Sunday Morning Is For Recalling?

You have to be old enough to remember how sad it was when they quit making Packard automobiles. (About 50 years ago?) Their slogan was, “Ask the man who owns one.” They had a unique grill and you could always identify their purring engine. Few of us actually thought we’d ever own one, but that gorgeous car was the stuff of our dreams.

Or, you have to be of an age when you had, actually, once ridden on a real train, with its dirty, sooty smoke and loud whistle. Or, maybe when dogs ran free and milk was still delivered by horse and wagon and the slow, plodding old nag could move ahead to the next “stop” by memory.

Yes, you have to have enough “miles on you” in order to recall the real pleasures of baseball. When players earned salaries that we could comprehend. When tickets and hot dogs were within reason. When your team was your team because of its history and also because it had always been your family’s team. When a trip to your ball park was a real treat, maybe just a few times a year, like fourth of July.

Believe it or not, once upon a time the Dodgers played in Brooklyn, NY. There was a second team in St. Louis, the Browns. A home-run slugger named Ruth was once a PITCHER! In other words, history itself was a big part of “our national pastime.” You needed to know these things in order to be your daddy’s child. (I recall taking our two girls to Wrigley Field one time and, pointing out to right field, I asked them, “Do you know who that is?” They didn’t. “Watch him carefully when he goes for a fly ball. That’s Roberto Clemente, and you are looking at the best there is. From now on, you should judge all outfielders by his standard.”)

Beginning with teams moving to other cities, and parks being torn down for bigger, newer palaces, and salaries skyrocketing out of sight, we fans were slowly falling behind in the “game.” Big Business now reigns and even congress is powerless to make our pastime legitimate…an even field of play. The last straw will be when they change the name of Wrigley Field. Our history, our hearts, will cease to keep time to the strains of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”