Mike Barnicle on Baseball

Originally published June 25, 1995, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

Part of living here all your life means you spend the summer with one eye on the New York Yankees. You don’t even have to be a big baseball fan to pray, root and hope that the Bronx Bombers crash and burn before the All Star break.

It is healthy to hate them. It is cathartic to depise the team as well as the owner ­­ and by the way, we may as well loathe the whole city while we’re at it.

What other town has metal detectors at communion rails? Or day­care curriculums where youngsters learn how to avoid stepping on victim outlines chalked throughout their playgrounds?

Where else would a lunatic lawyer like C. Vernon Mason constantly get his name in the paper? He is Mike Tyson’s attorney, and a few days ago he spoke at a Harlem Welcome Home rally for the heavyweight rapist and accused the media ­­ naturally ­­ of exaggerating his client’s crime.

“Do you all hear about the woman in South Carolina who drove her children into the river and drowned them?” Mason screamed. “Well, Mike Tyson didn’t do that. Do you hear about the bomb that was dropped on the building in Oklahoma City? Mike Tyson didn’t do that.

“Did you all remember Jeffrey Dahmer, who ate all the people and put them in a refrigerator? Mike Tyson didn’t do that, either.”

Ah, New York, New York. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Even with an IQ of 12. It’s a very special place, filled with some very special people. It’s the kind of place where the New York Post can conduct one of those instant polls trying to determine how its “readers” feel about the fact that Dr. Henry Foster will not be allowed to dress like a bellhop and serve as the nation’s surgeon general. The results: 40 percent said they were disappointed, 15 percent said they were happy, and 35 percent said, “Gimme 5 bucks for crack.”

But it is the Yankees who bind us together in unified contempt. It is the Yankees who truly bring out New England’s historic inferiority complex. Who cares that Manhattan has taller buildings, better restaurants and more sleazeball bond brokers? Who cares that their Italian mayor can pronounce difficult phrases like “Good morning” better than our Italian mayor? Our guy has better hair and an ego that isn’t nearly as out of control as the crazed Giuliani.

It doesn’t matter that New York leads the league in homicide and high school teachers marrying their students. People aren’t bothered that New York has more nuts, fruitcakes and total degenerates than anywhere else.

Ever since Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold The Babe for cash to produce “No No Nanette,” people here have had a fixation with every club that ever played in The House that Ruth Built. And this year’s edition is no different.

So, as the Olde Towne Team lost one in the mist to Baltimore Friday, the real bummer was that the Yankees beat Toronto. You see, we don’t live in the AL East simply to win a division; all we want to do is finish ahead of the swines of Steinbrenner.

And now we have an extra­special reason to excel: His name is Darryl Strawberry.

Darryl represents everything bad about baseball today. He is a convicted criminal, a drug abuser, a cheat, a jerk, a clown, a mental midget, a liar and now, a New York Yankee.

There is something deeply flawed within the best game ever invented when Pete Rose is out of the Hall of Fame while Darryl Strawberry is in right field for the Bronx Bombers. It is ludicrous as well as sad.

His new employer and fellow felon ­­ George Steinbrenner ­­ just signed The Straw to a contract paying the player a minimum of $850,000 for the remainder of the summer. What a wonderful example for all the boys and girls who still think life is on the level.

The Boss claims he wanted to help poor Strawberry, give him a second chance, when this is actually about the 10th shot the fool has been granted. Outside Yankee Stadium, the Grand Concourse is loaded with those who get no chance at all, people who grow up more dangerous than dynamite because they are smart enough to see that too much of life looks like a dead end and you might as well do as you please because even if you get caught, the consequences rarely equal the crime.

Steinbrenner and Strawberry are a perfect matched pair for The Big Town: lawbreakers with a special contempt for rules and the kind of behavior ordinary people struggle to oblige.

Steinbrenner may have wanted a right fielder, but he went out and got an accomplice instead. In any event, these two blowhards are two more reasons to wake each morning asking, “How’d New York do last night?”

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Originally published August 10, 1995, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

Let’s face it: With picture perfect days, clear, mellow nights and 24 overachievers pushing us toward the conclusion of August, you can’t help but drop the weight of the world by the side of the road in order to devote your energy, attention and imagination to the Olde Towne Team because they have already given us the gift of a great summer.

