THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 8, 1995 TAG: 9505080136
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Bob Molinaro
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
If this year's major league baseball season isn't to your liking, maybe you should look for a better game along the Information Highway.
In the year of the false spring, virtual reality could be the best option available to the baseball refugee.
In Cyberspace, you can have the game any way you want it, or wish it could be, without the overpriced beer or parking fees.
Virtual reality baseball must be more exciting, less greedy and altogether greater fun than the real thing, or why bother?
The season begins in mid-April and ends with a World Series that does not conflict with Halloween.
It is not played in multi-purpose stadiums, but in ballparks that smell like hot dog buns and cigars.
The season features scheduled doubleheaders. And Ladies Nights. And Knothole Club Days.
In Cyberspace, no one need ever be assaulted by a domed stadium, and all artificial-turf fields are cut up and turned into door mats.
The three divisions and wild-card playoffs are junked, of course. So are night World Series games. Late night is for Leno and Letterman, not Mattingly and Bonds.
In your own virtual ballpark, every patron is handed a scorecard, free pencil included, so that all fans can keep score.
Each game lasts exactly two hours and 10 minutes and is won in the bottom of the ninth.
When the home team is at the plate, the wind is always blowing out. When the visitors bat, the wind is blowing in.
There are more triples, the most exciting play in baseball, and fewer walks, the most boring.
On the information highway, every baseball team has at least one player named Mookie, Lefty, or Buck, home run hitters still drive Cadillacs, and centerfielders lose their caps running under fly balls.
In the world of microchips and managed moments, no player ever turns down an autograph request, or charges for his signature.
Fans savor priceless memories more than high-priced paraphernalia.
Hall of Famers never appear on shopping networks.
Players recall only the good things written about them.
Everybody shows up for work as eager as Cal Ripken.
Ken Griffey Jr. plays in a better time zone.
The ``save'' becomes a meaningful statistic.
Because virtual reality is a sheer fan-tasy trip, free agency doesn't exist. Players get rich, but without changing teams as often as they change socks.
In this game, the strike zone is larger than a tax collector's heart, batters do not fidget after every pitch, and commercial signage never appears behind home plate.
Real people, not corporations, buy most of the tickets. Fans occupy box seats, the upper deck and the bleachers, not luxury suites.
Owners, meanwhile, promote their players, instead of attacking them, and small-market franchises hang on to their best talent because it is the right thing to do.
In our cyberized vision of baseball, every player bears down as if it is the final year of his contract, the game is protected by a wise commissioner, and called strikes are the business of umpires, not labor mediators.
Perhaps our computer could even create the unlikely scenario in which the game once again connects with the kids it has lost to other sports.
Well, maybe not. Even virtual reality has its limitations. by CNB