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Baseball Orpheus
Republished here on this
website July 22 2026
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The Call
Installment 7
February 19, 1999
Baseball Orpheus
by David Beck
(Originally posted in Gregg
Pearlman’s EEEEEE! Giants blog)
In past installments of “Free
Agency is #!*%@#*!%#*&#!” and “The Call” I have made the
point that in light of all that free agency has done to
wreck the game, it is Joe Fan who ultimately decides
what he wants. Joe Fan may very well be perfectly
content with the pretentious pap that the major leagues
pass off as baseball, and as such he has every right to
get what he wants. And he gets it.
This assertion was reached based
on the foremost principle of the market economy: the
consumer is sovereign. If Joe Consumer buys it, it will
be made. If Joe Fan is entirely willing to contribute to
the gidzillion dollars Joe Ballplayer wants for playing,
then there should be no reason why Joe Ballplayer should
not get it.
As I looked back on the 1998
major league season, I began to see how dangerous this
is. I asked myself this question, “Is baseball great
because it is baseball, or is it great because fans like
it?” This question is indeed derivative of the whole
“Which came first chicken or egg?” quandary, but really,
ask yourself that question. What is the answer?
In my writings I have boldly
proclaimed that the answer is
baseball.
Pundits through the century have commented about how
perfect the dimensions of the game are—the 90 feet
between the bases, the spin of a curveball, the way the
grass is cut, and so forth—as if it was all evidence of
divine design. After exhaustively detailing the ravaging
effects of free agency, however, I have in the end
betrayed myself by conceding to the proscriptive powers
of the “free” market that confers upon Joe Fan the
authority to forge baseball’s rank and reputation. In
doing so I neglected to see that I was acquiescing in
the surrender of baseball
to fanciful and destructive forces that would be its
ruin—no matter how nobly “market-oriented” they are.
It is not greedy selfish Joe
Ballplayer, after all, but ignorant sycophantic Joe Fan
who bears the most reprehension. I have excoriated Joe
Ballplayer but have shrugged off Joe Fan’s complicity.
I’ve realized now that in some ways, I stay away from
the ballpark not as much because I don’t want to
patronize Joe Ballplayer, but because I don’t want to be
seen with Joe Fan.
Joe Fan may reasonably reply,
“Yeah, Dave Fan,
stay home. Don’t come to the ballpark. We don’t want
a depressing curmudgeon like you spoiling our time
anyway. Good riddance.” And by the principles of the
American free enterprise system, I must sadly comply,
because quite frankly many more fans would come to the
Giants’ ballpark—whichever one it might be—and root for
Mark McGwire to hit his 71st home run than
would root for him to strike out so the Giants could
win.
From all that I have shared I
may certainly envision being like Orpheus, the Greek
musician who played so beautifully that all the animals,
trees, and rocks listened joyously. In this sense I
would like all baseball fans to listen to my “melody,”
follow my lead and really make the statement—refuse
go to the ballpark.
Perhaps, but that is not it. I
wouldn’t care for beans if no one knew who I was. I
would just want a whole bunch of really powerful people
to see the merit in what I was saying and go, “Oh, yeah,
whats-iz-name said some great things there. Baseball
would be
much better if
free agency was tossed completely. Let’s all do it,
get it outta there,
and see the game become something truly great!”
At the least, I would like to
consider that some people have actually listened and
seriously considered the points I have made. The problem
is that not nearly enough have, and I despair so much
because I am convinced that what I know to be the beauty
and wonder of this extraordinary game will never return.
If you are someone who has
chanced upon this site or you are indeed someone who is
a regular reader of
EEEEEE! and
you have some input about what I have shared, I now have
an e-mail address through Hotmail. It is
davsbe@hotmail.com. I would love to hear from you. If
you are indeed a supportive voice, I deeply appreciate
it. If you have constructive thoughts and would consider
sharing them, I welcome those too, even if they reflect
opposing views. If you have devised some brilliant,
iconoclastic alternative, then please!—let me in on it!
If you are, however, someone who
thinks I am out of my tree and only wants to get a good
dig in, or you just want to make the point that you
think I will never get anywhere because I refuse to
consider compromise, then please save it. Joe Fan to me
has simply become an ignorant sycophant, and certainly
my narrow-mindedness in this area does not make my task
profitable. I understand that.
I just value the “hallowed
station” of the baseball too much. It is a slam dunk to
me that free agency has so profusely profaned the game
that a true devotee of the game cannot help but see
it—and would furthermore want to do
whatever is
necessary to change it. I’m not talking about a
purist or even
a traditionalist.
