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GOODBYE!
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Is hitting one out of the
park an overrated skill?
By GERALD NACHMAN
of TheColumnists.com
The basic problem with Barry Bonds isn’t Barry
Bonds, or BALCO, or even steroids. No, the real problem is baseball’s
crazed home-run worship. Were the home run not placed on a pedestal,
both in lore (“Casey at the Bat,” “The Natural,”
“Damn Yankees”) and in fact (Cooperstown, card shows),
nobody would care what Barry Bonds popped, injected, rubbed on
or otherwise ingested.
True baseball fans and astute sportswriters and broadcasters
have always found home runs one of the more mundane events in
a ball game. Unless a homer ties, wins or busts open a game,
the home run is, for many of us, just a very long out-of-the-park
hit. The only people who marvel at home runs are wine-and-brie
fans, sports stations hyping their local homeric hero, or a mindless
macho-mania that places power above all.
The beautiful thing about baseball--and the thing that has kept
it distinctive from (and to my mind above) football--is that
it’s a game of finesse where body strength is no measure
of a player’s value. Bonds and other clubhouse Charles Atlases
to the contrary, baseball players come in all shapes and sizes,
and often the smallest and slimmest and least bulked-up are far
more exciting than the beefiest slugger. I give you Joe DiMaggio,
Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Ted Williams (“The Splendid Splinter”),
among many. The big guy in baseball--the strapping Luke Easters
and Ted Kluzewskis and Ernie Lombardis and Moose Skowrons--used
to be considered a freak, like six-foot basketball players.
America, though, reveres heft and power, both in its foreign
policy (speak softly and carry a big stick) and, now, on the
ball field. What used to be “a game of inches” has
become a game of fences. But a home run, examined objectively,
is just a matter of a wooden club connecting solidly with a ball--no
small feat, to be sure, but once the ball is in the air the play
is finished and it’s all over but the swooning.
There is much more excitement in a sweetly executed double play,
a diving catch, a ball plucked out of the stands by a leaping
leftfielder, a rundown, a squeeze play, a stolen base, a collision
at home, or any of a dozen more complex events that occur routinely
in a game. But because of Babe Ruth, the home run has become
a hugely overrated event in baseball that has elevated Barry
Bonds to absurdly mythic proportions.
Bonds now is routinely referred to as “the greatest player
in the game” when, in fact, he’s only an average outfielder
with a fair arm, a routine base runner and the very antithesis
of a hustler. Trotting around the base paths after swatting a
home run does not tend to produce scrappy ballplayers--and, indeed,
Bonds is known to be something of a shirker, too famous and adored
to bother running out mere non-home runs. His general sullen
presence extinguishes any joy that might be found in his one-man
home run derby.
What Bonds does extremely well is hit a lot of baseballs a long
way--a worthy talent but not the be-all and end-all of the game.
Because of Bonds, and before him the already-surpassed wonder
boys Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, the home run has begun to lose
a lot of its splendor, and not a moment too soon.
Baseball is not about muscle, strength or power. It’s about
cutting the corners of home plate with a fastball, dancing off
first base to get a half-step advantage before racing to second,
maneuvering under a drifting ball being buffeted about by a nasty
wind, and hoping the closer can retire the side with the heart
of the order coming up in a 1-0 game. It’s about a third
baseman blocking a bad bounce that knocks him down, but he recovers
and, from a sitting position, fires the ball across the diamond
to nip a runner at first by an eyelash. Now that’s damn
thrilling stuff.
A home run, no matter how high or far it travels, is just a home
run--a long fly ball, really--and once you’ve seen one you’ve
pretty much seen them all.
©2005 by Gerald Nachman. The Nachman caricature is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted on Jan. 10, 2005.
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