The Red Sox prove we live in the baseball capital of the world, New England, where front porches, back decks and beach umbrellas everywhere bear witness to the wonderful things that occur whenever we get our money’s worth in dreams and deeds. You can’t give tickets away in Detroit, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia or New York while, here, you have to beat people off with a stick if they figure you have a pair in your pocket.

All this ­­ the attendance, the standings, the fever present since June ­­ prove that it is embarrassing to compare the Patriots to what goes down inside the Basilica in Back Bay. No doubt about it: The Patriots, Parcells and Bledsoe are terrific.

But that’s merely infatuation; baseball is our one true love.

And like anything having to do with the heart, deep feelings occasionally cause people to jump ugly with their loved ones. As a result, the Sox have often been victims of a bizarre form of familial abuse that infects fans from Montpelier to Mashpee.

They get beaten up regularly in the public prints, over the lunch counter, on radio talk shows, from the pulpit, at the gas bay, nearly everywhere by nearly everyone. And like other aspects of our incredibly provincial history as well as perspective, local fans are prisoners of the past.

Can’t blame them. From Enos Slaughter beating a perfectly good throw in St. Louis to Denny Galehouse starting in place of Parnell, from taking the pipe against Joe DiMaggio and the real Bronx Bombers in ’49 all the way through Aparicio tripping as he rounded third and Rich Gedman’s passed ball 14 years later, the Red Sox have always managed to turn September and October into kind of a weird, nightmarish, annual Throat Lozenge Festival.

Of course, the worst part of this brutal biography isn’t the loss of a pennant. It’s the winter of abusive phone calls you get from Manhattan and Chicago.

Crank calls from disgruntled dopes like my friend Michael Breen of Queens, semi­prominent radio reader, who has a neck like a drainpipe and a mind right out of Creedmor. As any psychiatrist would tell you, Breen enjoys predicting the demise of the Red Sox only because he is filled with self­loathing.

Breen, along with Anthony Kornheiser of Washington, D.C., behave in this pathetic pessimistic manner because they have no team to make them crazy. The club they most admire, the New York Yankees, is a troubled franchise run by a greed­crazed, loud­mouthed bully who tries to put fannies in the seats by holding attractions like “Unauthorized Weapon Day.”

Thankfully, things are a lot different around here. For starters, Red Sox fans are called ticketholders and Yankee fans are called parole violators.

Our guys have coaches; their guys have probation officers. We call our owner John; they call theirs a felon.

We have pitchers who make the Sign of the Cross before they throw; they have pitchers who flip the crowd the finger after they lose.

At Fenway Park, Joe Mooney, world’s greatest groundskeeper, marks both foul lines with white chalk; at Yankee Stadium, they have a relief pitcher and a degenerate rightfielder who have put the equivalent of the first and third base lines up their noses.

The Red Sox have real All­America role models like Mo Vaughn and Timmy Naehring; the Yankees have Wade Boggs, whose eyes obviously gave out long ago, and you can prove it by taking a peek at the woman who once fed his sex addiction.

So, let’s stop trembling about what tomorrow might bring. The Olde Towne Team has already given us a summer that will disappoint only cynics and pessimists.

It’s August and it’s exciting. And the best part is that, no matter what happens, it’s only baseball.

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Originally published October 3, 1995, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

Yesterday, nearly all the excitement and most of the news revolved around games where scores are kept and losers are defined by the lower number. You had the Patriots and Boston College both reeling in defeat as the Red Sox stood stage­right, waiting to perform this evening in Cleveland, where the unexpected is set to occur: meaningful October baseball.

But on the trains and sidewalks where life is too often a series of low expectations never met, the sun merely washed over another afternoon filled with a dreary reality. This is the land of suspects and victims, of kids waiting to be arrested and kids waiting to get shot.

We are on Bowdoin Street in Dorchester, in the middle of the Four Corners area, where gang colors are right off hockey jerseys and the discussion is about who’s been rousted by detectives looking for the shooter in the death of Paul R. McLaughlin, the assistant attorney general killed a week ago. Here, nearly everyone has a season ticket to mayhem.

