America's Pastime and her grand search for emotion

First appeared on August 4, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

When Wilmer Flores took the field before 50,000 screaming fans, he wept. He wasn’t a World Champion and he hadn’t just thrown a No Hitter and his wife hadn’t yelled “It’s a boy!” from the stands. The uncomfortable scene was begat by Social Media.

Twitter, Facebook, push notifications, text messages flying furiously through the air, invisible yet infinitely powerful. Word on the street was Flores had been traded, jettisoned like space trash from the only Major League team he’d ever played for.

A passing glance across a crowded room, a friendly wave, two people sharing a look that says far more than just hello. Emotion is glaring. It is unmistakable and powerful and can make you seem qualified for a job you have absolutely no business getting. It’s also noticeably missing from Baseball.

Like an image of a great mastodon stomping across the frozen tundra, his burly frame and impressive tusks the definition of raw power, we see a video of Pete Rose running over Ray Fosse at home plate and think “who would do such a thing?”

Today’s stars play hard, they play to win but despite some exciting young talent and the sudden rise of the greatest franchise in professional sports (we’re talking about the Cubs here in case your Google search returns something different), real emotion remains Baseball’s Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

Of course George Washington bears the brunt of the blame. With the size of today’s contracts, it doesn’t take a baseball insider to explain to we little people why playing with pure emotion and worrying over a career ending injury are by nature mutually exclusive.

Your scoutmaster said you wouldn’t get anywhere without a little emotion but you didn’t believe him because he smelled of stale beer and wore a really bad hair-hat your best friend said looked like the tail of a Pomeranian and he couldn’t even get the fire started for crissakes!

So you drifted after crossing that stage in High School and waited for the hand of fate to reach out and give you something to validate your existence, meanwhile that cousin, the one your mother always dotes on at Christmas, got that promotion in Milwaukee and there’s a lion loose in Milwaukee and a not so small part of you is rooting for that big cat to hunt your cousin down and gnaw his face off. That’s what emotion is. Sometimes it takes a successful cousin to give you a little kick in the pants.

In the end Flores wasn’t traded. Turns out 50,000 Woodward and Bernsteins could be wrong. But it's too late for Flores, thanks to our instant gratification-"hey look at this" world, Flores could hit a Grand Slam to win the World Series and pull a pregnant lady from a burning car on his way to home plate, and he will still always be the guy who cried at shortstop.

And while the real, not part-time-pretend media, is busy blasting the Mets for leaking a trade that hadn’t been fully consummated, we are once again missing the trees for the forest. Flores cares.

He’s not a machine powered by million dollar paychecks. He’s not a mindless robot detached from those dedicated to him most. He is a human being who loves his job and efforts to give something special to the fans every night. Something to the Construction Workers and Policemen, the Sailors and Cowboys and Indian Chiefs who pay their hard earned money to watch him. That’s why Flores cried.

And for that we should stand and applaud, for he is a great American, though your mother would probably argue not as great as your cousin from Milwaukee.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

A Smashing Start to "Next Year"

First appeared on April 11th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

I don’t ask for much. I’d like a good hot dog and at least one of my children to follow directions the first time. I’d also like flushing toilets in Wrigley and the sports world to stop heckling her like she’s the subject of a Comedy Central roast.

I’m not in construction. The only thing I build are sentences and that’s done on a part time basis and somewhat pedestrian level. But I am a sports fan and I know enough to realize when Opening Day rolls around its best to have your ducks in a row. It’s not like the boys in Chicago had a short off-season after all.

So you pack yourself into a car and point it north for a little slice of heaven the outside world knows as Wrigley Field. You do this knowing full well the baseball gods will shine on you even though it is April and April in Chicago can sometimes require great bravery, or at the very least polar survival gear.

But Ernest Shackleton you are not, you are a Cubs fan and you don’t ask for much. You want a cold beer and a warm dog, a spot out of the wind and a toilet that works. The radio is alive with stories of civil wars fought in countries devoid of natural resources and any qualitative reasons for living there. And while you depart with the full understanding your journey is likely to end in heartbreak and misery, you harbor strong faith in the front office, despite their inability to hire a qualified plumber, and besides, this is ‘next year’ and you want to be able to tell your grandchildren you were there.

