Out of My Mind (45 page)

For entertainment at halftime during the next Super Bowl game, I'd like to see a track meet among players from other teams. It would be fun to see which football player could run the fastest 60 yards, 100 yards or mile. They could have a mile relay.

Other than being pretty sure that the New York Yankees will win the World Series again this year, I don't know a lot about baseball. It's not my favorite game because there's too much emphasis on numbers. Being a fan involves knowing such arcane facts as which player struck out most often in his career when he came to bat with the score tied and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.

I'm not alone. Baseball is no longer the Great American Pastime. It's getting to be the Great Central and South American Pastime. More and more good players come from those parts of the world. Attendance at games is down and there are many fewer kids playing baseball after school in vacant lots in the United States these days because the lots are no longer vacant. City kids play basketball. It takes less space. The song should be rewritten. It would go, “Take me in to the basketball game.”

As a result of this trend, there are fewer and fewer Americans playing major league baseball. The names are more apt to be Rodriquez and Lopez than Ruth, Gehrig, or Mays. More than 25 percent of the players on the Yankees this year were not born in this country. It seems likely that this is a league average and there's no statistic comparable to it in football or basketball.

Having watched several football games, parts of five baseball games and a little basketball in the past week, I've concluded that the main thing wrong with sports coverage on television is that the men in the anchor booth won't shut up and let us watch the game.

A lot of the announcers are good, but even the good ones talk too much. We don't need to be told what we've just seen. John Madden
knows the game and thinks of interesting things to say. But he often gets bored and talks over a play we want to watch without being distracted by his comments about something else. He repeats himself incessantly.

When there are two men in the booth on television as is usual, they always seem uncertain about whether they should be talking to the audience or each other. It's awkward. If they look at each other while they're explaining a point, one announcer may end up telling his partner something about the game that he already knows. The only response the guy can make is, “You are absolutely right.”

Baseball needs some rule changes. There are too many substitutions. The pitcher who starts the game ought to be required to finish it no matter how many runs the opposing team scores.

The baseball gloves are too big. I was in a sports store where I measured a glove. A $200 first baseman's glove was twelve-and-one-half inches across. When I played as a small boy and someone dropped a ball, we'd all say, “Get him a bushel basket!” Well, the gloves the pros use now are bushel baskets. Smaller gloves would make the game more interesting by producing more errors. A fielder almost never drops a fly ball anymore. If there were more doubt about whether he'd catch it when the ball was in the air, it would make the game more interesting. It's wrong that a ball landing a foot short of being a home run is a certain out because the ball is invariably caught in the outfielder's bushel basket.

The other change I have suggested is to score one point for each base a runner reaches. If he hits a home run, he would get four points. For a double, he would get two points.

As I left the office with my suitcase, friends asked where I was going. I hoped they would and I said, in a voice louder than was necessary, “I'm going to the Super Bowl.”

Everyone was impressed or envious except for one guy I never liked anyway who said, “Who's playing?”

A lot of hanging around hotel lobbies takes place at this event every year. “How many have you been to?” is a usual question in small-talk conversations. I have been to nineteen now. I can count them because every year, on every seat in the stadium, there's always a foam cushion, provided by an advertiser, with the name and date of the game emblazoned on it. I always take my cushion home. All I have to do to determine how many Super Bowl games I've been to is count the cushions.

If the game is going to be fun for a fan, the fan has to hope one team wins. He has to hate the other team to make it interesting. It doesn't take much. Maybe you once stayed in a bad hotel in the city the team represents. Maybe you have some prejudice against the coach, the spelling of the quarterback's name or the way the owner got together the millions of dollars it took to buy the team. It can be anything.

There are many reasons to like or dislike a team. For instance, if you like the city a team plays for, this is reason enough to root for it. It accounts for why so many people love to see Green Bay win. Everyone loves an All-American small town in Wisconsin. San Francisco, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Buffalo and Seattle are likable.

On the other hand, it's easy for nonresidents to dislike cities like Miami, Dallas or Atlanta and root against their teams. I have a friend who always roots against any college team from Florida unless they're playing Notre Dame.

There are dozens of petty reasons to prefer one team over another as you watch on television. It can be as simple as the color of their uniforms. The tacky, no-class, mini-skirted Dallas cheerleaders offend me. One show-boating wide receiver who does a victory dance in the end zone after scoring turns me off a team.

The NFL has done a lot of things wrong, but affixing a Roman numeral to each successive Super Bowl was a stroke of genius. There's something classy about a Roman numeral that Arabic numbers don't have. The use of Roman numerals had all but died out until they started identifying Super Bowls with them.

The opening of the baseball season is something I look forward to because every game they play brings me closer to the football season.

I've missed very few New York Giants home games in forty-five years in spite of the Giants' management's incessant efforts to discourage me from coming.

In April this year, the Giants started their campaign to drive me out of the stadium again for next season. It was a letter I got as a seasonticket holder.

“Please note,” they say at the top of their message, “that we have increased our ticket prices by $5.00.” Well, of course you have. You always do. Why should this year be any different? My bill for ten games, including two preseason games that I have no interest in attending but must buy tickets for, is $750. That $750 is $250 more than Tim Mara paid to buy the Giants in 1925.

This was just a start in their effort to keep me from coming to games this year. The letter goes on to say, “Games scheduled during Weeks I0–I5 and Week 17 will be scheduled for 1 P.M. starts but will be subject to being moved to either 4 P.M. or 8:30 P.M.” That's nice for fans trying to plan their weekend, isn't it?

