Is America's Pastime Past Its Time?

I've been a baseball fan for as long as I can remember. I first became interested in the game when my grandfather would listen on the radio to the "Red Slobs," as he called them. The legendary Curt Gowdy did the play-by-play of the perennial cellar dwellers.

There was Chuck Schilling and Felix Mantilla. Dalton Jones and Frank Malzone.  Bill Monbouquette and "The Monster," Dick Raditz, a larger than life relief pitcher who deserved to be on a better team. And then there was "Doctor Strangeglove," Dick Stuart.  He hit a ton of homers and made about as many errors.

I collected baseball cards like every kid my age and to this day remember being hurt when for some reason Grampa Bernie -- who was always very attentive -- didn't have time to look at my collection.

My love for the game was cemented in 1967 when the Impossible Dream Red Sox won the American League pennant. Carl Yastrezemski -- "the man we call Yaz" --  won the Triple Crown that year. George "Tater" Scott, Rico Petrocelli, and Joe Foy were among the regulars. A young Tony Conigliaro hit 20 home runs. Former enemies like the Yankees' Elston Howard, the Tigers' Tony Horton, and the A's Ken Harrelson joined the team for the late season run to the top. 

I was truly hooked and have been a loyal fan ever since.

About 10 years ago, I even had a chance to vicariously live the baseball life when my daughter worked for two summers for the Pawtucket Red Sox.

So, like many, I'm more than a little disappointed that Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Players Association have yet to find common ground to begin the 2020 baseball season. The opportunity to command the sports stage and be a rallying point as we emerge from the virus crisis is slowly being frittered away.

We need to look back no further than the days after 9/11 to see how baseball can provide a much needed boost to the national psyche. Who can forget President Bush confidently striding to the mound at Yankee Stadium and throwing a ceremonial first pitch strike while wearing a flack jacket?

As fans, we are emotionally attached to the game and our teams. But, with players and management apparently entrenched in their positions and focused on money, we are reminded that baseball is just a business, and one that is not especially well run.

The good news for me, anyway, is that I have found a reasonable substitute for MLB.

The KBO, South Korea's national baseball league, airs six times a week on ESPN. The weekday games start at 5:30am our time. The level of competition is good with former major leaguers and homegrown stars -- who have or could have played in MLB -- scattered throughout rosters. There's no problem with the length of the games, either. They're usually over by 8:00am, before I've finished my second cup of coffee.

With no fans in the stands, teams have become creative. I tuned in last week to find Sponge Bob, Stitch, Winnie the Pooh, and Mickey Mouse among the spectators in the first few rows at an NC Dinos vs. Hanwa Eagles game.

KBO has become popular enough here in the States that they've added an English language version of their website to respond to demand for merchandise.

Even if MLB and the players reach an agreement tomorrow, baseball will struggle for fan attention. The current proposal sees the game returning sometime in July for a 76 game regular season. But, July is also the time the NBA and NHL will be back in business with playoff competition.

The NFL never really hit the pause button and has been dominating the sports headlines with free agency and the draft. Training camps should be opening in several weeks.

Fans will have options. Watch meaningful basketball and hockey games involving players and leagues that for the most part worked cooperatively to resume their seasons or teams and players who had to be dragged back into business kicking and complaining?

And we all know what happens when football season starts.

Baseball is often referred to as "America's favorite pastime."

If owners and players don't settle their differences soon, we could be talking about the game as past its time.

It Feels Like the '60s Again

I was born in the 1950's and did most of my growing up in the '60s.

It was a decade of milestone moments. The Impossible Dream Red Sox won the '67 pennant forever cementing my love of baseball. I saw Jimi Hendrix at the first concert I attended, and hung out in Harvard Square buying records at the Coop, while gawking at the hippies. I got my driver's license; bought my first car, and made plans to attend Boston University, where I would launched Howard Stern's career.

It was a great time to be young. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and technology was amazing us at every turn. By the end of the decade, television had replaced radio as America's dominant media.

There was a lot of excitement and hope for the future.

But it was also a very troubled era.

I remember where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated. (In church with my Catholic grammar school class participating in something called 48 Hours.)

Within the span of just a few months in 1968 my grandfather passed away and Martin Luther King was killed. Bobby Kennedy, too. The Vietnam War was spiraling out of control. Students peacefully protesting at Kent State were shot. African Americans looking to be treated as equals were attacked and lost their lives. People took the streets to protest.

Voters, who were concerned about what they saw as the lack of respect for the law, as well as societal changes that didn't quite fit their morals and beliefs, coalesced into something labeled the Silent Majority.  They elected a President, who promised to restore order and traditional norms.

The 1960's was a "decade of extremes," according to Kenneth Walsh writing in US News and World Report. "A decade of promise and heartbreak."

I'm sure I'm not the only one of my generation, who has been thinking about the '60s, while witnessing recent events.

The struggle for racial equality was never won and now racism has reared its ugly head with a surprising ferocity. African Americans and other minorities legitimately fear for their lives, especially if they're in an area where someone might think they "shouldn't be."  The list of senseless deaths is growing longer.

While many of us may not understand the logic or purpose, cities are burning again, as they did in the '60s.

The divide between and among generations in terms of personal beliefs sometimes seems as wide as it was during the days of Flower Power and free love, if not wider.

Current technology, which would amaze the astronauts of the '60s, has been both a blessing and a curse.

Countless lives have been saved by advances in medicine and emergency medical care. With today's technology, my grandfather would have easily survived that heart attack in 1968.

Computers and cell phones have improved our business and personal lives. Many of us have been able to work at home during the pandemic, because of high speed internet and technologies like Zoom and FaceTime.

We have direct access to books and music, making those weekly trips I took to Harvard Square no more than a back-in-the-day story. I saw Jimi Hendrix (with opening act Soft Machine) at the Carousel Theatre in Framingham when I was 15. My eight year old granddaughter recently attended her first concert via YouTube.

But technology, which we thought would be a unifier, has done the exact opposite. It has spread misinformation and given a loud and visible platform to those with extreme views. Too many have become intolerant of people with different ideas and are reluctant to learn when presented with information that disagrees with their version of the truth.

We've been through challenging times before.  A new book, Lincoln on the Verge, chronicles the issues our 16th President faced as he prepared to take office. The disparities between the North and South that contributed to the start of the Civil War are strikingly similar to the philosophical, economic, and technological differences between various part of the country today.

Lincoln quickly learned that he had been elected because of the telegraph. It took a few days for word to reach Jefferson Davis that he was the new President of the Confederacy, because of the lack of telegraph services in the more rural south.  This is not unlike the disparity in access to high speed internet -- or internet service at all --  in various parts of the country today.

But the biggest difference between now and then?

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln traveled by high speed train from Springfield to the U.S. Capitol.

We can only hope that the next Abraham Lincoln is somehow winging his/her way to Washington now.