stayed around as a bench player for that time. He did have a 3 hit game in the 82 World Series that saw him hit a homerun, but he wasn't anything great.
That said, he was a bubblegum blowing champion, and frankly, that goes a long way towards something great.

Baseball cards today are still nice. My wife bought me a pack of 2011 Topps, which didn't really feature anyone special, but the anticipation that I'll get someone life altering in that 5 cards for $1 pack is still like playing the lottery and seeing if I can get more than 2 numbers.

However, going to shows is more about seeing the names and the faces than being able to plunk down big bucks for the Golden Era of collecting (1950s and 1960s). There's the Platinum Era, too, but I can't afford tobacco cards. Nevertheless, I'm always amazed by what cards go for - even in 1 and sub 1 condition.

All the same, it's still fun to wander around the Convention Center in Valley Forge and think about what I could get.

Bill James

The beauty of baseball is in its numbers. We know the important numbers. For example, Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, which was then eclipsed by Hank Aaron who went on to hit 755 home runs despite never hitting 50 home runs in a season. And while Ruth did, he never had to play for a team called the Indianapolis Clowns as a second rate show act in the Negro Leagues.
We know that Ruth hit 60 home runs, and eventually, in 1961, he was passed by Roger Maris who hit 61 in 162 games instead of 154. We thank Ford Frick for reminding us of that distinction. Then, in 1998, Mark McGwire hit 70 and 3 years later, Barry Bonds hit 73. He would eventually go on to hit 762 though we seem to forget about his records in light of BALCO and look for a suitable replacement at the top of the numbers that are remembered.
We know that in 1968, Denny McClain won 31 and within a few years, he was made useless in baseball despite leading the league with 24 wins the next year. Nobody has come close since then. We know that same year that McClain was phenomenal, Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA despite only winning only winning 22 (he lost 9, but was named the MVP and Cy Young winner for 28 complete games and 268 whiffs). His movement was nasty and violent, a combination that comes out in the money shot porn of MLBTV's baseball history, but doesn't show up in the sheer numbers of baseball.
Thus, it becomes necessary that someone develops statistics that truly represent the power and effectiveness of a player as a whole. For the 31 wins that McClain got in that season, he had a 1.96 ERA and 280 strikeouts. Bob Gibson had 12 less Ks, .84 less ERA, and 9 less wins. Only one category is better, but somehow, his WAR (wins above replacement) is 11.9 compared to McClain's 5.9.
Who would you rather have? I know who I would rather have on my team. Watching him interviewed on MLBTV with Tim McCarver at his side and Bob Costas wearing the bib to catch drool (I'd be salivating to hear the story of Gibson plunking Pete LaCock in an old timers' game NEARLY A QUARTER OF A CENTURY after he drilled Gibson's final pitch for a grand slam as well).
But in the end, we need numbers to show us what season is better, and when we need those, we go back to Bill James, the stat guru of all stat gurus, whose contributions showed us how to create different statistics in baseball, which went on to show us how to create the definitive stats in baseball. And that's what the beauty of this game is. Frankly, it's a new revolution in sports and statistics. Hell, now we have Fan Graphs so amateur stats geniuses can make their own stats.
And it's all beautiful.
And it's the numbers that make the game fantastic.
Where would we be without them?

Troy Maxson

February is African American history month, and for that, one has to look at the black experience to see what baseball has been (the segregation of an entire race since Moses Fleetwood Walker), what it had to go through (the discrimination and resistance to Jackie Robinson), what it was possible that it could achieve (Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Bob Gibson, to name a few), and to what it is becoming (a shift to the NBA and NFL save some really great young talent like Jason Heyward, CC Sabathia, and Ryan Howard).
We have gone from the days of teams being worried about fielding an all black outfield to teams that can't field African American players (Houston's 2005 World Series team is a perfect example). And while there is color on the skin, it's from darker skinned players that hail from the countries that lie south of the American border. And while Martin Dihigo represents a somewhat similar and somewhat different experience, his Cuban heritage lacks resonance with the African American world of today.
For that, we go to the dramatic works of August Wilson to find Fences, the tale of Troy Maxson, a former Negro Leaguer who hit home runs like nobody other than Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson, but who was unable to play because of his skin color. Where Buck O' Neil felt that he was right on time, Maxson is spiteful for coming along way too early. He has gone so far as to push his son Cody out of a football scholarship so that sports can never do to him what they did to Troy, and for that and many other misguided things that he did, he's a larger than life idiot. He cheats on his wife and knocks up his mistress, who later dies in childbirth, leaving Troy's 2nd wife Rose to care for the baby and live in a loveless marriage. He fights for the right to drive a garbage truck despite not having a license and figures that nothing will ever become of it because it's so easy.
And for this, it's impossible to like him as a person. I felt the same way about Satchel Paige after reading the tales of his womanizing. The man could pitch like a machine, but I don't have to like the man off the field (in fact, his kids came to hate him as well). But alas, such is the biography that Mark Ribowsky wrote and that I came to sluggishly move my way through (Don't Look Back).
But with the August Wilson experience, the pain is all eventually gone and the mother makes the son go to the funeral, thus paying his last respects to his father and hopefully burying him instead of carrying him on his back forever.
And for that, perhaps there is meaning, but I can't say that it moved me the way that I hoped it would save a few lines such as:
She asked me when I met her if I had gotten all that foolishness out of my system. And I told her "Baby, it's you and baseball all what count with me." You hear me, Bono? I meant it too. She say, "Which one comes first?" I told her, "Baby, ain't no doubt it's baseball... but you stick and get old with me and we'll both outlive this baseball."
And with that, I think of my wife and how she "puts up with" my baseball infatuation and how lucky I am to have her, and it makes me realize that there are good things in life and they're more than just a game, but the game is nice.
I think about what it means to be a hero or a role model and I realize that if we don't have the ability to care for other people and treat them well, then we might be a good enterainer, but we're not much else.
It's just a shame that so many people, historically in reality and in fiction, can't do the same. Perhaps, it's time to focus more on the real than on the fake and get in the real game.