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Why would anyone play baseball in the rain? World Series, league
championship series, I don’t care, it’s an insult to the game to play it in wet weather.
Baseball’s a game of precision, of clean catches, straight throws, pitchers
who can hit the black around home plate and never throw a ball over the middle
of the plate. I don’t want to see balls squirting out of fielders’ hands,
outfielders slipping and sliding in the lawful pursuit of fly balls, bats
coming loose from a batter’s clutch. It may be okay for football, but it won’t do
for baseball.
Rain is the reason I’m sitting here tonight recording my frustration at not
having two league championship games to watch because a higher power has
arranged to soak two places at once, Boston and St. Louis (Houston?), thereby
depriving us of our baseball rights. Now you know why the religion of the rain
gods will never catch on here. The people who worry about an establishment of
religion can stop. Fire Gods maybe, Sun Gods possibly, but rain gods, never.
So what if they’re good for the crops? Which would you rather watch --
cauliflowers growing or Yankees-Red Sox?
The duck walks started some years ago when a man named Bowie Kuhn was
commissioner of baseball. The World Series was being rained on heavily, but the
contract with television was sacred and the game had to go on. Bowie Kuhn
remained in his field box , wet through, but trying the whole time to look like there
wasn’t any rain happening, and if there was, he was enjoying it. So
refreshing, you know. He paid a price. Not pneumonia, although the whole country
expected it, but loss of credibility with the public, which in due time cost him
his job.
If I want water polo I’ll go to Hungary, where they’re pretty good at it.
They’ve been winning the water polo Olympics since I was a kid. There are
other aquatic sports too, which have their following, but baseball is not one of
them. At least it’s not supposed to be. I wish people would stop trying to
turn it into one.
What else can be done to improve the game? Well, a number of things. Let me
suggest a few:
Ban all singers who murder the national anthem.
Ban all singers who murder “God Bless America”.
Make batters stay in the batter’s box.
At least make them stay in sight of it.
Do not allow any batter to adjust his gloves more than six times in any one
at-bat.
Break up the Mets.
Bring Suzuki to New York. I’d like to see him.
Send Piazza to Seattle. I’ve seen him.
Make announcers learn Spanish pronunciation just to get players’ names right.
Make announcers learn English..
I mean what I said about Spanish above. It’s annoying to hear professional
elocutionists, which is what announcers are, continually butcher the
pronunciation of common words and names, when it’s so easy to do it right. All you
have to do is remember that words ending in a consonant, except “n” or “s” are
accented on the last syllable, while words ending in a vowel are accented on
the next-to-last syllable. Exceptions to this are indicated by an accent mark
placed over the syllable to be accented.
Applying these rules we call Ecuador, Ecuado¯r, and El Salvador, Salvado¯r,
not E'cuador and S´alvador, Also we call Rafael Palmiero Pawmyero, not Pallmero.
“L” is silent as in Jim Palmer (Pawmer). If we could handle his name we
can handle the Spanish version.
Sorry to be so fussy about this. Learning how to pronounce words correctly
does this to you. You feel pain when you hear people say Noter Dayme when you’
ve found out it really should be Not-reh Dahm. This makes you very bad
company because you’re likely to sulk when in the company of people who insist on
doing it the wrong way. You’d like to tell them about it except for the fact
that they may turn on you and beat you insensible. All you can do is grin and
bear it and even put up with the people in the newspapers who insist on saying
someone got “chastised” when they only mean he was criticized, not flogged
with a whip or anything handy. That’s what the word really means and no one
gave permission to change it.
This article is still about baseball even though you may think it has become
one about language. Baseball just has lots of ramifications, that’s all. So
I can write about Baseball and Language, just as someone else can write about
Baseball and Art (there’s been plenty of it). And what about the article I
saw long ago “Will Night Baseball Replace Sex?” Baseball reaches into all
aspects of life.
We’ve had the first actor to become President, now who will be the first
baseball player? George Bush doesn’t count because he was an owner, not a player.
His father was the player. He also doesn’t count because, while he was a
star, it was at the college level, after which he went to war and played no
more. Mario Cuomo, on the other hand, played in the high minors and so would have
qualified except that he never became president. Senator Jim Bunning from
Kentucky is in the Hall of Fame, but never gets mentioned for president. That
could change, however, and he could be the next Ronald Reagan, that is, a
professional entertainer, which is what a ballplayer is and no shame to him, who
went from the clubhouse to the White House. Or it could be one of the men
still playing , who include some who understand the importance of celebrity in
America today and have ideas of using theirs eventually in politics.
A baseball president. How about that? He certainly could perform the job of
throwing out the first ball to open the season each year. He’d hear jeers
from the media of course, but after Fenway Park they would sound like birdcalls.
If he were a Republican he’d be accused of picking a staff with too many
right-handers and not enough lefties to balance it. There would be allusions to
beanballs when he got tough with the opposition. If he disagreed with
decisions of the courts his disputes with myopic umpires would be remembered. He
would as usual be accused of favoring the rich and grinding the faces of the
poor, but baseball’s the people’s game and it wouldn’t be believed about a
player that he had turned against the people. A baseball president would in fact be
…The People’s Choice.
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