#INTHEAIREVERYWHERE
Wednesday
November 6,
2024
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#INTHEAIREVERYWHERE |
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| Vol. 23 No. 44 | Wednesday
November 6,
2024 |
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A Baseball Story |
They played The World Series of Baseball in America last week. Once upon a time, before the Internet, television and the global village, we Americans believed that the baseball World Series topped the world. Many of us still think that way even at a time when nearly everyone knows that the true World Series of sports happens when soccer (or football, as the rest of the world calls it) plays to determine its best. But things may change, as more American sports are enjoyed the world over. Baseball is a summer game, where watching and rooting for the “Boys of Summer” for the past 100 plus years is best enjoyed during the warm, tee-shirt friendly months and not in late October (and certainly not in early November). In 2024 The World Series of Baseball is fighting for attention. With college and professional (American) football games, soccer tournaments, hockey games, and the coming basketball season happening at the same time, the going is tough for baseball. But for this moment, for me, it’s about baseball. I have loved baseball ever since I heard my father, Franz Joseph Arend, Jr., talk about Joe DiMaggio. We were sitting next to each other one Saturday morning in a tiny barbershop in Toledo, Ohio. It was 1948. It isn’t hard to pick your favorite team when you’re a kid. You simply look up at your father to see which team he’s rooting for, and that’s the team you go with. Baseball leaves a legacy of players and a legacy of fans as well. My Dad loved the Yankees, so I did too. However, my Mother, Eleanor Jane, adored the Brooklyn Dodgers. This might not have been such a problem if we hadn’t moved to New York. Once in New York we split our time between Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, where the Dodgers played. They call Brooklyn “The Borough of Churches” because if you walk ten blocks in any direction you’re bound to find a house of worship. But Brooklyn was once famous for its beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, until the team did the unthinkable and moved from New York City to Los Angeles. I loved both New York ballparks and can still remember the high arc of a baseball hit by Dodgers Duke Snider as it soared over the fence at Ebbets Field onto Bedford Avenue, just as I can still recall sitting in the bleachers (i.e., the “cheap seats”) watching the fluid motion of Edwin “Whitey” Ford, the immaculate, left-handed pitcher for the Yankees. He was so great that a sports writer at the time dubbed him “Chairman of the Board.” Most Dodgers and Yankees fans were not so nice about the other’s team. In truth, the Yankees usually won the big games (and still do), while the Dodgers lost the majority of the time. “Wait ‘til next year!” was the rally cry, as most Brooklyn Dodger seasons ended at the feet of the dreaded N.Y. Yankees. In fact, the Brooklyn Dodgers were best known amongst their fans as “The Bums.” It was meant as an endearment, but the name really stuck because the Dodgers always lost to the Yankees. Fifty years ago, when Brooklyn finally defeated the Yankees in the World Series, The New York Daily News ran a full-page picture of a cartoon bum with the caption: “Who’s A Bum! ” One year, on Mother’s Day, I bought my Mom and family tickets to the Yankees, and we all went off to spend a pleasant May afternoon inside Yankee Stadium. I knew she hated the Yankees, but I also knew that she had to watch my idol, Mickey Mantle, the great center fielder of the Yanks, hit a couple of home runs. There was not much of a reaction from Mom, I’m sorry to say, until the Boston Red Sox Player, Ted Williams, came to bat and rocketed a baseball almost clear out of this universe. My Mother almost fell out of the upper deck as she watched Williams hammer that baseball and round the bases. Baseball fans, I concluded, are seldom charitable. I watched the World Series in bits and pieces this year, mostly because I love the game. Baseball is at its best in the spring and summer, when the sport is in the midst of its 161-game schedule and your team can lose 10-0 one day, only to come back the next with a 3-2 lead. Baseball is great when the rich, dark green loamy grass of the field, rimmed in pink clay, personifies the sense of a perfect July afternoon, when days melt into weeks and months of games yet to be played. Baseball is the palm-ball pitcher Eddie Lopat floating a small white pill ninety feet. Baseball is six foot-ten Randy Johnson unleashing a 100 mph fastball at the batter as the shortstop, left fielder and seven other players shift ever so slightly in anticipation of the batter’s swing. Baseball is lyrical poetry to me, better than any other sport on earth. Despite the salaries and lurid headlines, baseball seems, to me, a kinder, gentler sport. Baseball is also the great American sporting exercise that now includes players from both Latin America and Asia. When the regular season ends, I die a little. Playoffs are great, but baseball is a relaxed center of my life for six months out of every year, not a do-or-die seven game World Series. My Dad used to say, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” He may not have been the first to say it, but when he said it, I believed it. In my life, those words work not only for sports but also for life itself. Every time I say goodbye to baseball, the sports pages seem empty. I vainly search for a scrap of baseball news, but by early November there is nary a word to be coaxed from pages filled with endless hockey, football, basketball and even tennis coverage. At that point I have only Christmas to look forward to, a moment alone in front of the fireplace, admiring the tree and my new baseball book. The countdown begins with late December hopes and dreams of another year. In February pitchers and catchers will report for Spring Training. The regular season in the second month of the year may still be three months away, but like the warmth of the sun my anticipation will burn brighter as the days pass, until the great summer games are renewed on opening day in April. In 2024 just past the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated my New York Yankees in the best of seven World Series. The defeat has been unspeakable let alone writing much about it except to say: “Wait ‘til next year! That’s the eternal slogan at season’ end and marching song of every team in organized sports in the world whose fate somehow missed catching the brass ring championship last season. In baseball as in life, all good things can come again. Geoffrey Arend |
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Publisher-Geoffrey Arend • Managing
Editor-Flossie Arend • Editor Emeritus-Richard Malkin |
Send comments and news to geoffrey@aircargonews.com
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