Baseball Yesterday and Today

A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.
   Humphrey Bogart

With the Baseball All-Star game tonight I can’t help but Look back on the first time my dad took to me to Yankee Stadium. The smell of cigars , hot dogs and beer . The criss cross walkways to get to your seats. And as you walked in the dim hallway to the bright opening to the field it hit me all at once. The magnitude of the stadium, the lights and that big beautiful field laid out in front of me.

And then you hear the crack of the ball, watching it soar out into the bleachers like a missile, or bouncing off the facade to a waiting player below. Baseballs ricocheting off the seats, the steel beams holding up the roof , with children and grown men in suits chasing them like they were diamonds.

Before me were the Gods of baseball with names that would become as familiar as the saints I learned about in school. The Mick , Rog , Whitey , Berra , Richardson ,Howard and Casey. 

I was hooked , it would be but a few years when I figured out how to get to the stadium that I was hitch hiking to the Bronx’s and sneaking into games if I didn’t have the money to pay for a bleacher seat.

The players then signed contracts year to year, most worked in the off-season and the fans had a much closer relationship to the players. With no guarantees, the game was a “dog eat dog “ profession. Bean balls and spikes flying high were commonplace in those days; players would hand out their own brand of justice on the field. It truly was survival of the fittest; there were few if any luxuries except for the very best of the best. That game is gone forever, money changed everything.

Today there are players with 10 year contracts , making hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries and much more in endorsements. The fans are kept at a distance and one has to take out a loan just to go see a game. Even bench players are making million’s more than the very best from those days. For today’s players, life is good.

I still love the game because of it beauty and the skill set needed, like no other sport to excel. but it is a watered down version of the game I grew up with and as BB King used to sing , “ The Thrill is Gone”