A GROUP DYNAMICS PANACEA: 
TALK BASEBALL!

 
     I have a solution to the problems of divisiveness that
have reared their heads on our listserv lately: talk
Baseball! 
     Baseball can be discussed endlessly, at least by
scads of  males of my generation. Disagreements can
surface without rancor--disagreements about who the
greatest player is, or was; what the greatest all-time
all-star team would be; what actual team was the
greatest in history; how old-time players would do in
today's leagues. 
     Players, managers, and coaches of the game itself  
are all famous for their "rhubarbs" that are
often cartooned as vast human pile-ups with dust
stirred up, hands stuck inside opponent's mouths,
stars and cuss words all over. In stark contrast, I
don't think I've ever seen two fans, discussing the
game away from the ball park, at least, "get personal"
so that their own bitter rivalry becomes the focus of
their conversation.

     I wanted to be a baseball player "when I grew up"
,till I was twelve or so. I haven't played the game
since, except for slow-pitch softball in my
work with little kids. I'm 54 now. Yet baseball
continues to occupy a place in my mind that nothing
else, it seems, ever will, except for Baba, about Whom
the most incidental chit-chat or speculation likewise
becomes fascinating.
     I try in vain to comprehend how that boyhood
place inside me can have remained so pristine all
these years. I just read a front-page article in
today's San Francisco CHRONICLE about baseball 
heroes from my own childhood. Ernie Banks, whose name I
hadn't heard in decades, as well as Willie Mays and
Orlando Cepada, among others, were in town honoring
current hero Barry Bonds before a Giants' game.
Reading those names took me right there--to the
rundown St. Louis neighborhood (tears fall as I write
this) at Grand and Dodier, where as a boy I would sit
next to my dad during some 50 games a year, watching
Stan Musial--"the Donora gazelle"--and the other
Cardinals host sluggers like Banks and Mays, Hank
Aaron, Ted Kluzewski, Duke Snyder, and Del Ennis.  

     All those names still stir the magic. They were
all young men who could run fast, or throw a ball
hard, or hit one far. They wore white or grey flannel
uniforms with colorful logos, and the rest of us
watched them in awe. By the time they were forty or
so, they had all retired and opened restaurants, or
in Snyder's case, worked an avocado farm.

     "Baseball is a game about coming Home," a poet
once wrote. Was that it? Was that the fascination?  I
used to read thick, beige, hard-covered books full
of statistics and stories about legendary baseball
figures like Christy Mathewson, who died of
tuberculosis at the height of his career; Rube Wadell,
a great, eccentric pitcher who as a child had been
rescued by firemen and could sometimes be found riding
firetrucks to blazing buildings when he was supposed
to be pitching; Ty Cobb--whom Baba-lover George Gerdes
once played on the New York stage-- whose great
baseball talent was matched, apparently, only by his
"S.O.B.-ness" as a person; Lou Gehrig; and many, many
others.

     I somehow lost interest in baseball when Musial
retired and the Cardinals moved to a big, sterile, new
stadium (now called the "old stadium) with no real 
grass for the outfielders to dream in and a homogenized 
crew of vendors replacing the odd characters in Cardinal 
caps who used to hawk scorecards and hot dogs at the old 
stadium*. Today I don't think I could name 5 active 
ballplayers. But baseball will always live mythically in my
imagination, perhaps like the pantheon of the gods lives in
Greece or Norway. And it will likely always
live that way in American literature, too. 

     I vividly remember laughing my way through
Phillip Roth's THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, a hilarious
book for which Roth chose baseball as the subject, in
the '70s. I loved the magic Redford brought to the
screen in "The Natural," and--very unusual for me--I
twice read THE SOUTHPAW, a novel by Mark Harris that
one of my childhood mentors told me would teach me
more about life than any other book.And I treasured
Roger Kahn's THE BOYS OF SUMMER--the title a line from
Dylan Thomas--about the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers of
1955, and what these guys were really like as
people.

     I even posted an All-time All-star team of Saints
and Perfect Masters on the Listserv once, with Rumi as
the pitcher. Several other guys posted their ideas
of the (literally!) Perfect team, too! The whole thing
was a ludicrous concept,since ANY Perfect Master could
obviously play ANY position perfectly! But that's
baseball--full of personal whimsy and quirkiness! 

     When I was pitching and playing outfield recently
in a game with some first graders, a Mother who was
picking up her son remarked to me, "You have all the
baseball moves and instincts on the field!" She was
the coach of her kid's team, so she was able to
recognize what is true: that under the bright baseball
sun, when I take part even in these school playground
games, my whole body still reacts every time the
pitcher lets go of a ball. My muscles are tensed, yet
poised, ready to move in any direction. My eye watches
the ball and keys minutely off the batter's swing. The
green outfield meadows I roam in are the closest I
ever came to "being in touch with Nature" during much
of my youth, and I still feel that joy when I'm there.
 
    So when you're about to go ballistic about
someone's post, try dropping the "istic" at the end of
that word, and adding a "base" at its beginning.Try
talking Baseball instead!
 
    OK, maybe that sounds lame, like the bumper
sticker I saw in South Carolina that said FISHING,
NOT DRUGS, as though those were the only two
alternatives. But, well, the thought has at least
aided me today in touching and sharing a remarkable
realm within, one that may live in a few other guys
hearts here, too. I wonder if there is, or was, any
equivalent realm for girls, and what that might be.
____
*Major leaguers probably don't daydream much in the
outfield, but kids do. As for the characters in
Cardinal's caps at the old games, I still remember one
fan--probably *born* at the ball park--who would just
scream a shrill, high-pitched note and wave a Cardinal
pennant when the home team did something good. You got
the feeling at the old ball park that there were
people who were born there and died there, and
probably never, ever left.