Baseball has changed

Baseball was a sport that kids played for fun.  They use to meet in the middle of the street.  The sewer cover was home, a brick was first base, a potato chip bag with a couple rocks was second and the fire hydrant was third. When the neighbor’s window was broken, everyone ran and nobody told who did it.  The first organized team I played for was my mother’s sixteen inch softball team with all the neighborhood kids – girls and boys – playing against the kids in another neighborhood.  At 10 years old I played on my first little league team – the coach had bats, our pants were pulled up and we wore sox under our baseball sox.   We had to bat with the Louisville Slugger label facing the umpire – yeah, we all swung the wood and no one had batting gloves.  The kids who did not play much rolled in the dirt because they did not want to go home with a clean uniform and the team from the other dugout sang “Go back… Go back… Go back to the woods.  Your team ain’t got no talent and your coach ain’t no good.” “Rally rally the pitcher’s name is Sally.”

We did not cry when the team taunted us, we merely taunted back.  We would sit on the bench and cry when we lost.  We did not have batting coaches, but somehow we knew that if we cocked the bat back and put “our bodies” into the swing, the ball would go further.  We learned the rules of the game from watching Monday Night Baseball. We lived in Chicago and we all knew that Steve Garvey was at first base for the Dodgers; Rick Monday was at second, Davey Lopes at short stop, and Ron Cey was at third base.  We knew that Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, and Dave Conception for the Reds would give the Dodgers a hell of a run.  The cubs Ivan DeJesus and Manny Trio were great at double plays.

Today, the kids do not sing and if they do, they cannot refer to their opponents by name, number, or position.  The coaches do not supply bats.  Every player has his own personal bat that costs between $150 and $300.  Some players like my own son has a bat for fast pitchers and a heavier bat for slower ones. I remember my mom yelling about the $40 registration fee, but now I pay $1,500.  The fields are better and if there is no homerun fence, the kids feel like they are on a crappy field.  Umpires are certified, coaches are certified, leagues are certified.  We have a kid who is bigger than the others and his dad is forced to carry birth certificates in the event that someone raises issue.  The game that we use to play is now a job – a prerequisite for high school baseball.  York high school has an A and a B team made of all travel team players.  As a result there are the Elmhurst Electric, Elmhurst Extreme, Elmhurst Elite and more that I forget to mention by name. 

There is discussion about the dearth of African American players in the MLB but seldom do I hear about the play of baseball in the African American communities.  African Americans are slow to pay the fees and sometimes cannot afford them.  No matter how much some families try, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to keep up with the Joneses.  Batting lessons are $45 per half hour.  Cage rentals are $30 per hour.  Police stop the kids and confiscate their baseball bats when they go – own their own to the park.  The price for a baseball bag is more than a basketball so I can understand why by the basketball.

The unfortunate thing is that over 1,000 players are drafted each year by MLB teams and African American players are disproportionately included.  The irony is that 40 years ago this would have been a comment on the racism in America – now it’s about the failure in the black community.