“I watch the nature show on TV, then I go out,” the boy is saying. “I like the shows where the lion eats the animals. It’s a good show. It’s exciting.”

It is early afternoon. The boy gives his age as 14. He is down with “The Devils” and his day began in a dirt alley behind a three­decker where he hid heroin he intended to sell to white guys who drive back and forth along the boulevard, spending lunch hour looking for a high.

Now, he is on the corner glancing in different directions as if there were a slow­motion tennis match being played on the street in front of him. He is talking about his friend, Cedric Middleton, who got dragged out of a house last week, caught while hiding from police because he was suspected of shooting at the sky in a neighborhood filled with women and children who were sitting on stoops in broad daylight.

“He gone now,” the boy said. “They got him.”

Middleton is 17 and in jail. During the summer, his mother had called the cops and begged them to pick her son up and charge him with something, anything. “Please arrest my son,” she had urged.

Middleton was grabbed in August, went to court and was placed on probation. He was offered the chance to choose South Carolina over jail, and he picked the trip south to live with relatives instead of a lock­up.

But the pull of the street is too strong, like some bizzare tide, with a natural strength all its own. And a few weeks after state troopers put Middleton on a plane, he was back on the boulevard, firing a gun in full view of too many to issue any denial.

The 14­ year ­old has no concept of the type of reality you feel this morning as you get ready for work or prepare your children for their very own pleasant school day. He has his TV, his crew, his heroin, a few dollars in his pocket and a vague plan to perhaps hook up with a girl at night.

His mother married a crack pipe when he was 8. Before that, the boy saw his sister sodomized by one of his mother’s boyfriends. He says this took place right there in the bed he shared with her. The sister was 11 at the time.

Now, the mother is in MCI­ Framingham and he lives with his grandmother in a broken­down building where the adults are either too old, too tired or too afraid to stop the kids from opening the door to streets that can swallow them whole. And the street, for hundreds, is like the lion he enjoys watching on his favorite wildlife shows: It is forever hungry, with a ferocious appetite and tremendous strength, all the while stalking its prey with great skill and incredible speed.

The lure of the street is simple, its attraction totally understandable, given the surroundings a lot of children run from: If you lived as they do, you would be on the corner, too.

They have their own rules, and nobody is ever too young to do anything at all: have sex, fire a gun, sell dope, steal a car, die. They have little idea what the word leader means. They do not care what verdict is rendered in the Simpson case. They may like one or two ballplayers and might prefer one sport to another, but the only things that cause them to dream are girls, clothes and money. And they are under tremendous pressure to obtain all three by any means necessary, which is why it is foolish to think that the oldest of evils ­­ murder ­­ cannot be committed by the youngest of children.

I know this is depressing and that all of you ­­ me included ­­ would prefer to lose ourselves temporarily in games where scores are kept neatly and our emotions rise or fall with victory or loss. Imagine what it is like, though, when you can’t, when you are 14 and this is your life.

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Originally published March 16, 1995, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

FORT MYERS, Fla. ­­ “Know what the place reminds me of?” Albert Dupree asked. “What?”

“The wake of a guy everybody thought was real popular but when he passed away only half the people you figured on showed up at the funeral parlor for him,” Dupree said. “That’s what it looks like to me. Look around.”

Albert Dupree was right behind home plate at City of Palms Park the other afternoon as the replacement White Sox played the Olde Towne Team in front of a quiet crowd of about 3,000 spectators. Dupree is 73 and used to live in New Orleans before he and his wife moved to southwest Florida 10 years ago.

“I love it here,” Dupree announced. “Whole area’s got a lot of old white trash just like myself.” Everybody’s old here this spring. In a state where two out of every three residents look like prunes and move slower than a state rep’s mind, the baseball strike has even managed to dull the senses of the young and formerly hopeful fans who figure they are in need of replacement brains after simply sitting in the ballpark.

There is no getting around reality: It is a minor league product on a major league field. At best, there are perhaps two or three guys on each club who could step in and become the 24th or 25th man on the varsity if and when the regulars ever decide to resume their business.

That’s not to say the kids don’t render a terrific effort. Many of them do, but it is kind of sad to see them bust a gut on behalf of a dream that will never gain fruition.

