Page Eight

SCARLET AND BLACK

Liberman Muses on Ethos of Baseball As
Nalional Pastime. Profession, and Business

Iiy 'rini Purges

in the tiirthrrancc oi this
paper's oiiorts to determine the
t~~~t~llti1l| characteristics oi its
constituent parts tso as to
ill'l‘ltv {It all flflfilrllle
catt-gorimlinli or news
7 we have interviewed

V l.ihrrinau on the subject

til ’iriwhnll. Specilicnlly, pro

hast-hull. The general question
post-it w s. just what is the

appeal 7 the beauty of a

sport well played. obviously,

the aim til the athlete is to win
lint whiit art» the proper aims

iii the tan in attending a cons

test: There is n winner and a

loser at every level or every

game. so obviously it can't he
rlirrr ii wiuut-r anti boo ii loser
7oi- ciiu it?

.\li\lL: The old Brooklyn tans,
when I used to see them as a
kid. were terribly partisan
There’s no question about it . .
they went to Ebhets Field to
see the Dodgers win. . . They
were depressed alid angry when
the Dodgers did not win

Bill there were some things
ihcy would never do There were
the things that they wouldn't do,
crcn in the days when they were
losing a lot . , when presumably
their morale could have been
bad Tlicy wouldn’t jockey their
players during the game, and
they would not boo their own
players when their own players
were in a slump. . . (This was)
tmhcardoi.

That's typical bush behavior
today, The idea of bringing
another major league team to
Milwaukee is really amusing
whcn you consider the way they
treated their last team when they
were losing,

rm not talking about sports

manship- l'm talking about the
myth or the game You either

love baseball and you appreciate
it for tiic way that it is played
or you don’t. And this has nothing
lo do with sportsmanship, it has
to do with being a pro, when you
appreciatea pro pcriormance.
Even when the Dodgers were

desperate tor a Pennant 7 in their
angriest moments. . . in their
most depressed aiternoons, they
would not boo one of their own
men because he dropped a ily
ball. Nor would they try to get
to an opposing centcr holder to
get him to drop a ily ball because
they wanted their team to win.
They would never havc done
anything like that You may have
heard oi Gil Hodgcs’ iamous
slump7it was a monumental
slump, a record-brcakcr. i don't
know how many consecutive
times he came [0 bat without a
hit . and cvcry time he came
to bat he got a bigger hand than
the time beiore, Can you imagine
lhatinWrigleyileldtoday?

No
Now where docs all the trouble

begin, . . what does it all mean,
ldon’t know. . I think it means
something because I think

baseball is extremely important
I |

to American litc7souietinw.
don’t have the mystique figs
ured out, but it is a mysterious
thing I think baseball doL-s a lot
tor American lite and I think
baseball has signiiied a lot tor
American lire-myth or whatever
you want to call it

Now the trouble must have
started ,by trouble 1 mean the
decline oi baseball which you
rccognizc,,

Skit: Do you mean a decline
in the quality oi the game7

MML: No The players are
better than ever. . the players
arc tantastic as atlilctrs. There's
noqucstionaboutit

Never mind your Ty Cobb
sliding into third, .that kind at
thing. These guys could slide
circles around Ty Cobb, There
are halt a dozen Ty Cobb: on
every ball club today These guys
are fantastic atlilelCS. I’m not
talking about that.

(I

I

. “
Q
(5

orbital?!

I'm talking a out some quality
in the game which. . , seems to
have gone out oi the game. I don't.

‘know exactly what it is, . . but
there are a couplc of connections
that lthiiik can be made

I think that there must have
bccn a time wlicn ball players
understood that Baseballwas hke
lite or that lite was like
baseball. And this was all right.-
The trouble must have started
when the metaphor started to
take the place of the reality; that
is, when the people in the game
slarlcd to decide that baseball
was lite. There are people in the
game like that, , ,it seems to me
when you coniusc metaphors
viith reality, then you’re nuts.

Slut: So Dnrocher is nuts
because or his emphasis on
winning"

,\l.\l :ldidn'l want to call him
"nuts," but I think that he par-
takcs or a certain nuttiness, and
there are others like him in the
game, * Eddie Siankey. [or
example. And there have always
been people in the game like that,
but I don‘t think the game was
nominated by your people who
(’llllltl not make th distinction
lit-tween baseball and life.

Now when you start to think
ol’ baseball and hit: as the same
thing. then it's only a quick little

jump lrom the idea that it has
to be played to win at any price
7 that's onc correlary 7 and the
other is that the game must be
made to pay oil, 7Grcediness,
Since you live by material in the
wol'ld..,bascball is no longer a
game tor this kind oi mentality.
“'5 no longer like having a
stable of flood horses. You not
only havc to have a stable at good
horses, but the horses have to
win, and they have to bring in
alot oi dough

Mr Wrigley hasn't played the
game that way, But that crowd
out in center field don't seem to
know that. They would seem to
belong to a diilerent baseball
mentality that's completely lost
sight of the idea of baseball as
like life. To them baseball seems
to Dollie.