Just a devotee. Joe Devotee.
Joe Fan is just a bandwagon
jumper. And because there are so many of them and they
have so much of the cash that the major league now
covets, he has now become
The Guy Who
Decides.
Joe Devotee would say, “Let
baseball be baseball.”
Joe Fan now says, “Change this
and that and this other thing so I can be entertained!”
Joe Devotee says, “The game in
and of itself is perfect, I enjoy
all the
different possible scenarios and outcomes.”
Joe Fan says, “Gimme more home
runs! And if I get what I want, I’ll pay whatever these
guys want me to pay! If I don’t, then I’m outta here.”
It is simple. With baseball’s
economics as it is, the game cannot survive with only
Joe Devotee’s support.
It needs Joe Fan’s.
Above and beyond the whole
economic aspect is the simple fact that because Joe Fan
has been decreed ruler over baseball when his only
qualification is that he
shows up means
that his boorish, petulant, and inexorable arrogance
will continue to be indulged. It is because of Joe Fan’s
imperious influence that the overwhelming pressure for
Joe Ballplayer to perform distends to such a degree that
it is really the primary reason he asks for his
gidzillions. Joe Ballplayer really is saying, “Joe Fan,
you are so insistent on me hitting that home run against
the most wicked of sliders, a pitch
you would
never even see.
You want me to hit your little home run for you?
It’s gonna cost
you.”
And Joe Fan pays. He pays
because he simply
must have his bread and circuses. He howls
maniacally for his
star ballplayer to come through. Doesn’t even need to be
a guy on his team.
Just a guy who the media showcases and Joe Fan can get
his vicarious kicks through. In the end, however, when
Joe Fan has spent his wad and pleasured himself with the
game, after he has mangled it for his own gratification
in the name of free market economics, he’ll chuck it
like a rotten melon rind.
I do use the term
Joe Fan with a
certain amount of disdain, to say the least. It is,
however, a rather generic term that could be seen as
applying to anyone. I must add the disclaimer here that
I do not believe that Joe Fan is representative of
every fan who
is in the ball park. At its worst, Joe Fan is indeed any
single individual who plunks down his ten bones for a
ticket not just to procure a thrilling well-fought
sporting contest but also to enable greed, peevishness,
vulgarity, abasement, conceit, and whatever other acute
adjectives that would describe all that free agency has
wrought. Yes, the way I feel now, in some ways Joe Fan
is any one my own very good friends who stroll on in to
that “forbidden” domain.
But to their credit,
they should
not be indicted because of the wretched behavior of
others, including that of Joe Fan. It would be like indicting the
people who buy power tools for abetting the guy who uses
a drill to murder his boss.
Joe Devotee is the one who loves the game and has
an exceptionally strong affection for his team,
whichever that team is. He may even appreciate the feats
of good, skilled ball players even if they are not on
his team. But Joe Devotee also genuinely discerns what
free agency has done to the game, to the major leagues,
and to his team. Even if he goes on into that park, he
has a keen understanding of what the real score is. Dave
Fan simply cannot find enjoyment in the illusion any
more. Joe Fan doesn’t care—or perhaps, to be honest,
doesn’t even know nor
care to know—that his team has no chance to get to the Big Show and
that if the Yankees and Dodgers get into the World
Series with only the merit of their mounds of cash, then
that is just fine with him. Joe Devotee isn’t any
brilliant baseball analyst or anything, he is just
someone who is
sincere. Joe Fan is a phony. When I look at the
world of baseball patronage, it seems that for every one
Joe Devotee, there are fifty Joe Fans.
That’s just the way of the
world. Today’s major league world.
In this light, there are only
two things left for me to do.
The first is to simply offer my
predictions for what will happen in the future of major
league baseball. I do this to detail exactly what will
happen as a result of the proliferation of free agency
in collusion with Joe Fan. I truly believe, as a devotee
of the game of baseball, that most of the following
predictions are bad news for baseball. They may be
wonderful for Joe Fan, but bad for the game. Should they
come to pass, I imagine that in the least I will earn my
own little vindication and perhaps the tiniest bit of
credibility. If they don’t, then maybe the game can be
saved, and as a poor psychic I will be none the worse.
Anyway, here goes…
Predictions for the coming years in major league
baseball
¨ The
Yankees and the Dodgers will meet in the World Series.
They will do so at least once
at some point within the next four years. They will then
meet a couple more times, at least, over the next dozen.
