Courtesy of the Niagara Gazette
By Doug Smith
From computers to cars, new kids on the block are always way ahead of Base Paths, so he was only dismayed, not surprised, to read in one of Tonawanda News Sports Editor Matt Parrino’s first columns that baseball is dead
Still, how could he have missed that? Okay, it did take an out-of-town comic-strip author to tell him five years ago of the death of Mark Harris, baseball’s greatest novelist, but the game itself, dead? Wouldn’t that have been in Baseball America? What was the cause? Was there a wake? Will there be a memorial service?
Base Paths grieved for baseball, and its sibling, softball, which he presumed died at its side, a twin-killing, so to speak. At least it went out in style, with Niagara Falls making both finals, Grand Island taking it all the way to the state finals,Niagara Community College winning the Regionals and the Power taking it to the final round.
He’d go anywhere to just once more watch Niagara-Wheatfield’s Caitlin Attfield make a play, or to hang out over a fence with Wolverine pitcher Andrew DeWitt, or to discuss the game with Tonawanda legends Al Chester and Mike Kramer.
He wandered out to Packard Court to reminisce and lo and behold there was some sort of service going on. It was 3-1 with two outs in the last inning and there’s a line drive to right, dropped by the fielder, a Scrooge of a scorer charging “error” on a tough play. But the next batter, a girl no less, pokes one into right and here comes this same kid, Matt Scheider, charging in, makes the catch, saves the game and if baseball’s dead, he may join it, he’s being pounded so hard by his team mates.
Redemption. It’s what baseball was all about. Could it rise again?
He headed to Sal Maglie Stadium, where much older players also quite evidently hadn’t gotten the memo, and good heavens, here’s a guy 53 years old pitching knuckleballs for a team from Chicago. How did he ever outlive baseball?
Base Paths checked the internet for data on baseball’s demise but first he had to sort out some e-mails about Olivia Zafuto, Maria Gabriele and Toni Polk, all from around here, going undefeated in 10 tournament games in North Carolina. So even south of the Mason-Dixon line, they don’t know the game is dead.
Or might Parrino have “greatly exaggerated” reports of baseball’s death, as Mark Twain would say.
Base Paths re-read Parrino’s baseball obit, with his better glasses. Aha! It turns out some knuckleheads had decided that the bodies God gave them weren’t good enough for the game and had chemically enhanced them. Well, that might qualify as attempted suicide, but evidently, it didn’t “take.” Two jerks out of millions of players amounts to an ingrown toenail and further, it had been surgically removed.
Mrs. Paths cried “foul,” having figured she could get him doing yard work, but not now. Call off the coroner, baseball’s alive and well and somewhere, there’s a game to catch.
Signal Base Paths via pollyndoug@hotmail.com
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