They are nameless, faceless sacrificial lambs being slaughtered on the affluent altar of this creep Donald Fehr, who leads ballplayers headlong into a season of litigation. As soon as the real major leaguers come to their senses and sue for a secret ballot that would mean they would be back to work within 24 hours of the vote, the replacements are history.

Of course, the cruelest thing of all is to have millionaire dolts like Brett Butler of the Dodgers or the vodka­swilling righthander from Kansas City, David Cone, call the replacements “scabs.” That term might apply if this action had anything to do with organized labor, but it does not.

Cone got a $9 million signing bonus last year. He demanded the money up front in case he had to hit the bricks. That kind of money in the bank can earn you a lot of self­righteousness.

Other players, like Tim Naehring of the Red Sox, earn far less and in Naehring’s case the strike could mean he will never again appear in a Boston uniform. Certainly, fringe players like Scott Fletcher or Danny Darwin have played their last major league game.

 And boy is this game in trouble.

Here, an area where a kid can play outdoors all year long, there are a ton of basketball games every night, under the lights. Baseball, slower and loaded with striking stars, has a huge marketing and image problem.

People aren’t waiting for Jose Canseco, Ken Griffey Jr., Mo Vaughn, Cal Ripken or Greg Maddux. They’re all caught up in Michael Jordan, a guy who hasn’t put the ball in the hoop for nearly two years.

Sporting goods stores from Fort Myers to Marco Island seem to offer more hockey jerseys than baseball hats. The Sharks, Panthers and Mighty Ducks are more well­known on playgrounds than a club like the Minnesota Twins.

It is pathetic that these clowns, making huge dough to play a sport in sunshine, don’t realize what they are doing to their livelihood. And please spare me the nonsense about today’s player fighting for the rights of tomorrow’s draft choices. A lot of these frauds charge for autographs and the only draft they care about comes out of a tap in the taverns where they pay nothing. They charge everything to their celebrity.

This job action is merely about good old­fashioned American values like greed, money, hatred and revenge. The idiots running the player’s association are living in total isolation.

They are rich fools who don’t care much at all about anyone who might make the majors 10 years from today, or anyone who played two decades ago. Most of them should have “Moi” stitched on the backs of their uniforms.

What they have going for them is their game. It remains a spectacular way to spend an afternoon. One big problem however: “I’m telling you,” Albert Dupree said, glancing around the ballpark,

“those boys better get back while there’s still something to get back to. It’s like when a man dies and only his closest kin end up going to the service. They ain’t nowhere near as popular as they think they are.”

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Originally published August 8, 1995, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

As the Red Sox returned home from Toronto last night, having brought us to the edge of a wonderful summer climax, the true magic of baseball was actually located in Bristol, Conn., where the Parkway National All­Stars ­­ the 1995 Massachusetts state champs ­­ were getting ready to face New Jersey in the Eastern Regional Finals. The game is at 2 p.m. today at Bart Giamatti Field, and for the hundreds going there by car, bus and train, it is an epochal event.

The Parkway team is made up of a bunch of boys from West Roxbury and Roslindale who are 11 and 12 years old. Yesterday, shortly before noon, they piled onto a charter and pulled away from their home field on Baker Street to cheers every bit as deep as those that rattle around Fenway when the Olde Towne Team goes head­to­head with the Yankees.

This is the second time in three years the boys of Parkway have grabbed the big baton. They won the state championship in 1993, finished second last year, then took the prize again Saturday by defeating Westfield South, 5­4.

In order to get that far, they first had to plow through a double elimination tourney. After that, they beat Medford, with Rob Lomuscio pitching a perfect game, sending them to the finals and Westfield where they emerged with a ticket to the truly big time: Bristol, the last stop before Williamsport and the Little League World Series.

The Parkway club carries the face of the city. The names off the roster give you some idea of why there ought to be optimism about the town despite the fact that grown­up public imbeciles seem unable to get out of their own way when it comes to things like building convention centers, ballparks or a school system that eases parents’ fears while also making children proud to attend and eager to learn.

Here are the Parkway All­Stars: The manager is Jim Galvin. The coach is Bob Lomuscio. The assistant coach is Bernie McManus.

