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Bitter, old Bob Feller. CONTRIBUTED IMAGE BY BOB FELLER MUSEUM, VAN METER, IOWA
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GOING, GOING, GONE!
A Hall of Famer knocks the cover off one fan's enthusiasm for America's waning pastime
BY LEN SOUSA
I know I risk a lot saying this - not the least of which includes being called a communist - but I want to make something perfectly clear early on: I hate baseball.
Most have probably just stopped reading this and that's their prerogative, but I urge you to keep reading if only to know exactly what to attack when writing your angry letters to the editor (please address them to "Pinko Baseball-Hating Scum").
I haven't always hated baseball; in fact, part of me still appreciates it on some level. When I was a tyke, the game was fun. We used to bat a ball around the neighborhood field and run around imitating classic ball players like Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Roger Maris. (My friends and I didn't much care for modern baseball players.) There was a naive kind of hero worship about the godfathers of the sport who didn't wear helmets or form-fitted pants, who broke and set all the early records, who married movie stars, and who made the game look like the fun time it was supposed to be.
I even watched baseball movies about the old time players - there was "Pride Of The Yankees" about Lou Gehrig, "The Sandlot" about playing ball as a kid and even the nostalgia-ridden "Field Of Dreams." These movies focused on the "real" American pastime; the days when the game wasn't about RBIs and steroid use but about something simpler. Strangely enough, I pined for a game I had never witnessed firsthand.
As I got a little older, I didn't play much baseball. I never joined Little League or the school team, but I was still a fan at the age of 12 and used to visit the local card shop every Saturday to stare at the autographed baseballs of those great players. One day, the shop announced that it would have a visit from Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller. Although there was a fee to meet him, I made sure to save up and have him sign something. Feller had retired from the game in 1956 but still shared the major league record for no-hitters (12 games) and may have even been the first pitcher to throw a 100 mph fastball.
More importantly for me, however, was that Feller had played back when baseball really meant something. When the game was still fun, and when it really was the national pastime. Here wasn't a man interested in getting paid huge checks to sit on a bench. Here was someone who played for the love of the game.
I arrived at the card shop on a Saturday morning to meet Feller and have him sign a baseball I had once used to play with the neighborhood kids. After waiting in line nearly 20 minutes, I handed him the ball and was about to say something goofy like, "Thanks for making baseball look fun" when the former pitcher (who was then in his 70s) looked at the scruffy baseball I had given him and curtly said, "What's this? A dime store ball?" The small crowd immediately broke into laughter, and I stood dumbfounded.
What Feller meant was that I had neglected to present him with an official Major League baseball, and he balked at the idea of signing anything else. My ball definitely wasn't official and he wasn't very far off from where I had originally bought it. Still, what did it matter? I was bringing him a bit of my past and asking him to connect it with a bit of his. After finally scribbling his name on the ball with a blue pen, he grumpily dismissed me without another word.
I was crushed. Sure, I wasn't the biggest baseball fan in the world. But while modern baseball felt disconnected, Feller was a part of that class of giants I still admired - the ones who played for all the right reasons. Wasn't he? Yet before I could tell him how great all the classic players like him were, he turned into a rude, uptight curmudgeon whose latest claim to fame was the unsightly price he charged for his autograph.
In recent years, Feller has gone on to insult Caribbean baseball players with near racism, and even criticized MLB for inviting Muhammad Ali to throw out the first pitch at the 2004 All-Star Game. It's safe to say the Hall of Famer is no longer "playing with the majors" in more than one respect, but my experience meeting him more than 10 years ago at last cleared the rose color from my view. Baseball had never really changed. Ever since the 1919 World Series scandal that was at the heart of "Field Of Dreams," there have been winning players and just plain losers littering the field.
I don't hold any animosity toward pro baseball for not living up to its legend. But I do have a problem with those who still equate baseball with America, as if it were some great symbol of our identity. If anything, it's a failed symbol. Forcing players to testify before Congress about their drug abuse only confirms how far gone modern players are from the true meaning of the game - if there ever was such a hokey thing in the first place.
Please don't tell me the World Series is still worth a ticker tape parade or that the sport tells us what it means to be an American. Baseball's time has come and gone, and its season ended decades before I was even born. It's time it stopped claiming to live up to its shattered ideals and simply faced the fact that it's a game - nothing less and certainly nothing more.
Though he does not directly blame him for ruining baseball, Len Sousa might still hold a small grudge against Bob Feller, whose signed baseball he's since purposefully lost track of. Visit www.len-sousa.com.
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