What's Happening To Baseball?

You can find Buck Weaver in a saloon near 63rd and Cottage in Chicago almost any afternoon the horses aren't running. He won't be drinking --he'll be in the back room.

Buck is willing to interrupt his pinochle game to tell you about the good old days of baseball.

"We used to sit there with a file," he recalls, "and get our spikes as sharp as razors."

Buck will recount his pre-game conversations with big Heinie Zimmerman of the hated Cubs, which ran, roughly: "Why, you big %$$#!!**-/ ¢ of a #--!*!, if you $!&$":)¢ anywheres near third base, I'll **#!//¢$ your :)!/%#!&! zoff!!" And he meant it.

Buck Weaver was one of the greatest third basemen who ever lived, but don't look for him in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was one of the eight players on the Chicago White Sox who were ruled out of baseball for life when Judge Landis decided they threw the 1919 World Series to Cincinnati.

Buck never did collect a nickel from the gamblers. He wants to be reinstated in baseball, so he can die with a clear record, but the commissioner won't even answer his letters.

Buck Weaver is Old School baseball. Are there any like him today?

If a team of the ten best men in the majors today could play the ten best of two generations ago at their prime, today's players would beat the ancients ten games out of ten--razor-spikes and all.

Today's ball players throw harder, hit farther, are meaner and bigger, throw more beanballs at batters and more blocks at second basemen than any athletes since Abner Doubleday decided to invent the national pastime.

The older the old time athletes get, the greater they become--the farther away they get from college, the more All American honors they won.

But in any sport where results are measurable, it's no contest. The fellows with the knee-length track suits and handlebar moustaches galloped the mile in 4:12. It took a 1954 athlete to do what they said was impossible--run the mile in less than four minutes. They run faster, jump farther, vault higher, and put the shot longer today than ever before. A young Californian named Bob Mathias mangled the Olympic records of heroic Jim Thorpe.

Basketball has come along so fast that fair-minded players who watch the dazzling play in state high school tournaments acknowledge that most state champions could have taken good college teams of a dozen years ago. If nothing else, they'd simply play over the old timers' heads. Today's kids would take a 2 to 4 inch height advantage into the game.

Football? Maybe 60 or 70 to 0,favor of the atomic age. The game today is so fast, the passing so skilled, the linemen so large, the boys from the flying-wedge days would be as helpless as the College All-Stars are in that game with the pro champions every August.

Is there any reason for thinking baseball is any different than the other sports?

'54 can beat '94, '04, and '14 in every department--including getting plotched when they're supposed to be in their hotel rooms. Big difference is--you don't hear so much about such goings on these days.

Today's clubs have press agents with split personalities. They spend half the time trying to get propaganda into the papers, and the other half trying to keep the bad stuff out. They're pretty good at both.

In Boston they have an outfielder who chases fly balls with such abandon that Lou Boudreau asked the management to please pad the walls, and they did. Now Jimmy Piersall is the only outfielder in baseball whose equipment includes glove, bat, spikes, and a foam rubber outfield.

"Sissy stuff!" the old men will snort. But were bones harder in the old days? Would a skull bashing into concrete in 1954 crack, whereas a 1904 skull hitting the same concrete at the same velocity merely knock a few chips out of the wall? The 1954 game (continued on page 46) Baseball(continued from page 17) is guilty only of being a little colder, more businesslike. In the industry of baseball, Mr. Piersall is worth approximately $500 a pound on the open market, and if the Boston management wants to protect its chattel by padding the corral, they would seem to be displaying good business sense.

Early this season a rookie had the nerve to accidently cut the hand of Giant second baseman Davey Williams in a play at second. The following inning the rookie, defending second base in a double play, was kayoed when one of Williams' teammates, a husky catcher named St. Claire, plowed into him. Anybody who thinks ballplayers are getting soft should sit in the stands and watch second base, or close plays at home.

The beanball is as much a part of a pitcher's equipment today as a curve ball and a cold stare. One mid-west fan got so worried about beanballs, he wrote the sports department of a newspaper suggesting that when a batter is hit on the head and knocked unconscious, he automatically scores a run. It would be a noble gesture toward gentlemanly sport, but it wouldn't work. In a month, every bench in the majors would have brought up a hard-headed rookie from Ashtabula with the sole assignment of getting his noggin in the path of fast balls.

Baseball is more skilled and fierce than ever. What, then, is happening to attendance? Millions fewer are seeing games now than in the years after the war. Only a few clubs are making money. More people watch horse races than big league baseball, although if you put mutuel windows in the ball parks the customers would knock down the gates to get in. Gambling is illegal everywhere but in churches and horse parks. We can't vouch for the philosophy behind church bingo games, but as far as the horses go, they're too smart to be fixed or to bet on themselves, so they may be gambled upon by Homo sapiens. Accent sap.

Two hours used to be unusually long for a baseball game. They used to start at 3:00 in the afternoon, and the old man could be depended on to get out of the park and home by 5:30 or so, even allowing time to stop at the corner bar for a slug of sarsaparilla or something.