The players are Billy Cuqua, Sean Fay, Tony Issa, Tony Guarino, Joe Hough, Brian Hughes, Jon Lawless, Rob Lomuscio, Miguel Magrass, Phil McGeown, Mike McManus, Matt Murphy, Mark Nicholas and Rob Ryan.

These kids, fielding flawlessly, taking the extra base, thinking principally about their team and their sport, are beyond hate, color or the petty prejudices that too often bust a spoke in the town’s wheel. All they know is that they are young and gifted and they like each other well enough to keep on winning while having a ton of fun.

They come out of a program that does not get nearly enough attention because we are too busy selling bad news and there sure is enough of that to go around. But Little League is alive and well. Baseball rules. And flourishes.

And not only with the physically gifted. There is another level to the sport in West Roxbury and Roslindale: the Challenger Program. Here, the kids range in ages from 5 to 18. Most are special needs students. Some have cerebral palsy. A couple have Down syndrome. And there are two or three autistic children in the three­team league.

But all of them play. And all of them get a turn at bat. And every one, one way or another, gets a hit and a taste of success. And if you are ever in danger of thinking you are having a difficult day because you can’t balance your checkbook or you got a flat tire, go see these kids play any Tuesday night and you will be thrilled.

That’s what people wore on their faces yesterday as the buses rolled toward Bristol: a look of thrills, a feeling of accomplishment, and the pride of being a parent.

The adults are postal workers and firefighters, teachers and nurses, delivery men and plumbers, housewives and third­shift maintenance guys. The kids, their very own sons, are living a dream, riding a thrill parade right down I­95.

Baseball is the simplest of all sports: You catch the ball, throw the ball and hit the ball better than the other team and you win. It is the only sport where you don’t have possession of the ball on offense; that’s because you have a bat, held in two hands in order to attempt the single most difficult thing in the entire athletic world: putting that bat on a baseball thrown at odd speeds in varying directions.

These kids may go on to do truly extraordinary things. Maybe there are potential scientists, authors, Nobel winners, poets and bankers among them. Maybe some will teach history or plow streets some day, but right now, this very afternoon, they will do something they’ll carry with them for the rest of their years: They will play their hearts out for a title, together, with the cheers of their home town ringing in their ears for a long time to come.

The Red Sox are home; but the true boys of summer are in Bristol, Conn.

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Originally published February 9, 1995, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

In my dream, the president settles the baseball strike by asking this arrogant, melon­faced dope Donald Fehr, lawyer for the players, to go to Waco to negotiate with Janet Reno. But when Fehr gets there, the attorney general orders the FBI to toast Fehr along with these imbecile millionaire athletes who, were it not for a God­given ability to throw, catch and hit a ball, are just a collection of left­handed elevator operators and right­handed 7­Eleven clerks. Another problem solved.

I mean, how embarrassing is this? No matter what you think about Bill Clinton, he is still “Da Man.” He’s the guy elected to sit in the White House. He’s the leader of the free world.

Nobel laureates, senators, members of Congress, the joint chiefs, the head of the CIA, Wall Street billionaires, corporation chiefs, university chancellors, national and international figures all arrive at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a bit awed, awkward and respectful in the presence of power. It’s a house filled with history.

So here we are the other night with Fehr, who appears to soak his face in cement prior to every public appearance, coming out of the West Wing to announce that he and his players have flipped the bird to Clinton and to Bill Usery, the mediator. Why Fehr’s assistant, Gene Orza, practically called Usery senile.

The players didn’t like the recommendation of Usery, who settles disputes for a living. And they didn’t care that Clinton, who has enough to worry about besides a baseball strike, devoted his time to try to get grown men to go back and play a game at pay scales far above minimum wage.

What do they want, anyway?

They claim to represent a union. But what kind of union has some members cutting lucrative free­ agent deals while everybody is on strike? You figure Walter Reuther, John L. Lewis or George Meany would allow autoworkers, coal miners or carpenters to sign individual contracts while the picket line continued? The truth is that ball players are to organized labor what shopping mall guards are to law enforcement.