A match-up like this simply represents too much damn
money for the major leagues to dismiss managing to see
that it happens somehow. In a lot of ways, they already
have—mostly through the machinations of free agency
endowing those teams with tremendous advantages.
¨ Some
unexpected team will simply make the decision to break
the bank.
This will happen once next
year, then again two year after. The notable factor is
that they will
really break it (“Money is no object” to the most
extreme) and extend spending on players far beyond any
other team’s capacity to spend money—let alone beyond
its own. For
one ensuing year that team will then supplant a typical
big spending club in the World Series. The possibilities
for that team this year include the Diamondbacks and the
Rockies, though no team so far has broken the bank to
the extent that some team will at some point. Of course
the best example of this in the past is the Florida
Marlins of 1997.
¨ More
advertising will appear in once-thought sacrosanct
places.
Most likely places you will see it are as follows, in
order of what you’ll see the most soon to that which
will appear a little more in the future:
n
Stadiums given corporate names. Already a wide-spread
practice, look for nearly every stadium to be so named,
if not all of them. Watch, too, for other ways to assign
corporate names or symbols to frequently mentioned
venues. “Welcome to Pac Bell Park where today, on the
Charmin Bathroom Tissue Field, the Giants play host to…”
n
Ads
along the fences in foul ground, behind home plate, and
in the dugouts. Again, already standard practice, it
will just become far more pervasive and acceptable.
n
Ads
on the outfield fences. A couple of parks already have
put Gap ads in the appropriate places as sort of a
novelty. Look for many more “appropriate” ads to go up.
The ads will not be the unsightly “George’s Auto
Body”-types as they are in minor league parks, but will
be very stylish and representing much larger corporate
interests for sodas, beers, automobiles, and the like.
n
Ads
on your seat at the game. They put ads on all your
promotion goodies, why not there?
n
On
broadcasts, more time devoted to airing commercials.
Time devoted to commercials has already too frequently
pushed into the first couple of pitches of the
half-inning. The envelope of tolerance for filling
non-playing time will always be stretched as far as it
can. If commercial air time during non-playing time is
maximized, look for more “creative” ways to stick
advertising in and around the TV screen during play.
This is already done with score updates; watch for more
of it coupled with the posting of stats and the like.
n
Ads
on player’s gear, equipment, and uniforms. Many players
already have contracts to use a company’s bags, hats,
and of course, shoes. Begin looking first for ads to
appear on bats, gloves, helmets, and then upon uniforms.
Nike’s swoosh is already seen on nearly every uniform,
and if the uniform is not Nike, then the product name or
symbol of the jersey’s maker is prominently positioned.
In college football players wear huge insignias on their
jerseys that display the name of the bowl game they are
playing in—and that name is always that of a company
sponsor.
n
Active player endorsements during play. A player will
not necessarily stop in the middle of a slide, jump up,
and plug the virtues of Pepsi, but he will be asked to
have a Pepsi cup in his hand at some specific time while
he’s in the dugout, and the camera man will be asked to
get a shot of him at that time.
n
In
the further future look to see a baseball game in which
the players look like NASCAR racers in their racing
uniforms. Look to see ads on the field such as directly
placed on the bases or sprawled across the playing
grass.
n
Of
course there is always the Rollerball possibility where
the name of the team itself becomes the name of the
corporate interest that runs it. Instead of the “San
Francisco Giants,” how about the “Safeway Giants?” Think
that is too far fetched? They renamed Candlestick Park
“3Com” Park and nobody said diddly—at least not enough
to prevent it. They have renamed every college bowl game
after a corporation and no one thinks anything of it.
And remember that some team nicknames are actually
derived from the owner’s business interest. From among
many example, I just think of the San Diego Chargers,
who were essentially named after a credit card company!
¨ Much
more emphasis will be placed on players and their
performances.
The “Boo, different shirt” mockery mentality will be
adopted by more people and they will expect to see and
to have sensationalized the accomplishments of the Mark
McGwire’s, the Sammy Sosa’s, the Cal Ripkin’s of the
major leagues. Should baseball fail in promoting them,
attendance and interest in baseball will decline. The
media is crucial to this, so look for attempts to
hoodwink Joe Fan with pseudo-accomplishments such as,
“My goodness, he’s just hit his umpteenth double in day
games against left-handers named Robinson! That’s a
record!” Any attempt to break one of the more
“legitimate” records like the season home run record
will be treated as if it’s the greatest feat in the
history of the world. This, of course, is no bold
prediction on my part, it happened
last year.