But an unexplained postponement leaves you flustered because, not unlike Washington, you are left choosing between a woman who hid her emails from the public and a man so elitist he believes everyone in the U.S. should be above accepting a helping hand. Talk about limited options indeed.

The Action 2 News broadcasts shots of construction crews delivering plastic outhouses to Wrigley, which only brings more inspiration to those jeering her. The jokes keep coming faster than Republican presidential candidates and while she may be undeniably stunning and the closest thing the sports world has to historical perfection, she remains incredibly fragile and self-conscious in the face of her multimillion-dollar renovation.

The Action 2 guy says something about the postponement being linked to a malfunction in the bathrooms on Opening Day before making a joke about a goat and you wonder if his hair is real and try imagining Shackleton’s crew using plastic toilets while crossing the Antarctic. Why can’t they just open the doors? You drove two hours and would be happy to just sit and watch the grass grow under the lights; after all games at Wrigley have always been more of an unavoidable distraction anyway.

So ‘Next Year’ is off to a smashing start as you take a twenty dollar cab back to the parking garage you had to move some stocks around and mortgage your house just to use for a couple hours. And as you limp out of town with your NXTYR vanity plate and Ernie Banks bobble head wobbling on the dashboard, you do so realizing ‘pottygate’ has made the Cubs the laughing stock of baseball. And while it’s not an entirely unfamiliar position, it is one they don’t normally assume until the first or second week of June.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

This just in...Baseball is Broken

First appeared on August 16th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

Baseball is broken. In fact Baseball is beyond broken, it’s flat-lining. Lying on the table, a team of despondent doctors surround Baseball, heads shaking at the impotent shell of a once proud national pastime, hobbled by scandal and decaying from extensive overuse of chemical enhancers. Things have gotten so bad that somewhere Babe Ruth has turned over in his grave, not before ordering a double and lighting a cigar of course.

All apologies to Apple Pie, but Baseball has gone so rogue America should file a restraining order as soon as possible to prevent the words “Baseball” and “America” from ever appearing in the same phrase again.

The American public is so over Baseball they’re feverishly awaiting the start of football, this despite a colorful offseason for the NFL which saw countless arrests and other off field issues. Maybe Charles Barkley was right when he said athletes are not “role models”.

So what does Baseball do to fix itself besides get tougher on PED’s and pray for a steroid scandal to hit professional football? Bringing Sosa and McGwire back seems illogical at this point. And this is way beyond increasing the quality of ball game give-aways and tackling concession stand prices. The Cubs could put a replay board the size of Mt. Rushmore in right field and it still wouldn’t heal the scar steroids has left on baseball. This is an issue that, like Babe Ruth and October, threatens to become part of the fabric of the game.

PSA’s and rookie orientation programs won’t scare this elephant from the room either. It appears far too large, too entrenched. You can forget about trotting Pete Rose out too. Nobody can argue his story is tragic and should serve to prevent players from making poor choices, but for players struggling just to break through the stakes are way too high to worry about somebody who hasn’t laced a pair of spikes up in thirty years.

Forget about “This Time it Counts” or replay in baseball, steroids appear destined to become Bud Selig’s legacy. If Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez have done anything other than thumb their nose at baseball while shattering the dream of thousands of Little Leaguers everywhere simultaneously, they’ve stranded the Commish at a crossroad as well. If Selig doesn’t do something decisive, something powerful, something Roger Goodell-like soon then steroids stand to bury him too.

Selig’s opportunity has been lost in the buzz surrounding A-Rod’s return and the ridiculous payday Braun will still enjoy despite running the hand that feeds him through a meat grinder. At this point it would appear the only logical move for Selig is to get tough with the Players Association and lobby for a lifetime ban for steroid offenders. The future of the game hangs in the balance.

And if you’re the MLBPA, now’s not the time to come to the rescue of guys like Braun and Rodriguez. Doing so only threatens your legitimacy and risks fracturing your clientele. If Baseball has any chance of getting off the table now all parties involved need to come together and foster real solutions.

A lifetime ban seems the only logical plan of action. When they’re serious, the powers that be will consider a punishment of this magnitude for first time offenders, but until then, this dance we’ve all come to know so well will continue. In the meantime, say a little prayer for Baseball because things don’t look good.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams