‘Unchanging’ baseball: Seasons to escape, reasons to change

Bill Knight column for 7-25, 26 or 27, 2019

As the Trump mob screamed the divisive chant “Send her back!” last week, I was oddly reminded of the far less ridiculous Wrigley Field tradition of bleacher fans shouting, “Throw it back!” when opponents homer.

That and this month’s passing of Jim Bouton, the Yankees pitcher who threw so hard his cap fell off, rekindled memories of when he was a fireballer and I was a Little Leaguer, and of baseball’s changing landscape yet unchanging escape from evil, temporary but wondrous.

Bouton, who also played for Seattle and Houston, wrote 1970’s tell-all “Ball Four,” which recounted behind-the-scenes glimpses of life inside Major League Baseball.

Inside baseball for me then survives as a few childhood memories: hitting a backyard pitch from Dad through a window in a neighboring warehouse, where Dad went, smiling and saying, “I’ll pay for that!”; pitching to Dad behind the garage and perfecting a knuckleball (as much as that’s even possible), and giving up a home run in the last game of a season where I’d been the only Little Leaguer to hit one out.

(Full disclosure: As a pitcher, I faced other, better power-hitting sluggers, but the mostly right-handed hitters went deep to left field, where there was no wall at Carthage’s Williams Park – where I spent sizzling summers sipping icy Grapette pop or chilled Pepsis with peanuts dropped in the bottles. So, most long balls to left or center were doubles or triples. My dinger went over the tall, chain-link fence in right.)

When I played in flannel uniforms, the Major League Baseball Players Association existed, having formed in 1954 in a dispute over pensions. But the real struggle of ballfield democracy vs. paternalism started in 1966, when the MLBPA hired Marvin Miller from the Steel Workers, and it became a union. A year before its first work stoppage in 1972, Bouton expressed his support.

“Bouton was a pro-union man and said so,” comments Mark Gruenberg of Press Associates Union News Service. “His stands were and are anathema to baseball’s (and other) bosses [and] so was Bouton’s questioning of authority in general and the Indochina War in particular. (Not to mention his literacy and brains).”

Ken Burns’ mini-series documentary “Baseball” 25 years ago said, “At its heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game born in crowded cities, an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating. It reflects a host of age-old American tensions, between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.”

Now, changes seem ahead, as the Collective Bargaining Agreement expires Dec. 1, 2021, and players –workers, if wealthy ones – see an economic system needing repair.

It used to be that rookies were exploited, except for a few “bonus babies” with extra signing money, and veterans were rewarded. But in recent years, owners decided to pay most veteran free agents less than what their performances merit (exceptions this season being Corbin, Harper and Machado – all in their twenties). That’s not lost on skilled ballplayers, who reason talented athletes should earn more in their prime.

In another classic baseball book, 1955’s “Bang the Drum Slowly,” Mark Harris wrote about a star pitcher hearing management promise, “If you have a good year, we will make it back to you in 1956.”

The southpaw replied, “And when I have a good year in ’56, you will make it back to me in ’57, and I will go on being paid for the year before. This shorts me out of a year in the long run.”

Maybe more troubling for the National Pastime and its fans is that fewer owners really compete, instead juggling to keep attention and attendance without fielding the best team, so their franchises can get higher draft picks, cheaper ones. Also last week – apart from the latest round of racist tirades from the White House – Sunday’s standings showed 11 MLB teams already more than 15 games out of 1^st place, some on pace to lose 100 games this season.

As I wrote the year of the last baseball strike (1994-95), “Owners want players to control club spending by giving up the right to work for the best offer – whether salary, great fans, a bonus or a short outfield fence. Players, like any workers, should be free to work for any employer; anything else is slavery, as baseball’s old ‘reserve clause’ was indentured servitude.”

Despite likely changes, three-hour ballgames without tweets and turmoil – when the only lies on the diamond might be “hidden-ball” tricks and the only divisions the leagues’ team breakdown – will remain magnificent refuges.