¨ In
the same vein,
team accomplishments will mean squat, unless those
teams are the Yankees and the Dodgers, they are both in
the World Series, and they are evenly matched. This
scenario will send World Series television ratings to
Pluto. Should these two teams fail in their task, the
media will make a valiant attempt to play up the
Cinderella story of some team, but will inevitably and
assuredly fail. This will be reflected in the low
television ratings.
¨ Several major leagues
teams will be
forced to fold
in this environment,
or they will be subsidized
by the big spending teams. This is the whole idea of the
“luxury tax.” This scheme is designed to give the
illusion of “evening out the playing field,” while in
actuality it merely keeps other teams barely viable to
be used as fodder for the darling teams, most
significantly the Yankees and the Dodgers. The
prediction here is that the fans will continue to be
taken by this ruse, because they will be perfectly
content if McGwire and Griffey engage in a race to hit
80 home runs a year in the regular season and the
Yankees and Dodgers meet in the World Series.
If the big media-enhanced season performances do
not occur and the Yankees and Dodgers do not appear in
the World Series, look for ratings and interest to go in
the tank.
¨ Expect to see more drastic “dress up the game” activity,
because the Powers-That-Be will work valiantly to
prevent that collapse from happening. Examples include:
n
Radical realignment that includes more interleague play.
There will continue to be a demented desire to try to
get practically every game of the season a Mets-Yankees
match-up or a Cubs-White Sox match-up or even a
Dodgers-Yankees match-up for that matter. Keep in mind
that for every Mets-Yankees match-up there
must by
necessity be a dozen Rangers-Brewers-type match-ups.
n
Moving the fences in to produce more home runs. Other
home run producing ploys will be making bats lighter
(which they have already done), making the strike zone
smaller (they’ve already done that too, really), and
getting players to buff out more (McGwire admitted to
using steroids and barely a peep was heard because
everyone thinks so highly of his home runs).
n
Construction of the unique, traditional-style ballpark,
a la Camden Yards. Gimmicks in those ballparks will
continue to be devised, such as putting the right field
fence so close to the bay as they have in San
Francisco’s new ball park that a home run hit to right
will literally go into the water.
¨ Regular ticket prices will remain relatively
unchanged.
“What is that?” you may scream. “I would think
that would be the one certain prediction! That ticket prices would
go through the roof! What the heck are you saying?” A
number of factors are involved as to why:
n
Please note that this is
regular ticket
prices, and it is for
tickets. The
cost of going to a ball game will always be somewhat constrictive,
as it has been ever since free agency became so
entrenched. The Powers-That-Be will always try to gouge
fans through items such as parking and concessions.
n
The
Powers-That-Be persist in their strident demands for
luxury boxes at ballparks. In fact, luxury box “owners”
will be a significant part of the Powers-That-Be
aristocracy. Ball clubs plan to get a huge portion of
the revenue for increased costs from luxury boxes, in
part to ease the burden of high ticket prices for the
more “average” fan. Catch is, the Powers-That-Be will
further maximize their return on the luxury boxes by
cajoling cities and communities (that is, taxpayers) to
pay for them—as well as for whatever other amenities the
club feels it needs to cater to Joe Wealthy Fan.
n
Ticket prices will never make any
drastic jump,
only gradual increases. They
do go up each
year, but only in the smallest of increments. Too much
of a noticeable increase would be unwise, so the
Powers-That-Be jack it up as much as they possibly can,
but not too much in order to appear fan-friendly. It
does add up, though; the fans are treated like the
little comfy froggie in the pot of slowly boiling water.
n
The
look of the fans in the ballpark is now a major marketing tool. Note
how smaller ballparks is the trend. This doesn’t seem to
make sense. But the Powers-That-Be have realized that
they can get more revenue with less, and here is how.
With a huge, cold, concrete 60,000-capacity stadium a
club may get 25,000 fans in the seats but it
looks like the
park is only one-third full. Should the park come close
to reaching the 60,000 capacity, economically speaking
ticket prices will stay the same because the huge supply
of available seats will not allow more demand to have an
impact on those prices. Now if you have a nice, cozy,
“traditional” ballpark—which in and of itself is
significant (the Camden Yards principle)—that seats only
30,000, then the 25,000 who fill the seats make it
look like many more are there, and the perception that this team
draws and is popular is enhanced (if not completely
fabricated altogether). Should the demand increase to
the point where there could very well be 60,000 people
who want to be in the park for a big-draw game, then
economically there is a reason for prices to go up:
demand is exceeding supply. The Powers-That-Be have
realized that the number of times they could get 50,000
in the park are so few and far between that it was not
worth it anyway.
