Beautiful Game

Anyone who has ever listened to baseball on the radio or even watched it on television has heard some favorite announcer say, "It's a beautiful day for baseball."

For me, that announcer was John Sterling, who does Yankee games on New York radio. It always seemed like it could be hailing, with a tornado lurking on the horizon, and he would still say, "It's a beautiful day for baseball."

Yesterday the Harvard baseball team lost to UMass by 11 runs, but it really wasn't that close. When Nate Murphy sent an Andrew Duffell pitch 400 feet over the right field fence in Fenway to make the game 8-0, it was clear to all that extensive garbage time was upon us.

But it was a beautiful day for baseball, so the fact that Harvard lost didn't really matter. Let me explain.

Steve Goodman, a cancer patient and avid Chicago cubs fan, once wrote a song called "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request," in which he says that his ideal funeral would be in a ballpark.

Give me a doubleheader in Wrigley Field on Some Sunny weekend day.

Yesterday more than 100 fans showed up to watch the Crimson be manhandled by the Minutemen. That didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that the crowd was non-partisan. It seemed to be mostly young adults -- maybe alums, but certainly not avid fans one way or the other -- who had taken their kids to go watch a ballgame for three dollars.

They were average folks who wanted their children to grow up having sat in the front row of Fenway Park, having chased down a wayward foul ball to the cheers of the other fans in the park, having watched baseball on a Thursday afternoon. The only thing missing was a peanut guy who could hurl a bag of nuts across four rows of people with pinpoint accuracy.

Have the organ play the national anthem, and then a little na-na-na-na, hey-hey-hey, good-bye.

As the cheesy tape recorder bellowed the national anthem over the loud speaker, the players on both teams lined up along the dugout or at their positions, put their hats over their chests, took a gallant "baseball player" stance, and stared at the flag. Some mouthed the words to themselves, some made equipment "adjustments" and some stared at the one red seat in the Fenway bleachers instead of at the flag.

But they all had the stance that all baseball players take. For most of them, the Beanpot is the only time they will ever be in a Major League ballpark without paying. And what they will tell their grandchildren is not the score of the game, but how they took "the stance" on a Major League baseball field.

Have the Cubbies run out into the middle of the field. Have Keith Moreland drop a routine fly.

Fenway Park is scheduled to be torn down in a few years. As any Sox fan knows, its history is not one of piling up in glee on the pitcher's mound and having champagne baths in the locker room. It is one of Bill Buckner letting a routine grounder scoot through his legs.

Which is exactly why it should not be torn down. Baseball is a sport whose charm lies in its traditions, good or bad. Those kids chasing down those foul balls will cherish the memory of watching a good ole' fashioned butt-whipping.

It's a beautiful day for a funeral.

Steve Goodman's sentiments, while morbid, could not have better described the game of baseball. I now know why John Sterling didn't care what the weather was like, or even if the Yankees won the game or not. It was all about baseball for him.

Yesterday was a beautiful day to be in one of baseball's last shrines, to listen to the national anthem, to chase down a foul ball and to watch one team lose to another team by 11 runs.