The players, who claim they are striking for future generations, don’t care what happens to recently retired veterans found homeless in Houston; now they’re on the bricks for some 13­year­old Little Leaguer with terrific hands and tremendous bat speed? Give me a break. They charge for autographs, treat fans like trash, and go about their selfish ways in whatever town and for whatever team will pay the freight.

And what they have done is unbelievable. In a country where the majority define themselves as workers, nearly everybody with any common sense hates the ballplayers.

Actually, “hate” is too meek a word; “loathe” and “despise” would be more like it.

Oddly enough, the strike has its roots in the near total incompetence of the owners. They were the ones who began throwing incredible sums of money at players. Confronted with near­bankruptcy, many owners began looking for ways to save themselves from themselves. They figured the solution might be a salary cap.

In the process of devising this numbskull idea, guys like the egomaniac who owns the White Sox ­

­ Jerry Reinsdorf ­­ decided to fire the baseball commissioner. He was an obstacle to their greed. In his place, they selected an empty suit from Milwaukee, Bud Selig, who, if he were a woman, would be pregnant each month because he cannot say “no” to anybody.

Stop the story here and there is no question who wins the public relations war: the players, in a walk.

Enter Fehr who, no matter what concessions are made, always says something like: “There’s nothing new here and they are not bargaining in good faith.”

The reality is that Fehr is afraid to make a deal with John Harrington, the Red Sox owner, who has been negotiating for those who have nearly ruined their own sport.

Let me tell you about Harrington: He is a tough businessman with an altar boy’s face and demeanor. He has been around a long time and I have known him a hundred years and if you cannot make a deal with John Harrington, you cannot make a deal period, because the man is both honorable and honest.

So now the whole 1995 season is about to disappear because Donald Fehr and a handful of blind ballplayers still say “not enough” to people who merely want the games to resume. Never mind that the magic of our best sport has been diminished almost to the point of no return.

Clearly, it’s time for parents all across America to sit the kids down and say to them: “Don’t you start caring about or cheering for these greedy major league ballplayers because they don’t care about you or the game you like so much. Welcome to reality.”

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Originally published July 9, 1996, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

PHILADELPHIA ­­ Bill Giles ­­ who sure is older than the stadium where his team, the Phillies, plays its baseball, yet happens to be a lot younger in spirit than most men half his age ­­ stood yesterday in the locker room where National League All­Stars will dress to play the American League this evening in a sport that is struggling to regain momentum and popularity. Major League baseball, stocked with talent, needs kids to survive.

“Someone pointed out to me recently that I had spent my whole life in baseball,” Bill Giles was saying. “But I told them, `Not yet, I haven’t.’ ”

Giles owns the Philadelphia Phillies, a club with a proud history. He has done everything there is to do around the sport, other than mix mud for the balls, but he knows his game is surrounded by a rising level of danger. “We have to market this product and attract the young fan again,” he said.

His father, Warren Giles, was president of the National League at a time when baseball had absolutely no competition for the minds or money of sports fans.

Television had yet to establish itself as a dominant force in American life. There was no cable, no MTV, no Sega, satellite, Game­Boy, Nintendo or computers, and there sure wasn’t a parade of athletes being paid salaries that ensured they did not have to care what fan or owner thought about their abilities or their attitudes.

“Thirty years ago, players cared more about the game, because they knew more about the game,” Jim Fregosi, the Phillies manager, said yesterday. “Today’s athletes are bigger and stronger ­­ and they’re certainly richer ­­ but they don’t necessarily know how to play baseball as well as we did three decades back.”

“That’s because we played more back then,” Fregosi added. “We played baseball from morning till night. These guys today don’t play the sport nearly as much, and a lot of them don’t have the respect for it that older players have.

“That’s baseball’s biggest job. Get kids playing baseball again, instead of soccer.”

The manager stood behind the batting cage at Veterans Stadium as the National League took batting practice in tropical heat. Ripples of warmth rose from the artificial turf as Jeff Bagwell and Chipper Jones took turns knocking the ball into seats filled with spectators who had come out just to see players practice.

There were a ton of kids on the playing surface surrounding both dugouts, and ballplayers had to run a gantlet to get to the cage. Most stopped to sign balls and caps held in outstretched hands by youngsters with huge eyes: Mo Vaughn, Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr. and Cal Ripken stood and signed, while Brady Anderson, Wade Boggs and a few others pretended the kids were not there as they pushed past them, never even bothering with eye contact.

