Craig Mitchell -- The Ying and Yang of Baseball

Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s you watched baseball in kind of a protective bubble.  My impression of most of the stars I admired seemed pristine and they were all on pedestals.  I just assumed they were as they appeared; Good, upstanding men playing America’s pastime for our entertainment. Of course, that’s not always true  There were some early indications. In the early 70’s two Yankee pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson swapped wives. The fact is that MLB players are just as human and flawed as the rest of us.  Some more so, and some plied with the spoils of big contracts and endorsement deals are damn near intolerable.

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The cracks in this impenetrable veneer really started to show in the 80’s.

There was the cocaine trials’featuring Dave Parker, Dale Berra and Keith Hernandez. But mostly when big money got bigger and bigger stars started leaving the teams of their origin for big paydays elsewhere, not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that a schism started to separate the fans from the players. It got wider and wider, and today, it’s as wide as it’s ever been. Ballplayers have always been like matinee idols to most of us fans, but today, they are in a different universe.

My sensibilities were more sheltered. I held on to this romantic notion that players were a step above longer than most. I honestly didn’t think about what a player did or didn’t do personally. I judged them by what they showed me on the field.  Sure Dick Allen was smug, but man did he crush the ball. I was sure they were fine examples of maturity and manhood. No smoke, no fire, right? In 1991, I was covering Met and Yankee games for The Talking Yellow Book sports department, that’s right, The Talking Yellow book, or TYB. This was a phone service that was free in the New York Metropolitan area and in some parts of Florida providing free information to callers. It was a like a small and incredible diverse radio station in the back pages of your phone directory.  It was very cool, and had a lot of very, very talented people, most of which are still working in radio and TV today.

In spring of 1991, I parlayed a Stand Up comedy tour of south Florida with some spring training coverage.  They got me press passes to the Mets/Yankees in Port St. Lucie. I got much deeper access in spring that I had gotten in the regular season.  Before the game I was on the field, trying to get some sound and New Met Vince Coleman was by the Yankee dugout talking with another player.  A 9 or 10 year old kid was leaning WAY over the railing going “Vince, Vince, VINCE!!!”  attempting to get the speedsters attention and get an autograph. (This was very common by the way) Spring training games are much more relaxed. It’s common to see players run in the outfield during game play, and players can sign autographs at any time at their discretion.  After the kid had yelled himself nearly hoarse he managed to yell one more “VINCE!!”  Coleman finally turned to him and said “F**K you!”  I was absolutely stunned. The kid just shrunk away and Coleman returned to his conversation as if nothing had happened. Remember that veneer I mentioned before? Totally shattered!

I covered back to back games in Port St. Lucie that week. The next day when I got to the park, there was a strange vibe. I did a test call from my station in the press box to TYB and my manager Walt Fowler said that there had been a big Met story overnight. (This was way before the internet) Supposedly a few Mets were implicated in a sex scandal.  My job was to find out who it was.  Me? I was no hard edged reporter.  So, what I did is the WORST thing I could do. I asked other reporters. Now, you may not know this but if you think ball players can’t stand press. Press has even LESS tolerance for each other.  One thing for certain, I was NOT going to ask any of the Mets or the Met staff which players were indicated in a sex scandal. I was back on the phone with Walt and I was very honest in how there is no way I was going to ask Howard Johnson or Charlie O'Brien who got implicated? But I said I would keep my ears open  That’s when something very cool happened.  As I was sitting in my seat hooking up my phone and tape recorder, a well-known NY baseball writer stood next to me. Marty Noble. It was apparent he had overheard my conversation   He said softly, “Darryl Boston, Dwight Gooden and Coleman”  I said,  “What about you?”  He said with a laugh, “Hey I wasn’t there!” I said  "No, why are you telling me this? “  He said, “Don’t worry. Just phone it in” and he walked away. So, I phoned it in. The question I got was “Who told you that?”  At first I said a source close to the team. When pressed I told my manager it was Marty Noble and that was all he needed to hear and we went with the story. Now the reach of The Talking Yellow Book was not nearly as big as the smallest radio station you could find, but we broke the story that day, it came out in the papers the next day anyway with all the media attention you’d expect.  Baseball had changed alright, for me, it changed forever. Back to back days I got a hard lesson on how baseball players can be very flawed people.  Now, those rape charges were eventually dropped. But to this day I am still haunted by what Coleman said to that kid wanting an autograph.  It was a 1991 twist on the old Black Sox sing song  “Say it ain’t so Joe! Say it ain’t so!”   It’s so.

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 In the following years, there were strikes, steroids, hgh, testosterone, surly players like Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco breaking records under suspicion, Rickey Henderson showing no class and humility embarrassing Lou Brock with his proclamation that “He is the greatest of all time”, Rafeal Palmerio lying about his PED use under oath and on and on. Suspensions, apologies and of course the debacle that’s known as A-Rod.   In 1993, Coleman showed his true colors again when he and Brett Saberhagen sprayed reporters with bleach in the Shea clubhouse. I was at the game that day, but had left before that incident occurred.  

 All in all, baseball never is, and never was pristine. Like all facets of life it has its ups and down.  Going back to the Black Sox scandal, to Pete Rose’s lifetime suspension, baseball is a sometimes a pressure cooker microcosm of society full with dysfunction and horror stories.  As I was writing this, the news is hitting that Derek Jeter is retiring following the 2014 season.  A thought occurred to me.  There is ying and yang in life and likewise in baseball.  For every Pete Rose, there is a Derek Jeter, for every Vince Coleman there is a David Wright or a Joey Votto or a Johan Santana or a Curtis Granderson.  There are still sterling examples of maturity and grace all over the baseball diamond playing before us right now. Like anything else we have to take the good with the bad.  As for me, I still find it very easy to look past some of the flotsam that can rise to the surface and still follow baseball very much like I did when I was a kid.  It’s a game after all. That hasn’t changed.  As long as we have that, everything is going to be fine.