If They Build It

Though some great poets have written otherwise, March is the cruelest month. With each passing day, the promise of warmer temperatures is snuffed out by the biting winds that nip at our faces. Even as trees and flowers seem ready to bloom, snow and ice stubbornly linger on the ground.

March, however, is also the month of spring training, that annual ritual of renewal on the verdant fields of the sunny South. Snapping gloves and cracking bats seem to force the spring even for those of us bracing for the next Noreaster. When the boys of summer return, winter seems a passing memory.

This year I feel more removed from baseball than ever before. I barely remembered what day pitchers and catchers were set to report. Without the help of a street performer and her rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball-game" at the top of the T escalator, I might not have recalled that Opening Day is only a few weeks away. And no feeling that baseball is in the air has alleviated the doldrums of winter.

Why the lack of connection? Why doesn't the national pastime provide the same lift it used to? Once we get to college, many of us sports fans don't follow our beloved sports as closely as we once did. New interests and activities can crowd out adolescent addictions. Shoe-boxes filled with baseball cards line our shelves at home, no longer the playthings of our leisure time.

But baseball's missing luster is due to more than the hard facts of growing up. The sport has disappointed Americans continually over the past decade, casting its players and owners in a neverending comedy of errors.

First, the owners effectively eliminated the game's commissioner, unilaterally wiping out a position that symbolized honesty and integrity ever since Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis brought the 1919 Chicago "Black Sox" to justice. The game's natural tendency towards greed and money-grubbing (it is a business, of course) has been unchecked by any impartial voice for too long.

Then came the strike of 1994. I have a rare and odd memento--a ball from the 1994 World Series--a painful and ironic reminder of the series that never was. Egos and stubbornness resulted in the unthinkable--the suspension of an annual tradition that was never previously canceled, not even for this country's two World Wars.

The familiar list of offenses goes on: the post-season games broadcast late at night, feeding network television with ratings but depriving a new generation of baseball memories, the continuing labor disputes that perpetually threaten to shut the game down again and the wild card playoff system that perverted the integrity of the regular season for a few extra bucks.

Now, Major League Baseball is spending money on its public image again, trying desperately to win back the fans' loyalty. Opening Day could once again be a sort of national holiday, the owners hope. Perhaps those ballparks around the country can cease being shrines of greed and once again be fields of dreams.

Already, some mistakes are being made. The decision to allow inter-league play cheapens the World Series. The idea that a game between the White Sox and the Cubs could decide anything less than a game World Championship seems obscene. The mystical boundaries between leagues are now gone, perhaps to be revived on that day when the owners regain their senses.

Hopefully, they will. Television networks cannot ensure the future of baseball, though they line the pockets of owners with money. Increased ticket prices will drive fans away. Baseball needs Americans.

And America needs baseball. In an age when attention deficit disorder reigns supreme and the images on our television screens race by our brains in fractions of a second, baseball teaches patience. The fielders' changing positions, the batter's fixed stare and the catcher's mysterious signs all mold attention to detail. Baseball can be the antidote to our frenetic and fast-paced culture. If baseball will build us a new home, we will most surely come.

See you at the game.

Ethan M. Tucker's column appears on alternate Thursdays