n
The
Powers-That-Be will also look to get a much more
substantial portion of revenue from television and other
broadcasting venues. Big market teams are able to get
massive media packages, and with an inconsequential
portion of those revenues they can afford to subsidize
the smaller market teams—this, again, is the whole
luxury tax thing.
n
National broadcasting contracts with NBC, Fox, and ESPN
provide considerable revenue. All teams in the major
leagues benefit from their coverage of the high profile
events such as the World Series, even if some of those
teams never get even remotely close to them. In fact,
for the national broadcasts to make the most of their
investment in the World Series, it is
best
economically for the Twins or the Expos if they
don’t get into
the World Series. Can you imagine the sound of TV’s
being turned off around the country if there was a
Montreal-Minnesota World Series? Deafening! (Key point
here should be made. I should state that it is
absolutely best for the Twins and Expos
for each of them if they did get into the Series. The next best
thing for them would be for the Yankees and Dodgers to
get in, which would rake in the big $$$
for everyone else,
including the Twins and Expos. The
worst thing
for the Twins and Expos is if they didn’t get in, but
the Brewers and Rangers did instead. You can surely see
why it is not unlikely for the Powers-That-Be to have a
veiled fondness for the Yankees and Dodgers.)
n
Owners will begin paying for teams and investing huge
$$$ on free agents to “guarantee” success by dipping
into corporate interests that have nothing to do with
the team. It will appear very much on the up-and-up—very
legitimate—but there will be no objections, simple
because all the Powers-That-Be understand the economic
nature of the game today. As I asserted before,
Murdoch’s Dodgers will now be an integral part of the
blended Fox Group family. In fact, when he discussed the
sale of the Dodgers, Peter O’Malley confessed, “I told
[Murdoch] I thought it was too high-risk a business for
one family because there is no reason to believe player
salaries would level off. That they were getting higher
by the hour and that there’s not a whole lot you can do
other that raise ticket prices or put up some more
signs… I told him the truth.” (Los
Angeles Times Magazine, January 31 1999, p. 36)
Murdoch will indeed radically change the way a major
league team is managed, and will empower the Fox Group
to do so many “creative” things that even I, Daviac the
Magnificent cannot predict what will happen.
¨ Many
more instances of dishonorable behavior will occur on
and off the field,
some of which may be reckless, vulgar, or even criminal.
For one thing, the regard for character and
sportsmanship has already been vastly diminished, but
more significantly, there will continue to be no
substantive penalty for that conduct. Think about how
everyone went out of their way to point out how Mark
McGwire and Sammy Sosa were not only great home run
hitters but also great human beings, too. It was almost
as if Joe Fan
wished it to be true so he could be relieved that he
wouldn’t have to be ashamed about going bananas for a
couple of miscreants. Clearly not all ballplayers are so
“angelic.” Certainly we know of all the instances in
major league history when they have not been, it’s just
that in the coming years more license will be taken by
more and more rogues. In a trenchant scene from one of
my favorite movies,
Heathers, one of the members of an elite high school girl’s clique
furiously asks another, “How can you be such a
mega-bitch?” Without a blink the malevolent Heather
smugly replies, “Because I can be.” The major leagues is
just one big group of Heathers.
¨ The
Y2K millennium-bug problem will be barely a blip
and life will go on normally shortly after January 1st,
2000. There, that’s a prediction with some teeth in it.
What? Doesn’t have to do with
baseball? Oh,
but it does. For with the verity of this prediction
comes the fact that all the
other stuff I am predicting about baseball over the next several
years will come to pass. Want some more
really
specific predictions? Okay, here goes. The Yankees and
Dodgers will meet in the World Series in the years 2001,
2002, 2003, 2006 and 2008. The Yankees will win in 2001
and 2002, the Dodgers in 2003, and the Yankees again in
2006 and 2008. The Yankees will be in the World Series
against some other team in 1999, and they will win. The
Dodgers will defeat a team other than the Yankees in the
2000 and 2007 World Series. Just watch.
¨ In
more and more ways the fans will dictate what the game
of baseball will look like.
Kowtowing to Joe Fan by the Powers-That-Be will continue
unabated, only because most people think of themselves
proudly as Joe Fan and believe that they are being duly
gratified. Joe Fan has always sucked at picking
all-stars, but that was never enough to convince the
Powers-That-Be to end fan voting. What will stop them
now?
