For love of the game (At Week’s End)

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opinions

July 21, 2017 - 12:00 AM

When I first became interested in baseball, along about the time the Philadelphia Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1955, if you were a serious fan you didn’t need a scorecard to know who played for what team.

Every kid who followed baseball could rattle off lineups of most American League teams — many NL, too — and even knew KC bench players and pitchers as well as they knew their own name.

Stalwarts of the game — Mantle, Williams, Aaron, Mays, et al — were untouchable in the trade market, and seldom did many other players change teams. They were bound, right or wrong, in a sort of involuntary servitude. The teams owned them, body and soul.

That changed in 1969 when the Cardinals’ Curt Flood challenged the reserve clause, which prevented players from switching teams at personal behest. His claim, which won court support, was the reserve clause violated antitrust laws and the 13th Amendment, which did away with slavery.

That opened the gate to free agency and, with certain concessions to teams for having signed and developed players, soon had many moving to the highest bidder.

No one with a wit of fairness would question an employee’s right to accept the highest bid for their services.

The second thing that has occurred over the years that wasn’t true when I spent night after night glued to a tiny transistor radio listening to the Athletics lose yet another game is the influx of Latino players.

That has been good for the game. Salvy Perez is at the top of the class in K.C. Not only is he a fan favorite, but he also is talented almost beyond belief.

But, here’s the problem in modern day baseball. 

No longer do I know from one season to the next, often one month to next, who the Royals or  any other team will field for a given game. It drives me nuts trying to keep track of who is playing where. 

I suspect most fans don’t get as deep into the game as I do, and with the financial aspects, as well as drug-enhanced performances that hit the news a few years ago, I find it harder to enjoy the Great American Pastime.

Same is true, by the way, of Jayhawk basketball. I just get to know (by way of TV coverage) the players, when they jump ship for the NBA.

I suppose, as James Carville would say, it’s about the money, stupid.

For a kid of the ’50s that’s too bad.

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