THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 8, 1996 TAG: 9610080442
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: 64 lines
One of baseball's storied ballparks, Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium has been history for more than 25 years now. But it seems like just last week that I took in its features and sat in one of its narrow, wooden grandstand seats as baseball spread out before me.
It seems like last week because it was last week.
When you enter the Baseball Hall of Fame in the leafy village of Cooperstown, N.Y., a row of seats salvaged from Connie Mack, where I saw my first game at age 4 - a Phillies-Reds twi-night doubleheader that I still vaguely remember - rests in the lobby outside the room that holds the honorees' plaques.
Now, nobody needs me to enumerate the sins upon its believers that baseball has committed since Connie Mack became a vacant lot. Start with Robbie Alomar's sorry saliva debacle and trace any of the many tributaries that flow from it.
What I can relate, and I'm trying here to not be a George Will fancy pants, is the cleansing value a few hours wandering the Hall can have on a follower whose faith isn't what it used to be.
After covering a football game in Syracuse, I was about a 90-minute Sunday drive from the Hall with a day to kill between assignments, but I nearly didn't make the effort.
I'd been before, with my family when I was about 11 and had baseball on the brain. I didn't care so much anymore.
Ultimately, that was why I decided to go again. To see if I could revisit that time and place, to see if I was still willing to be charmed, and if baseball was still worthy enough to do it.
I'm happy to say it began to happen about a block from the Hall, when I strolled into the bleachers of Doubleday Field on a crisp and silent Sunday morning and sat. It sounds weird, I know, but that was it. Just sat for 15 minutes and looked out over the perfect green and brown diamond and let my mind drift, peaceful and alone.
The feeling gripped hard a while later, about the time I touched the bronzed faces of Richie Ashburn, Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, Phillies who captivated me for so many summers - Ashburn, the former Whiz Kid star, as a witty, laconic radio announcer, Schmidt and Carlton as all-time greats whose triumphs swept me away through high school and college.
The warm and fuzzy faded a little in the Baseball 1996 area, where each big league team has a locker with its uniforms and yearbooks and such on display. The Alomar thing had just happened, everybody was aghast, and there in the Orioles' locker was the Puerto Rican spitfire on the cover of the media guide.
But I knew good stuff was ahead, so I forged on to things like the Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron rooms, the Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio lockers, the year-by-year exhibits and the old ballparks section with its photos and artifacts of Connie Mack, Crosley Field, Forbes Field, the Polo Grounds and the original Yankee Stadium.
Finally, when I found my seat at Connie Mack, the day felt complete. It felt right.
It also felt very small and uncomfortable, the seat that is, and I chewed on this irony - in the most plush period baseball has ever known, the major league game is meandering rudderless through a stark ebb, this dramatic postseason notwithstanding.
What I learned was, if you're disenchanted with the business of today's baseball, a walk through Cooperstown won't necessarily change your mind.
What it can do, though, is tell you something important. That the time and love you once gave the game were not given in vain. by CNB