This last prediction, again, is
the most destructive one. For really, it is the one from
which all the other omens come.
Joe Fan dictating what happens
in the game of baseball.
Ultimately,
here is the
deal that will save baseball:
Baseball
is what must dictate what happens in baseball.
Because money is now the driving
force of the game, and the fans are the ones with the
money, then they will dictate what the game is and what
it will become. They will also be profoundly goaded by
the Powers-That-Be, so please understand that I do not
solely condemn Joe Fan in all this.
The crucial question is then,
how does baseball return as the rightful sovereign?
These things
must happen:
1.
Free
agency must be ended. Period. No in-between
considerations, no compromise plans, no luxury taxes, no
salary caps, no revenue sharing, no restricted free
agents, no nothin’. I will say it as bluntly as it can
be said: No player at any time should have the right to
leave his team, ever, at any time, unless of course he
wants to leave major league baseball and work somewhere
else (team considerations aside). He can take another
job anywhere. He can play for another team in another
league. He can
start his own league if he wants. He can go be a bum
in the street if he so chooses. But for
baseball to endure, it must be taken back from the players who have
used their greed and petulance to wreck it. Again I will
emphasize, nothing is wrong with the players each making
a million dollars a year playing the game,
it is just that
free agency must be eradicated. Period.
All those things must happen for
baseball to be saved. What? There was only one thing?
Oh, well, then, all of that
one thing must happen, then.
I will emphasize, I am speaking
of just the game. Major league
baseball may survive just fine for fans who care only
about seeing Mark McGwire hit a ball 700 feet or
watching the super-$$$ teams like the Yankees and
Dodgers in the World Series. Major league baseball may
make it based on its entertainment value, its show
quality, its dazzling spectacle.
But it will not be,
and has not been for some time, baseball.
And that is truly where my part
as Baseball Orpheus comes in.
You see, I have given up paying
attention to the game. Given up following it in any way.
I read the sports page no more. I check out the sports
magazines and websites no more. I plan to watch exactly
zero baseball games this year, much less go to any in
person. It is the complete cold turkey abdication of my
commitment to the major leagues. As I think about it,
considering the farce that was the Tony Phillips drug
affair two years ago, I wonder what took me so long.
Whenever I watch a game, read
about what’s going on, listen to thoughts and ideas
about what’s happening, free agency is still around. Why
should I continue to endorse it and furthermore enable
Joe Fan and Joe Ballplayer with my attention?
A lot of other reasons enter
into this plan of action, and an inventory of those
reasons may be in order some other time. For now, I will
say that chief among them is my firm resolution against
being treated like a duped Washington Generals fan. The
San Francisco Giants really have the tiniest of chances
to go to the World Series unless they are the team that
breaks the bank, and really then, what is the value of
that? Would
the Giants
have won it, or their money? At its core, in my own
little perhaps even a bit deranged way, I simply want to
make my polemic against free agency that much more
profound.
Baseball, and the Giants
together—they comprise my Eurydice. She has gone into
the depths of hell, and I want to rescue her. “The Call”
is my valiant attempt to do so.
I am baseball’s Orpheus.
Yes, the metaphor may be a bit
melodramatic, but it works.
By indefinitely putting the
whole thing aside, I am essentially compelled to
steadfastly look forward. I will be sorely tempted. In
forsaking any knowledge of the major league goings-ons,
it will seem to me as if she isn’t there, and I will
long to look back too soon. But if I do, the major
leagues will snatch her right back. My Eurydice will
disappear. The game,
as it should be,
will not be there.
I will see only the burning
cinders of hell that free agency incessantly stokes.
No Eurydice.
No baseball.
So as I move ahead, on to other
endeavors, I may indeed
never be
allowed to look back. I accept that possibility. Hades
has proffered such a test of my resolve, and at times it
will be agony.
It is just better than this.
***
July 2026 note: This was written
and posted online three months after I began my somewhat
earnest sports celibacy commitment, one I’ve pretty much
held even today: Paying no attention whatsoever to
anything sports except to the extent my mental radar
simply can't help but pick up things and pay attention
to them. (I admit the one single thing I deliberately
indulge is Kansas City Chiefs football games.) Sad to
say this abstention commitment is quite justified as my
once-beloved major league baseball has gotten way worse
– definitely further entrenched in the depths of Hades.
Perhaps some day I’ll address the things I considered
here way back in 1999...
***
A Very Relevant Recent Post from My Other Blog,
Reality Salon
Baseball Page
Kansas City Chiefs Blog
***
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