Fifty years ago. Good lord, that's a long time. I had just turned 8. I didn't know nothin' 'bout baseball, but everyone was talking about it. My mom had to explain it to me (she was Red Sox fan). When I first played with the kids in the neighborhood, they positioned me at shortstop, a word I had never heard and thought was made up out of pity to give me, the smallest kid in the world, a place to play where I wouldn't cause problems.
Things were very different then. The old folks who always tell stories about how when they were kids they just went off alone all day, fending for themselves, parents not bothering to keep track of them. They (we) aren't lying. It really was like like that. Maybe around dusk your mom would start to wonder where you were and yell out the back door for you to come to dinner.
We played a lot of tag; wandered the woods across the street catching tadpoles and garter snakes. Occasionally we would get enough kids together for a sandlot game, but usually we played a game we just called "500". One kid would bat (by tossing the ball in the air himself and hitting it), the others would go out and field. A grounder was worth 10, and pop-up was worth 50, and liner or fly was worth a 100. Once one kid got to 500 he got to be the new batter.
Baseball was different too. There were no divisions, just a bunch of teams in the A.L. and N.L. They never played each other during the regular season (other than during the All-Star game) and after 162 games, the teams with the best record in each league played for the championship; no such thing as playoffs. The games all started at 1pm local time. Since the Tigers opponents, the St. Louis Cardinals, played in central time, the 2pm Eastern start time meant I could run home at top speed from school (a little over half a mile) and catch the end of the game on TV. Otherwise, you were stuck sneaking updates from the transistor radio you snuck into school with you.
The game itself was closer to sandlot games too. Nobody worked the pitch count, you grabbed a bat so you could hit. When a pitcher got the ball back they threw another pitch, they didn't dilly-dally. Pitch counts were unnecessary. It was like being on the sandlot, you didn't analyze everything for a statistical advantage, you just played. Runners stole bases and were thrown out. You moved runners along with sacrifice bunts and flys. It was all very instinctive. Don't think, it hurts the ballclub. The players smoked in the dugout.
I won't recount the details of the '68 Series, but it was epic, with astonishing performances and unlikely occurrences. The fact of the Tigers came back from a 3-1 deficit only heightened the experience, winning game 7 against the most frightening pitcher ever (Bob Gibson). It was like a living storybook to an eight-year-old.
I seem to be going down a path of wistful nostalgia, longing for the days of my youth, but I'm not. I would not want to go back to those times either in baseball or in life.
Being outside playing with the other kids was fine and all, but as often as not you found yourself maneuvering through a juvenile world that approached Lord of the Flies. Did it make us tough? Probably. Is it good that we needed to be made tough? Probably not. It may have been necessary, but it's not to be desired. As a small, overly-thoughtful, introverted kid, I can't imagine anything I wouldn't have traded back then for one day's worth of access to something like the Web.
Baseball is a vastly more interesting game now also, especially of late. It is slower, which is annoying, but the players are probably better overall and the strategies are much more varied and intricate (and, yes, statistically oriented). Longtime readers know I was on the sabermetrics train at an early stop. ESPN recently did a test telecast of an Amazon-supported project called Statcast. Instead of inane babbling about who "really wants a hit" and who is "not looking comfortable on the mound" we got primed with deep stats and graphic predictions and intelligent rational analysis in general. It was wonderful. And it was very well received. If MLB provided a cable package of games like that, I would pay for it. There are problems implementing it I'm sure since the skill set of announcers has got to be something more than "just keep the cliches coming" but I think that's a solvable problem. It bodes well for the future.
I watched little of this year's World Series since it was between two teams I don't like: the Dodgers from that execrable city Los Angeles and the pink-hatted Massholes of Boston. The highlight was game 3, a 7-hour 20-minute 18-inning affair that was the longest, and possibly most excruciating, game in Series history. Evidently instead of having to rush home from school to catch end of games, we now pull all-nighters.
Once again, I have droned on in a post without have a clear objective other than to note that since the '68 Tigers were my first exposure to baseball, have officially been a baseball fan for 50 years now. (Of course, it's also been decades since I swung a bat or wore a glove.) Baseball is where I first saw the battle of the objective versus the subjective and realized I am constitutionally predisposed toward the former, an aspect of my personality that has influenced me throughout my life, for better and worse. Although I only follow on the periphery these days, it still brings an image of verdant beauty. The last game I attended was a Tigers spring training game in Joker Marchant stadium in Lakeland, where there is a large green lawn where the left field bleachers would be most places. Sitting in the grass, casually watching the game in the perfect Florida spring weather was true detachment for me; one of those moments that sets itself deeply in your long-term memory.
On the other hand the best pitcher in the A.L. -- Justin Verlander -- and the best pitcher in the N.L.-- Max Scherzer -- both used to play for Detroit. Somehow, the Tigers managed to lose both of them in the course of their careers. Not unrelated, this year the Tigers barely avoided being 100 game losers. Baseball giveth and baseball taketh away. I should see if I can find an Al Kaline throwback jersey.
