THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 11, 1995 TAG: 9510110597
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB MOLINARO
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
If baseball hurries, it may be able to capitalize on the enthusiasm reportedly generated by the playoff series between the Seattle Mariners and the departed New York Yankees.
This is no sure thing, though.
Deion Sanders is always a video-op waiting to happen, and Dennis Rodman may change his hair color at any moment.
Attention must be paid.
As baseball goes on to the next thing, working its way closer to the World Series, few would even suggest that the sport is still our national pastime.
For the time being, O.J. is our national pastime. As if to prove this fact beyond a reasonable doubt, Simpson goes head-to-head with baseball when he submits to gentle cross-examination tonight on NBC.
Once again, baseball is expected to suffer a wound. This one, for a change, will not be self-inflicted.
America finds its sports in all kinds of strange places at a time when baseball has given people every reason not to care.
Fragmented television coverage of the wildcard games, and now the league championship rounds, don't help. But people began turning off the game long before now.
The Yankees' removal from the fall TV lineup deprives America of one of life's great camera shots - Boorish George Steinbrenner fuming in the owner's box.
Despite this loss, the Mariners' come-from-behind theatrics against the Yankees are thought to have rekindled some kind of interest nationwide in baseball. Well, maybe.
Seattle's success does, at least, provide the LCS with a matchup of the two brightest stars in the American League. Each at-bat for the Mariners' Ken Griffey Jr. and the Indians' Albert Belle is a special event in itself.
For Griffey, the postseason represents a jail break from the semi-obscurity that comes from playing in the Northwest under a dreary dome in a bad baseball town.
At least Griffey's great play does not come as a total shock to America, which has been introduced to the centerfielder through All-Star games and TV commercials. But what is it about baseball that permitted Mariner sluggers Jay Buhner and Edgar Martinez to remain a secret for so long?
Belle, the probable Most Valuable Player, is a prodigious home run hitter who has been more closely associated with cork than Ernest and Julio Gallo.
Belle's bats have been X-rayed more often than a kid's Halloween candy. If he lights up Seattle pitching, what do the Mariners do, demand an MRI?
Belle anchors a batting order that Indians pitcher Orel Hershiser calls a ``lineup for the ages.''
Perhaps it seems that way, but final judgments are best postponed for a few days. Start comparing the Indians with the '27 Yankees when they win the World Series, not before.
Maybe the Indians will get to face the Braves pitching. That is something to wish for.
Another World Series in blase Atlanta might be nothing more than a lounge act for the Olympics, but what is it about the Cincinnati Reds that fires the imagination?
The Reds' best-known personality is their ill-mannered, chain-smoking owner. Marge Schott makes Roseanne look like Audrey Hepburn.
Tonight, of course, baseball won't matter much to America. Its oddballs and all-stars will be knocked out of the box by NBC's programming.
The connection between baseball and Simpson is not as tenuous as you might think.
I hear O.J. is a good gloveman. by CNB