Everyone knows baseball has a problem except the players. There is an arrogance about too many of them that threatens the stability of the best game ever invented.

Football is fine, but it is difficult for a child to truly identify with somebody as big as the World Trade Center. Basketball has a similiar problem: It’s played by millionaires who are 7 feet tall, while hockey, with the nicest professional athletes, is only on the verge of becoming more than a regional sport.

Baseball, however, is democracy disguised by bat and ball. You don’t have to be terribly big or terribly fast. It is a game kids can still play with a parent years after Little League memories have been magnified in the rear­view mirror of imagination. Almost anybody can play catch.

But to keep on liking this wonderful game it is necessary to like those who play it for a living. Sadly, if there are indeed a whole lot of likable athletes in the major leagues, they are doing a wonderful job of hiding their warmth behind a wall of big money and incredible indifference.

Suddenly, Albert Belle came up the steps of the dugout and onto the hot turf. The begging children looked like pygmies alongside the bulk of the Indians’ outfielder, but their polite ­­ and they were truly polite ­­ pleas did not matter, as Belle spoke to a single friend while ignoring everything and everyone.

There, with all his talent, as well as his hideous lack of civility, Albert Belle was a metaphor for professional baseball: blessed with ability but totally unconcerned that those who walk away shaking their heads, their view of a great game warped by basic bad manners, might find something better to do than come back to the game.

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Originally published October 1, 1996, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

On a morning when the sun arrived like a warm handshake offering the promise of a splendid day, a single green bench stood bathed in a yellow glow along the Commonwealth Avenue mall, between Berkeley and Clarendon, where apartment buildings are low enough and the sun was at just the right height in the sky to turn late September into mid­July. It was 8 a.m. when I sat my ample arse in comfortable escape from lost children, fired Red Sox managers and the daily grief of life.

My wonderful Monday start was broken, however, by a dog belonging to some Back Bay bore in a bow tie who, regular as a laxative, took his pet out for a dump before work. The dog, an ugly little thing not much bigger than a dust mop, came up behind me quieter than a professional prowler and peed on my pants cuff as I perused the baseball box scores.

It’s amazing how quickly your mood changes once you’re turned into a urinal. Suddenly, the sun didn’t feel quite so warm, and instead of simply going for a second cup of coffee somewhere, I had to go get a change of socks.

Heading toward Copley Square, I bumped into a throng of kids coming up out of the subway on their way to school on Newbury Street. They appeared to be about 15 or 16 years of age and looked as if they had just crawled out of a dumpster.

A couple of them were swearing loudly at someone or something when, in a flash, one kid turned to a second strolling alongside and let loose a lunger that landed on the other boy’s jacket; then the whole posse erupted in laughter.

It was another of those moments ­­ and, believe me, I have had many lately ­­ when I again realized that so much has gone right past me that I can barely understand half of what happens in front of my own eyes each and every day of the week. From the global to the local, events seem etched in such insanity that either I am getting dumber ­­ a distinct possibility ­­ or the culture is growing more depraved by the moment.

One kid spitting at another on a crowded city street reminded me instantly of the incident in Toronto over the weekend where the Baltimore Orioles were playing the Blue Jays Friday evening and a spectacular ballplayer by the name of Robby Alomar spat in an umpire’s face and was right back out on the baseball field the following afternoon. Incredible.

No wonder baseball is in trouble. But whatever problems plague this particular sport, larger problems afflict us for not punishing brutal behavior with protests plus our absence.

The fact that an athlete can do this to an official and not suffer immediate banishment is ridiculous. Yet this occurs all the time, and then we wonder why so many kids, adults too, act like fools: They see it played out daily. They see bizarre behavior rewarded with big money and no consequences.

And it’s not just baseball. Take a peek at pro football, where we have these marginally talented defensive backs going immediately into some berserk street dance of ridiculous gyrations after they intercept a football or make a weak tackle in open field.

It’s not just touchdowns, either. It’s deflected passes, quarterback sacks, kickoff and punt returns. And it triggers a trickle­down effect: High school kids copy what they see pros do on their Sunday TV.

