IT’S OPENING DAY!!

Yeah, yeah, sure, the major league season got under way in Tokyo about 10 days ago, but I’m telling you--THAT WAS NOT OPENING DAY!  

I’m all for international involvement in the great game, and I recognize the problems of travel, jetlag, schedule and so on. Still--THAT WAS NOT OPENING DAY.

Today--TODAY-- when Major League teams compete, for realsies, in Major League ballparks, THIS is Opening Day.

Once upon a time every Major League Baseball season opened in Cincinnati, Ohio. This honor was accorded to the Reds because they had been the first professional baseball team way back in 1869. So when a new season rolled around, the Reds would play an afternoon game on Opening Day while all the other teams waited till the next day, or, occasionally, till later that same evening. It’s not this way anymore. Nowadays, every team plows in on Opening Day. This stolen honor from the Reds is not the only charming tradition which has wilted under Baseball’s line drive toward corporate uniformity. 

The latest sign of this, and a sure omen of the Final Days, is that teams have taken to wearing corporate logos on their uniforms.  The Reds now wear a Kroger patch on the sleeve of their beautiful, simple, red and white uniforms. That’s Kroger. 

I have no doubt that, within just a few years, major leaguers will dress like Nascar drivers or snooker stars, festooned with a raft of advertising blotches, their team colors barely peeking through.

With that in mind, let’s raise a faint cheer for Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Orioles Park at Camden Yards, Angel Stadium, and Nationals Park. Parks whose “naming rights” have not been auctioned to the highest corporate bidder. (Others such as Wrigley Field, Kauffman Stadium, and maybe Busch Stadium straddle the middle ground.) 

The biggest part of the problem with this is the sheer, slimy, too-American greed of it. A lesser, but almost funny problem is the temporary nature of these designations. The poster boy for the fleeting nature of names is surely the Houston Astros. Their current stadium opened in 2000 and this year collects its fourth name in those 25 years.

But I don’t want to just be an old fogey about it (“Why, back in MY day…”) So let’s move along.

Fortunately, I was able to attend three of the old Reds’ openers …1976, 1981, and 1982. I can guarantee ya, those Opening Days were a big deal. Parades and parties, kids playing hooky, TV specials, and a ballpark near to bustin’. It was great.

But it’s the ‘81 opener which I remember today, now that I’ve gotten past the history and the grousing. It was the last year when you could say, without terrible exaggeration, that it was The Big Red Machine out on the field. Tony Perez was gone. Joe Morgan too. No sign of Cesar Geronimo. Pete Rose was there, but in the wrong dugout. He was now playing first base for the Phillies, that day’s opponent. But Ken Griffey was still a Red and Dave Concepcion and Dan Driessen. George Foster still present and, best of all, the great Johnny Bench still behind the plate.

The pitching that day was a Clash of the Titans. For the Reds, Tom Seaver. For the Phillies, Steve Carlton. It doesn’t get much better than that. Matter of fact, it was the first time in MLB history that two three-time Cy Young Award winners faced each other.

It wasn’t a classic duel, however. Seaver was excellent, only allowing two singles through seven innings, then yielding a double and a run in the 8th. He struck out four in eight innings.

Carlton also gave up only one run in 7 innings but he allowed nine hits and was wild, walking four and throwing three wild pitches. Tom Hume finished for the Reds and got the win. Sparky Lyle gave up a pair of runs in the 8th and was the loser.

Interesting note: Pete Rose led off with a single on the first pitch of the game…first pitch of the SEASON… and was thrown out trying to steal on the second pitch of the season.

But FINALLY, we come to the incident which inspired this saga. Third inning--Johnny Bench comes to the plate with a runner on second and two out. As the greatest catcher of all time settled into the box, I heard the two fans behind me--two guys in their mid-twenties, I’d guess--talking baseball. One of them says, “It’s Bench. He’s due!” The other guy says, “yeah, he’s due!” Now, I remind you that this was Bench’s second at-bat of the entire season. He had struck out in the first inning, making him 0-for-the year, so, of course, on his second turn at bat in the 1981 season, he’s “due”.

