By MIKE BEAS
Someone asked me the other day when I last tested the turnstiles at a Major League Baseball game. Couldn’t pinpoint a specific year, but could produce a venue (Wrigley Field) and the Cubs’ opponent that sun-drenched afternoon (St. Louis).
Do remember Mark McGwire knocking two out that day, so I’m confident this had to have been either the summer of 2000 or 2001. In other words, not recently.
Do I miss it? Can’t say I do. With the sport littered by steroid users, accused steroid users and eventual steroid users, baseball’s innocence exited stage left a long time ago and took a noticeable chunk of fan base with it. Yes, the economy shoulders some of the blame — a ballpark’s food-beverage combination remains as inexpensive as it is healthy — which makes for a convenient crutch for the MLB suits who must explain the downturn in attendance figures.
Good economy or bad, it comes down to belief in the product, or lack thereof. When one-time heroes, the A-Rods, the Mannys, the Clemenses, are being exposed as users of steroids or other illegal substances, skepticism settles in. Then outrage. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Looking back, it’s fitting McGwire, the once-idolized slugger turned social recluse, starred in the last game I attended. We fawned over his power; he was a batting practice phenom who could have worn himself to a nub that afternoon at Wrigley had he had the time to autograph every hat, baseball and game program thrust in the direction of his massive chest.
At the time McGwire and so many of his headline-happy cohorts represented everything that was right about the game when in fact they were everything that is wrong about it. If Derek Jeter and/or Albert Pujols, baseball’s supposed “cleanest” superstars and the two sturdiest threads holding baseball together, in time plead guilty to performance enhancing drugs, the fallout would achieve previously unexplored levels of negative.
This is what Abner Doubleday’s creation has been reduced to, waiting for two future Hall of Famers to stumble over their own greed so skeptics are equipped with the ultimate “I told you so.” Attending games to soak up the atmosphere of a particular stadium trumping the desire to witness in person certain players and teams. Wondering if the guy belting the tape-measure homer is on something significantly stronger than Wheaties and Power Bars.
Selfish behavior has yet to pull the plug on baseball, though it has wrapped both hands around the cord. The game so many of us grew up with is going, going, gone. What the sport looks like 10 years from now could make for a frightening visual given how badly its reputation has been bruised over the past decade.
Maybe soon we’ll be fed a dose of feel-good — the Cubs winning the World Series, a player chasing a .400 batting average into September, the Reds a contender even for one magical Cincinnati summer — and some of this negativity can be washed away. Baseball is due, that’s for certain.
• Mike Beas is a freelance writer/columnist and Kokomo native who resides in Carmel. He may be reached at mbeas@att.net