Now, when can you begin to
see the declinc'7 Probably,
historically — and this is a kind
irony 7 Babe Ruth is probably
the beginning of the trouble, That
is, when you start to build the
team around the idea oi a guy
knocking the ball over the icnce.
And you start moving the lenees
a bit, so the guy can get the ball
over the fence And you start to
yack the price at admissions up
a bit, so they can come to see
the guy hit the ball over the icnce
that‘s been moved in a bit. And
you pay the guy a hundred
thousand dollars a year to hit the
ball over thc icncc; the game's
all tscrcwedi up.

5&B: The idea is that Babe
Ruth's a hero, right? He‘s larger
lhanlile. '

MML: The game, as Malamud
makes dramatic in his book 7
t'rhc Natural — ed.) 7 the game
rises and tails with the hero, .
It depends on what kind of a
hero . .

shits: When your team‘s at bat,
and when its the bottom oi the
order. the catcher and the pitcher
7 and say, you’ve got a second
baseman who Can't hit You’ve
got these three people coming up
7 Thc iaiis Sit back, And they
wait tor the next inning, because
nothing happens.

But then the next inning 7
you've got the good people
coming in. people who can really
pttl it up. And then you've got
iiitci-cst. Then you've got heroes

THE LABOWITZ REPORT:

“Cl-ii non puo quel che vuol, quel the put) voglia.”

SCARLET 8 BLACK

THE WEEKLY SPORTSPAGE

Leonardo da Vincl

SPORTS

- , mmWKfisaiflfim

Friday, April to. l970

Cleveland. Dibble. Cowles.
O-C Take I.M. Openers

ByJ. c. Labowitz

The 123rd llu'soitball season opened on Monday, and trom all
indications this season should be the highest point in soltball history
since J,B. Grinncll invented the game to see how far west he had

come,

Be that as it may, the season openers saw Cleveland take Loose
6rd, and Dibble shutout Haines 370, despite Dave Brown’s 15 strikeouts
for Homes, which must Set some kind of record. Dave MacKenzie
wasn't that good tor Cleveland, but he had some hitting, which is
somewhat essential. Great consternation was {git in IM circles (or
diamonds) about the dominance of pitching 7 only 13 runs in 2 games!

Such worries were dispelled and IMS returned to form by
Tuesday, as Cowles beat East by something like 28-8, and Read and
Oli~Campils bad a pitcher's duel that ended 23725, Read. Go had

some players irom very tar

off-campus, like Park Elementary,

and Read needed a home run from an outfielder named Labowitz
to win. West Norris is not competing in softball, and the franchise
is being moved to the Faculty. Steve Johnson is arranging the Faculty
players and schedule, since profs are not supposed to cut classes
for [M games. But then again, neither are students.

Grinnell’s track team made an inauspicious start drop-
ping the first meet of the season to Loras.

Grinnell took two events in the quad meet. Norris
Stubbs (above) took the triple jump with a 45-0 pedom-
ance, And Bill Schooler took the javelin with a loss of 151-10.

NHL: on well 7 it probably
does work that 7 and it
probably has come to work that
way more and more, But that's
not the way it’s worked, let’s say
since you invoked that setting 7
that's not the way it worked at
Ebbcts Field in the thirties and
iortics, Where every man on the
team was the next thing to a
divinity to every kid in Flatbusb,
Nevertheless, the guys on the
other team were also heroes. And
there was a great deal oi interest
in what went on when the other
guys were up to bat You didn’t.
want them to go down 1273 so
your guys could get up. There
was a real interest in the game.
And there was a terrific amount
oiexcitoment. .

stats: Do you think that the
game is as interesting, still"

\HIL: The game is iii-
trinsically unchanged, except
iiisoiai- as it‘s been corrupted by
those who have tried to make
something else out oi it, and who
are gradually succeeding The
game is intrinsically the same
They haven't even changed the
rules in any important way,
which is a good thing.

Although. .they have
monkeyed around with the game
a great deal. They've monkeyed
with the ball, they've monkeyed
with the iences, they've
monkeyed with the height of the
pitching mound, and they’re

.doing their best to make as much

of a television Show out of it as
they can. . .And this is part oi
the corruption.

They haven't succeeded, quite,
in leasing up the whole thing up
7 but they're working on it. And
it started a long time ago with
an exploitation oi what was not
essential in the game. At the
same time that Ruth was hitting
those homers, somebody was
making double plays, but nobody
waspayingaiiyattention. the
excitement ior Musial when the
Cards came in those days was
tantastic When he took his
position on the iield, you didn‘t
ycll obscenitics at him you
wouldn't think at it. But that's
what they do.

They started doing it with
Williams in rcnway park. And

LIBERMAN—
Continued on page 7