I desperately wanted to turn around and confront these two geniuses. I wanted to remind them of the reality of the situation. I wanted to advise them to take more care with their analysis. I wanted to tell them both that they were morons and I was surprised to find them in public without a keeper.

But I didn’t. I sat, watching the game, shaking my head, remembering how many times I’d heard Marty and Joe on the radio telling us that the Reds’ fans were the smartest and most knowledgeable in all of baseball. It would be a few more years before I learned that all fan bases--or at least their announcers--laid claim to that same baseball distinction. 

For the record, Johnny Bench took a base on balls in that third inning of the first game of the 1981 baseball season. I don’t know if a walk satisfies the criteria of “due” or not.       

But that was then, this is now. And now is Opening Day, the most optimistic day of the year.  So ....

“Wait’ll THIS year!!”

MY OWN LITTLE PIECE OF INSIDE BASEBALL

I spent a bit of the endless off-season reading Jim Bouton’s BALL FOUR for the first time. Don’t know why I’d never gotten to it before.

Bouton’s book was infamous in its day, and the author, still a major league pitcher at the time, found himself almost universally despised by other players, managers, owners, even a lot of fans. His crime was honesty. 

Whereas all previous baseball writing had stayed on the green and sunny side of the fence, Bouton dared to tell us that ballplayers were human. That they got drunk, that they were prejudiced, that they played ugly pranks, even that they competed at being peeping toms. Nowadays, while we like to think the best of our heroes, most of us understand that they’re only people. People blessed with superhuman physical talents, underdeveloped mental processes, and bloated bank accounts….hey, we still love you guys! Have a great season!!!     

        Anyway, this reading has reminded me of the one piece of behind-the-scenes baseballknowledge which I picked up my own-damn-self. And in honor of Jim Bouton, here it is.

This could have been 1980, 1981, or 1982. I was working at the Cincinnati Playhouse in…uhh…Cincinnati.  One day at the theater, I was in the office area for some reason, possibly negotiating for more green M&Ms in my dressing room. I was with someone, can’t remember if it was a fellow actor or someone on the staff, when we noticed a female staffer at her desk. We both saw that she looked different from her usual. Normally she was a modestly attractive--well, truthfully kind of mousey--young lady. She always dressed neatly but demurely and always seemed put together but sort of plain. Hair, makeup, clothing…just sort of beige. 

This day, though, she was done up fine. I don’t remember just what her ensemble was but it was clearly more colorful, more stylish, and much tighter than anything I’d ever seen on her. Her hair was sort of “blown-out,” leaving her looking like a brunette puffball. And she was heavily made-up. Major eyeshadow, bright red lips. She looked sort of attractive, sort of trampy. 

My companion whispered, “the Houston Astros are in town today.” I didn’t get it…

He explained that the young lady was the girlfriend of an Astros player, a guy who was a good player, maybe an occasional All-Star. He’d never get a sniff of the Hall of Fame, but he was a near-top-flight-ish player of his day. 

Oh, wait, I left something out. My friend didn’t say that our lady was “the girlfriend”, he said she was “the Cincinnati girlfriend” of the player. A player who, by the by, had a wife back in Houston.

This, of course, was a bit of a shock and started me thinking. If she was the “Cincinnati girlfriend,” did that mean that our sometime All-Star also had an “Atlanta girlfriend” and a “Pittsburgh girlfriend”? Did he have a “girlfriend” in every NL city which wasn’t Houston? That would be 11 girlfriends. Or maybe he limited himself to the NL West, which would mean only 5 girlfriends. Either way, a lot of ladies to keep track of. Did he keep a Rolodex which he studied on the plane to each city? I mean, you wouldn’t want to rendezvous with Esther and call her Phyllis, ‘cause that would be bad. Am I right, guys? Gimme five up top.

On the plus side, a national supply of girlfriends would have cut down on the time and effort of picking up a fresh barfly in every town. On the other hand, I wondered about wifey back in Houston. Did she know? Did she care? And was this standard behavior for all Major League players, or just the random well-organized philanderer?

That was the end of my view into regional Major League girlfriendancy. So I am happy to report that I never saw a day when our office ladies, the whole mob, were all gussied up at the same time and giggling “Hey, the Dodgers are in town!”.