Let's Face It: The Game Stinks.

Probably the worst mistake the Yankees and Mets could have made when it comes to the future of their—our—sport, was to play, intact, so many of the old, old classics on their respective networks during this pandemic.

Don Larsen's perfect game, the 1960 Mazeroski game, the Mets' series against the Orioles in 1969, and then against the Astros and Red Sox in 1986 (a year, to be sure, that altercockers such as myself still think of happening as just about yesterday)—they were mesmerizing, even the losses (A loss never previously having been replayed on either channel.)

I have to admit, my stomach balled into knots watching Game 7 of the 1960 World Series.  Such an agonizing loss!  BOY, did those Bucs have luck!

Among other complaints, Forbes Field was in about THE worst condition I have ever seen a major-league ballfield in, even for a routine game.  There was not a true bounce on it.

The pebble that did in Tony Kubek?  Hell, it's amazing there wasn't such a play every inning.  Even the great Clemente out in right field botches a couple of balls hit out there, trying to field them off a turf with divots that look to be the size of foxholes, even on the grainy, black-and-white telecast.

Thanks to that field, Bobby Shantz, the hard-luck Yankees pitcher who did such a great job that day, comes within a millimeter of bouncing a two-run double over the head of Don Hoak at third base, in the top of the 8th, with the Yanks already up, 7-4.  The ball was ruled foul—I'm still not sure it was.  One pebble here, another there...

Why this should have been, I don't know.  I had assumed that the Steelers, the Panthers, and every other football team in Pittsburgh must've been using Forbes on weekends.  But in looking it up that does not seem to have been the case.  Was this some weird way of trying to level the odds?  Was the groundskeeper just a hopeless drunk?  (In which case, we could understand.)

But I digress.

The point is, these games were riveting.  They were great.  You saw players do all sorts of things—such as Mantle's great, heads-up dive back into first to avoid a game-ending double-play in Pittsburgh—and playing all kinds of ball.

And it moved.

You know, Whitman said a very long time ago (not even I remember it), that baseball was "America's game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere."

That was still true in the 1960s.  It was still true in the 1980s, and even, maybe 15 years ago.  You watch these games and you're struck first and foremost by how all the celebrities are into the games at the World Series—or at least, they dare not say otherwise.

Jackie Kennedy is so intent on the play in the 1969 Series that she hands John-John some money to go to the concession stand, her eyes staying on the field.  Averell Harriman—Averell Harriman!—being interviewed by Tony Kubek between innings, can only talk about Bud Harrelson.  All the celebs talk baseball, and when play starts again their very brief interviews end and it's right back to the broadcast booth.  No inning-long "commentary" from some bored stars of the latest Fox sitcom flop, desperately trying to find something to say.

Sure, the parks looked like sagging, haimishe wrecks.  But the people knew it was a big deal.  They dressed up in suits and dresses for the World Series, and they hung on every pitch.  In good part because it was still a fun, fast-moving game.

Not anymore.

Our Peerless and Dauntless leaders, El Duque and Alphonso, have already written about the all-too-predictable failures of MLB and the players in negotiating some sort of season, and they have written about it very well.  I agree with pretty much all of that.

Personally, I think the risks are too great, and we should let the 2020 season go, much as that leaves me chagrined.  But if they were going to play, the negotiations should have been all about safety and the quality of play.  Of course, being who they are, they made it into money, especially the owners, who would be taking NO risk.

Worst possible outcome.  And with this virus hanging around, and the upcoming fight over a new general agreement, WILL we have baseball in 2021, even?  Maybe not.

And maybe that should lead to a total reboot, which could be a good thing, because the problems with baseball today go far beyond this pandemic.

Let's face it:  "The three true outcomes" brand of baseball, combined with the usual, runaway greed, is killing the sport.  Ballgames, especially big ballgames, are bombastic, endless spectacles that have been reduced to Home Run Derby.

I suppose it's natural that it came down to this.  Everything in our society tends to narrow down to its logical endpoint.  Art gets simpler and more abstract, until you're putting blank canvasses or vivisected cows on the walls.  Capitalism boils down every industry until the most efficient—and bland—company rules everything, and then puts out a shabbier and shabbier product.

I don't know why we expected baseball to be any different, especially because it is was our national game.  We reduced it to the "most efficient" outcome, tacked on a gazillion ads and product placements, marked the price way, way up, and declared, "Job done!"

Well, it stinks.  Watch one of those classic games on YES or the Mets' NO channel, then watch a re-broadcast of a more recent game, and you'll see the difference.  The sport today has no juice, no dazzle, its stadiums filled mostly with people who seem to be there on what used to be called race memory (the human race), maybe wanting to show it to their kids before it disappears.

There's no "snap, go, fling."  The fans sit silent for the most part, filling their mouths with the largely awful, overpriced food, probably thinking, 'Well, it beats the food court in the mall.'

I don't think baseball, per se, is going to die, no matter how badly its greedy practitioners and owners botch this crisis.  But I do think it may have to emerge as something completely different to survive.  And I don't think that would be a bad thing.