Peloponnesus 2, Baseball 0

Many historians credit the Peloponnesian War with being the beginning of the end of the Greek Empire. The loss to Sparta brought recession, a loss of invincibility and a gradual decline of Greek influence in the world. One of the earmarks of the culture was an obsession with sports. One can easily draw conclusions between America and Greece in the area of art, engineering, political atrophy and moral decay. The obsession with sports grabbed me.

I grew up in Suburban Atlanta in the 50's, which then had no professional sports team. My heroes were the New York Yankee team that fielded Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra. I had their autographed pictures all over my room and collected their baseball cards. I played in Little League and revelled in the stories my Dad told me of the days of Ty Cobb and the Atlanta Crackers, a minor league club. It was the mid sixties before Atlanta began to get their major league clubs. First, the theft of the Milwaukee Braves brought baseball to the Big A. It was awesome as a teenager to be able to go out to the Atlanta Stadium and see real major-league teams playing my favorite game. The other pro teams came later. Yawn.

My love of baseball didn't wane until the strike of 1972. It didn't die until the strike of 1981, which actually included 5 work stoppages between 1972 and 1981. I never cared much for basketball, didn't know a thing about hockey and played football until my size threatened my early death at the hands of peers maturing much more rapidly than I. For a while, I switched my attention to football but slowly, over the years, my excitement "ember" slowly died out. I have had friends who feel the same way. Some hang on to the team representing their alma mater out of duty. Some watch just to be knowledgeable around the water cooler at work. But yes, there are avid sports fans around - just go to your local sports bar.

There are many theories about this loss of interest in sports that I apparently share with millions of other Americans. I once read that during my youth, baseball players made about 7 times the average annual income of Joe America. Now, it's somewhere around 770 times. Of course, that's only numbers but it might be symbolic of the disparity between the average baseball player and the average Joe. I used to watch and cheer for guys that I felt were just like me, only much better at baseball. Today, I know that I watch guys whose only similarity to me is that they play a game I did as a child. There's no loyalty to a city or team, no comfort in knowing the team that came so close this year will be back next year. There's the continual off-putting of whining and grumbling over how much money this player, or that player makes. It's all about money and there's nothing left of the spirit of the game.

I did not watch the first minute of this year's World Series. And, I don't feel cheated. I don't know who pitched and barely which teams were in it. I wonder if the recession will hit baseball. I hope so. I'd love to see the dissembling of the machine it has become. Wouldn't it be grand to sit in the stands and see guys playing for the sheer love of the game? The grit and grime of competition in America's pasttime without the grandiosity of Big Business? Well, maybe it will come and maybe it won't. The Atlanta Stadium is gone. Worse, Yankee Stadium is coming down and with it, for me at least, the last vestige of a game I loved as a child.