The so-called New York Giants play their home games in New Jersey. It can take me an hour and a half to drive the traffic-clogged nine miles from Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel to the stadium to find a parking place walking distance to my seat. It's always a long walk. With new security rules and not enough people to frisk each of
us entering the stadium, I have to allow another half hour to make the kickoff.

We are no longer allowed to bring anything to eat or drink into the stadium. A sandwich in a bag or a bottle of beer or water must be discarded at the gate because of “security,” they say. Because they make money selling food and drinks to us for outrageous prices at the concession stands, I say.

I try not to arrive at the stadium hungry or thirsty. A small bottle of plain carbonated water, which you stand in line for fifteen minutes to buy, costs $3.50. A twelve-ounce bottle of mid-quality beer is $6.50. A bag of popcorn is $6.50.

If the game is moved to 8:30, it means I do not get home from the Meadowlands until sometime between I2:30 and 1 A.M. I enjoy reading about a game I have attended but Monday morning newspapers often do not carry the result because they went to press before the game was over.

Several years ago, it snowed the night before a game and when we arrived at the stadium the seats were covered with snow. Fans did what came naturally: they balled up the snow on their seats and threw it at officials down on the field. Giants management was furious with what they called “unruly fans.” It had apparently not occurred to them that they could have avoided having us throw snow if they had cleared it off our seats before we got there.

You might think that by being at the game you'd avoid the tediously frequent television commercials during a game but such is not the case. The public address system in the stadium is never quiet and is usually trying to sell something.

At home, a fan can avoid the sales pitches by going to the refrigerator for a snack. In the stadium, we're captives forced to listen to the sales pitches that constantly appear on the huge screens at either end of the stadium. Commercials are not solely a halftime intrusion. They come up between plays, during time outs and during the thirteenminute intermission.

The time between halves was extended by a minute in 1990 not to provide the players with more rest but to allow more time for commercial announcements.

After the game, anyone who comes by bus, as I sometimes do, walks three-quarters of a mile to where the buses are parked for the ride home. Passengers are a somber crowd if the Giants lose the game . . . joyous if we've won. Passengers have been somber on 41 occasions during the last 100 New York Giants home games—in New Jersey.

I don't dislike baseball; I'm indifferent to it. Last Monday night, when they played the fifth game in what fans were calling one of the great series in baseball history, I watched an undistinguished Monday night football game between St. Louis and Tampa Bay. The football game started a few minutes after 9 and ended about II:45 P.M. The baseball game started four hours before the football game and ended only forty-five minutes earlier.

I watched twenty minutes of the interminably long Saturday night baseball game that started a little after 8 and ended about I2:40 A.M. The Sunday night game was even longer. It ended about I:I0 A.M. It should not take that long to determine which group of nine men throw, catch and hit a small ball better.

My granddaughter, a college senior who grew up in Boston, called the next day to ask, somewhat critically, if I had watched until the end.

“No,” I told her. “Some of us have to go to bed at night so we can get up in the morning and go to work to make enough money to send children to college.”

There are fans who like both baseball and football but almost all of them have a preference. Some older baseball fans try to justify their enthusiasm for the game by endowing it with some mystic intellectualism that escapes me. Columnist George Will is their guru.

The Yankees are the best team in baseball year after year because their owner, George Steinbrenner, spends the most money to buy players. Something wrong there. If another team beats the Yankees, which happens, it's because the best team doesn't always win in baseball. Doesn't even usually win, it seems to me.

I get fidgety watching baseball because the players are fidgety. The pitcher stands on his little hill looking down from his elevated position toward the man with the stick at home plate. He tugs at his cap. He shifts his shirtsleeves. He looks toward first base. He looks at the catcher and nods or shakes his head. On television, the camera shows someone in the dugout spitting tobacco-infused saliva. The pitcher seems to be afraid to throw the ball. The catcher is telling him where it should go even though no pitcher can accurately predict, within a foot or so, where any ball he throws is going to end up.

It's not clear to me why a catcher is supposed to know where the ball should be thrown better than the pitcher does. The pitcher's only input is negative. He shakes his head if he doesn't like the catcher's suggestion. Eventually he's ready and at that instant, the man waggling the bat steps away from the plate and the inaction continues. It's no wonder games last five hours.

If the pitcher fails to throw the ball within the designated boundaries over the plate four times, the batter gets what is called “a walk.” When a batter is “walked,” he doesn't walk, he trots to first base. After playing from early spring until the day before November, they still have not decided which team is best, so they play what baseball arrogantly calls “The World Series.” No other country in the world but Canada is allowed to play. If Japan could play and won the World Series, not an improbable outcome, it could destroy the image the game has of itself as all-American.

Every evening after dinner, millions of Americans decide what they don't want to watch on television that night. It's easier than deciding what they do want to watch.

There's so much fake drama on television that poses as “reality” that it's a relief to turn the dial to sports and watch something that's really real. A lot of us do that. When a game starts, no one knows how it's going to end, so the drama may have no importance but it's genuine. It accounts for why five of the ten most-watched shows in the history of television have been sports events. (Four Super Bowl games and the 1994 Winter Olympics. The World Series never made it. If there had been television in the I920s, a fight between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney would have been watched by everyone, but boxing has lost its appeal.)

Football is easily the best sport to watch on television. Four downs for a team to move ahead ten yards sets up a dramatic situation every time a team gets the ball. The brief pause between plays gives viewers an opportunity to assess their team's options, and to that extent they're playing the game themselves.