Cooperstown!
If ever the term “idyllic” applied to a place, Cooperstown, New York probably fit’s the definition to a tee. Cooperstown is a village, actually, of about two thousand people nestled in the beautiful countryside of upstate New York and is best known for housing the village within a village that is the Baseball Hall of Fame. Baseball is the oldest of our professional sports here in the United States and Cooperstown houses the stuff of legend that baseball is really comprised of in the early part of the twenty first century. There are many other sports across the American landscape these days and baseball is not the dominating national past time that it once was. This nation passes its leisure time in so many ways now that it is incredible, really, to think of the number of sports that this country pays attention to at any one time. There is at least one sport for every season in America and, right now, the one on many sports fans mind is football, with the playoffs and the Super Bowl on the near horizon.
This week, however, the age old ritual of naming the new inductees into baseball’s Hall of Fame reared its head and a great, but, not so great surprise occurred. No one got enough votes to gain entrance into the Hall! This last happened in 1996 but, this time it was for very different reasons than any we have seen before. One has to be officially retired from baseball for five years to even be eligible for admittance to the Hall and the very discerning Baseball Writers of America, the protectors of the values and traditions of baseball, are the ones who cast the ballots for those who are fortunate enough to be considered for admittance to one of the most exclusive clubs in all of sports. There were two supposedly very worthy first time candidates for the baseball hall this year and their names were Barry Bonds and Roger Clemons. Bonds holds the all time home run lead and Clemons was one of the most dominating pitchers of his or any other generation! The problem with both of them and several others in contention was that they had used performance enhancing drugs to elevate their already impressive statistics. America and its idyllic sport are in the midst of the steroid era now and there may be other years when no one is found eligible to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame.
It has been said that the steroid era went on for at least twenty years and there is going to be a taint or a stain on the game for at least that long in the future until the very strict drug testing guidelines put in place a number of years ago kick in and we can again elect those found worthy to belong with their storied, drug free predecessors.
There are those who contend that players like Bonds and Clemons need to be in the Hall of Fame because, even without drugs, their statistics would have been good enough to get them there anyway. Others state that would be the equivalent of allowing a bank teller convicted of embezzlement an honorable old age simply because he had not embezzled for most of his life. Once convicted of a crime…..!!!!!
It is not like every member inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame were living angels in their time. The immortal George Herman “Babe” Ruth was a drinker and carouser and might have struck more than 714 home runs if he had taken better care of his body. Ty Cobb was a ruthless player disliked by almost all of his peers who, it was said, might have been a member of the Klu Klux Klan in the off season. There were many prejudicial players in the 1940’s when the also immortal Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier against the wishes of so many who did not want to play on the same diamond that his very swift and talented ebony body came across. But, on the field, every one was equal and Robinson proved that with his God given talent. Baseball has always been one of the advancers of equality in this nation and those who might have been so prejudiced learned from people like Robinson that there was a better world out there. They grew and the nation that so loved them for their abilities grew along with them as they saw diversity at work right before their eyes. It was, and is, a meritocracy that should be protected from the often cruel winds of short term change.
In so many ways, it is that God given talent that qualifies one for the Baseball Hall. If ever a game was inhabited by some eccentric characters, it was baseball during its golden years. But the talent and the use of that talent is what has separated those who enter the Hall every summer from those who will never get there across eternity. And, some who never get there during their lifetimes are voted in by the veterans committee long after they have passed away. There is a democracy and sense of history and fairness that one sees in baseball at its best that one sees in few other sports. It is the talent and the care and longevity by which it is employed that separates those who make Cooperstown from those who merely played the game. It has been noted that those who strive to reach the major leagues of baseball do so knowing that they will play and be judged there against the very best players in the world for the rest of their playing careers. To make the jump to Cooperstown against that backdrop is an accomplishment indeed!
We have seen the very ugly side of sports in the last few months with the disqualification of world class cyclist Lance Armstrong and the stripping of those seven titles that he had won in the Tour De France. What was sadder still was the fact that the cycling governing board could not find anyone worthy of giving those titles to who had not also doped. We suppose that was the equivalent to what the baseball writers did last week. There has always been a purity about sports that dates back to the ancient runner who ran the twenty six miles to announce the news that needed to be heard and then collapsed and died after making the sacrifice that had to be made. They call that a marathon these days! And we remember the Olympic games of old and the runners sailing along the shore in England as they prepared for what was ahead. And, we remember the English runner who sacrificed a chance at Olympic gold simply because he would not run on the Sabbath early in the last century.
It is tough, in many ways, to watch professional sports these days. We began watching and listening to baseball almost fifty years ago when we, at fourteen, discovered our beloved St. Louis Cardinals and established a lifetime love affair that will stay with us as long as we have intelligence and breath. Athletes in those days might have made little more than a living wage as they wrestled with the thought that almost anything could end a career from a torn rotor cuff to a blown out knee. Now, overpaid athletes spend great deals of time on the injured reserve or disabled list and continue to receive pay at levels that astonish even us as doctors work medical miracles that extend careers that might have been mediocre at best when compared to athletes who came before them who made far less and risked far more. And, that is what, in our opinion, makes the Baseball Hall of Fame so very special. One sometimes gets in there on grit alone! No amount of enhancements can secure a spot among the immortals, no matter what kind of numbers that come from those chemical aids. We remember the great Cardinal pitcher--Bob Gibson-berating a younger hurler because he did not wrap his arm between innings to prevent the sort of sore armed injury that ended so many careers.
Players in those days cared more about their fellows and the game than they did about how much money that they could make! They had a fraternity with each other and the fans who adored them so that is missing from so much of the game today. When an overpaid player cares to give an autograph at a game that he does not charge for as they do at card and memorabilia shows, he is reaching out to a citizen of this nation and the game that is probably earning a fraction of what the hand that signs that ball or jersey or program makes. There is an isolation in sports these days that was not evident when the old Brooklyn Dodgers players often lived right in the neighborhood where their overly loyal fans expressed their love for them, even in the off season. We remember Hall member Grover Cleveland Alexander stating that when he looked out the window on a cold winters day he could take solace in the fact that baseball season was one day closer as the sun went down.
We are about one month away from the start of spring training that occurs each and every year as the days grow longer and the season opener approaches so soon after. And, we pray that some young soul who is going to start his professional career this year will care enough about the game that nurtures him to not be tempted by the drugs and chemicals that have tainted so many that have come before. Baseball is but a season in the greater game of life and we, as a nation and a world, so desperately need some heroes that we can believe in for a lifetime. We need the Cooperstown’s and the ones who endured to arrive there perhaps more than we have ever needed them before as we face a common future that might seem somewhat bleak in so many other ways. To spend a few hours in an escape to something like baseball might be more valuable to the fabric of this nation right now than we might ever be able to conceive. We remember our high school years when we had little going for us other than a future that we could not yet comprehend when we would lie awake at night and listen to descriptions of people like Bob Gibson perform their magic for us as we used our imagination to fill in the gaps that the radio could not fill. It was a good thing then and it is still a good thing now! And, really good things seem rarer and rarer as the days pass by! After all, we live now in an age of horrors that the most advanced visual delivery systems cannot show. We need all of the baseball that we can get just to try to balance out all of the Newtown, Connecticut’s that seem to be increasingly coming our way. Newtown was also an idyllic place nestled in the Connecticut countryside but, we fear, its idyllicism is forever gone and we need to protect with our hearts and our lives places like Cooperstown and what it means to the generations living and dead who bind us to it. For, in doing so, we might be protecting our very soul!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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