Saving the Game

Friday night (12/28/07)

It was the late 1960s or early 1970s, but I was the age that I am now. I was in Manhattan, and went up in a high-rise to the office of retired baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio. I was there to persuade him to give me the address of baseball's commissioner Bowie Kuhn, something that was a closely-held secret. I made my case, and eventually he relented and gave me the address, because I had a plan to save the game he loved. I made my way to Kuhn's office, and walked in without an appointment. Once there, I opened a big square case that I had been lugging around. It contained a metal contraption inside a clear box, which, when placed on a baseball outfield, would chew up and strip off Astro Turf, revealing the natural grass, so that once again the game could be played the way it was intended to be played.

*****

I'm still in Richmond, at the home of my twin brother and sister-in-law. Last night, just before bed, I stood before Drew's bookcase filled with books about baseball, and chose one called "The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball." A biography of Joltin' Joe DiMaggio was next to it.

This dream is a metaphor for the current problems in baseball; I could just as easily have substituted steroids for Astro Turf and Bud Selig for Bowie Kuhn, except for the fact that Selig is probably worse than Kuhn ever was, and the problem of steroids is a lot more difficult to root out and solve than the scourge of Astro Turf.