The Alomar situation is different. It was an obscene act, a vile thing, the lowest of the low. Why, you’d rather get sucker­punched in the kisser than have someone spit in your eye.

Maybe the worst part is the weakness with which baseball reacted to Alomar. There is no commissioner, and apparently the president of the American League doesn’t have the guts to confront the players’ association and sit this chump down for the league playoffs as well as for the first three months of the 1997 season.

Now you might think this is overreacting because it’s sports, not real life; but the problem is that a huge number of people who happen to be younger than 21 think these millionaire, sociopathic morons are worthy of emulation. Ask 10 kids who their heroes are and most will not respond with the names of Clinton, Gore, Dole, some teacher or a parent.

Odds are the reply will involve an athlete, an actor or a rap singer, someone who takes the field with a low IQ, huge bank account and big car. And they are admired merely because they are rich, famous and can do what they want, whenever they want, and do it while they spit in society’s face.

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Originally published August 3, 1997, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

At Fenway Park the other afternoon, this total moron put his fat arse in a box seat during the bottom of the first and spent the rest of the day acting like a complete jerk.

When he wasn’t screaming at Wilfredo Cordero, the alleged wife-battering Red Sox outfielder, he was acting obnoxious and pounding down enough beers to quench the thirst of the First Marine Division.

Of course, that was his constitutional right. It didn’t matter to him that he made things uncomfortable for other paying customers. Yet, because most people now are either timid or wary of establishing eye contact with potentially violent dopes, this fool clearly mistook the crowd’s silence for approval.

It was a pretty good game, too. The Olde Towne Team played the Mariners — baseball’s most attractive offering, with Junior Griffey, Jay Buhner, Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson — and the capacity crowd was thrilled to be watching a day game even as a single fan acted like he had a bolt in his brain.

Finally, though, things got so bad that a guy leaned across the aisle and posed the following question to Mr. Motormouth: “Do you like hospital food?”

“Whazz’a problem?” the drunk demanded. “I can shay what I wanna’ shay. Cordero’s a bum. Guy’s sposed’a’be a role model, fa’ crissake. Guy desherves it.”

It struck me that here was an occasion of marvelous irony: A thoughtless imbecile spoiling things because he decided a baseball player failed to meet his obligation as a role model!

That phrase, role model, has been fashionable for a few years. It’s part of the growing social trend toward replacing individual responsibility with collective obligation.

For example: In stories about teen mothers, the inevitable implication is made that society is at fault for the difficulty of a single young girl who probably got pregnant because of cigarettes, television commercials or a lack of — you guessed it — role models. Welfare recipients have difficulty working because they have no role models. And, somewhere, some kid is going to grow up and pound his wife or girlfriend because of Wilfredo Cordero.

It’s odd but the need for role models seems to have grown in direct relation to the expansion and magnified importance of the media.

Years ago, when there weren’t nearly as many entertainment options like cable, pay-per-view, movies or the worldwide web, hardly anybody mentioned the trendy, numbing phrase.

I guess things were pretty primitive then. And most of the country was probably awfully unenlightened.

Like, when Dad came home Thursday night and dumped his pay on the kitchen table, enabling Ma to buy bread, milk, butter and eggs, not a single soul stood and said, “Dad, you are an awesome role model, man.” How sad.

How pathetic that we used to view parents, policemen, doctors and priests — rather than movie stars, TV anchors and athletes — as role models.

And on those occasions when some guy lost a couple rounds to Jim Beam on Saturday night and chose to beat up his wife, none of the neighbors whispered that he had failed to perform admirably as a role model. Instead, the thick familial peer pressure of those dark ages would quickly result in the victim’s brother, father or friends kicking the deadbeat’s arse all the way down the block.

Of course, today that would mean assault and battery charges filed against the woman’s family, crafty lawyers, pathetic judges, interminable court delays and a hefty fine imposed on the wrong people.

The procedure would involve social workers, probation officers, psychologists and the distinct possibility that those who tried to do the right thing would have their names published in the paper and their reputations ruined.

Let something like that happen and you’ve got the ultimate American nightmare: You’d be called a poor role model.

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