If my political vision is as acute as I fancy it is, 1992 will go down in American history as the year of the most significant signing since the Declaration of Independence: the signing of Ryne Sandberg’s baseball contract.
Despite predictions that their golden goose, TV, will not roll out golden eggs indefinitely, the owners ask for more eggs. Guess what. TV won’t yield. Nor will the hiking of ticket prices dam the flood of expenses from rising salary levels. As the average utility infielder’s salary approaches $2 million per annum–oops, make that $2.2 million; utility man Luis Salazar just signed for $3 million plus–baseball’s goose gets closer and closer to being cooked.
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It’s 1995 now. The national pastime has become the nationalized pastime, each city owning its own team and navigating its own baseball destiny. No longer can greedy owners terrorize whole cities by holding their franchises hostage. No longer do admonitory laments veil the blackmail of exodus. No longer can the spoiled brat bawl that it’s his ball and no one else can play. Finally, as nature intended, the ball belongs to the People.
No, we’re talking eat-sleep-and-breathe serious here. We’re talking nothing so trivial as, say, the U.S. presidency, where we could sleepily allow a dim, amiable, bumbling ex-actor to wamble into office and nap on an overstuffed antique ideology for eight years. We’re talking sports here–the most public, the most debated, the most studied, the most absorbing organ of the American body politic. And the captains who steer our teams must not only pass the microscopic scrutiny of their constituencies, they had better perform once in office. Vigilant watch can fast sour into punitive glower. Without a championship or the reasonable hope of one, any captain is liable to be booted out on his assessment.