Now they start at 1:30 or 2:00, and you get home about the same time as when they began at 3:00. The men who run baseball could speed up the game any time they wished, but they don't wish. They sell more grog at long games. The concessions mean the difference between black and red ink at many ball parks, and they're going to bleed those hot dog and beer sales for every last nickel, even if they kill the game doing it.

Promotion minded club owners try to sell the ball park as a great place to take the family. In the fifth hour of a double header on a hot Sunday afternoon, your family would be safer in Herman's All-You-Can-Drink-For-Two-Bucks Bar and Grill. Ask the ball clubs why they have dramshop insurance. One recent Sunday in Wrigley Field in Chicago there were three gang fights going on in the park simultaneously--one in the bleachers, one in the $2.50 seats, and one on the field in front of the Cardinal dugout. The game stopped, and the television cameras turned their innocent little eyes on the American flag, while the announcer whistled Yankee Doodle. Mustn't show the naughty men fighting in beautiful Wrigley Field or the TV cameras will get booted out of the park right on their image orthicons.

In spite of the skill and spirit of the players, games are so slow they get downright boring. Pitchers dawdle interminably over the resin bag, pawing the ground, glaring at the batter, shaking off signals, throwing to first, taking off their gloves, massaging the ball, and conferring with the catcher. Managers are allowed to stall. Batters hold up the game by stepping out of the box. When Mickey Cochrane was catching and managing his Tigers to a championship, if a pitcher wasn't performing up to snuff, Iron Mike would fire the ball back with everything he had. The player on the mound had to pitch well or risk having his head taken off. Now the catchers stop the game, stroll out to the hill and have a good heart to heart chat with the hurler. A good catcher can use up forty-five seconds saying, "Pudid iniz eer!"

Doubleheaders are abominable, but the newest invention of the baseball moguls, the twilight doubleheader may drive all but the hardiest baseball nuts out to the race tracks. If nothing else, the human seat isn't up to that kind of abuse.

The ball players today are as colorful as they were in any age of baseball, but they're operating behind an iron curtain called public relations. It may shock Little Leaguers to learn that some of their heroes get tanked with surprising regularity. If a player happens to become indiscreet and somebody's jaw busts their throwing hand, public relations takes over. The hero either fell out of bed or was the victim of a "locker room accident."

The PR boys aren't always successful, of course. A Milwaukee god named Eddie Mathews, who hits more home runs than anybody, made one bad mistake at 3:00 A. M. one night this summer when he was barrelling through the outskirts of his adopted city. He was picked up by the only traffic cop in the state of Wisconsin who was completely indifferent to the fortunes and misfortunes of the Milwaukee Braves.

With the players safely tucked under the motherly wings of front office public relations, the owners and managers of major league teams have assigned themselves the task of creating color and controversy. Thus, instead of Roy Campanella saying what he thinks of Sal Maglie, President O'Malley may be quoted. Leo Durocher will give the reply. Maglie's reply will be to throw another fast one at Campanella's head.

Casey Stengel of the Yanks and Frank Lane of the White Sox have the assignment of creating a feud between their respective clubs. Publicly, each rates scorn and derision from the other; privately, each thinks the other is a great baseball man.

Players never indulge in personalities today--anymore than they sign autographs on the field. They let their elders do the talking.

Does it help the game? Look at the attendance.

Television may hurt attendance. In Milwaukee they broke every crowd record in the majors in their first season, and there is no TV at any time in that town. But Milwaukee also has a huge advantage over the older clubs, whose parks are built near the centers of their cities. Milwaukee has a huge and inexpensive parking lot. Parking is a problem in most big league cities.

There's one more element to be considered in the sliding attendance. That element is the New York Yankees. The cash customers are tired of seeing the Yanks waltz away with the pennant year after year. They're sick of it in New York, too, where the more they win, the less they draw.

This is another case of the rich getting richer. The more the Yankees win, the better that World Series money looks to promising young players, and the easier it is for the Yanks to sign them up.

Even with Yankee home attendance dwindling, the club is one of the richest in the history of baseball.

Stop the Yankees and you'll have a dog fight in the American League and World Series. It would be the greatest gate stimulant the game could have.

How do you stop the Yankees? By breaking them up? That would be the worst possible step. Baseball could take a lesson from pro football, and adopt the draft system. The lowest clubs would get first choice of the top minor league players each year. A look at the balance of power in the pro football leagues for the past twenty years proves the value of the draft. A draft would equalize the pennant races, and it would do away with the asinine system of paying teen-age kids huge bonuses to sit on the bench and vegetate for two years.

Something's got to be done to stop the slide in baseball attendance. We'd like to make some suggestions we think might do it.

Move a few clubs to other cities, starting with the Philadelphia Athletics. Get Los Angeles and San Francisco into the majors.

Tighten up the game by eliminating stalling.

Put in a player draft.

Put in more parking lots.

Get the drunks out of the parks.

Let the player say what they think. You might even get a picture of some of them filing their spikes.