Mike Barnicle on Baseball

Originally published September 17, 1989, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

It’s Sunday and I’m trying to be charitable but it’s awfully difficult because the Red Sox are still around like Uncle Harold, the cranky know­it­all who never knew when to go home. I hate to say it, but I’m sick of them. I love baseball, but I truly dislike this 1989 edition of whining malcontents who effectively stole my summer.

Actually, the larceny began in the spring when I discovered that Roger Clemens had a bolt in his head. This happened when Pea­Brain hinted he might have to settle any beefs with boo birds, sportswriters, real estate agents, carhops, carpet salesmen or anyone else around here cowboy style.

Of course, his catcher, Richie Gedman, jumped in and said the fans were ingrates. This was an odd statement coming from a guy who can’t hit his hat size, never mind his own weight.

Poor Richie. He seems like a sincere kid. He’s on a major league roster and sucks down a million bucks a year despite the fact that when he’s up ­­ bat in hand, flailing away ­­ he makes you wonder about his eyesight. You’d think he’d be smart enough to shut up.

Then we had Jim Rice’s elbow. He’s had more bone chips than Tammy Faye has had facelifts. Who do you figure performed the surgery on Rice? The guy in the ad who says, “I’m not a doctor. I just play one on TV.”? Clearly, the medical mumbo jumbo hasn’t affected Rice’s appetite because this morning he looks like the black Raymond Burr. Ironsides as DH.

Next came the sorrowful mystery of Ed Romero, followed by Joe “Turn the other cheek” Price. When the manager had the gall to question the pitcher’s inability to hold a runner on any base, the lefthander told the man to go frost himself and told the press he exploded because Morgan had popped the question at an inopportune time. Beautiful. Try that one on your boss next time you screw up an assignment.

Finally, a couple of days ago, Morgan, a nice guy who is still a minor­league manager, said the club might be only one or two guys away from being able to turn things around. I’ve thought a lot about that statement and he might be right if the two guys were Jim Jones and Joe Francis.

Jones had the Kool Aid concession at Jonestown a few years back. And Francis was an executioner at the old Charlestown State Prison.

The Reverend Jim and a stack of Dixie cups sure would clear out some of the deadwood. That plus old Joe Francis, hand right on the switch, and you’d have the ultimate waiver wire.

Unfortunately, it’s the fans who are currently getting zapped at Fenway. The ballclub has a built­in incentive not to change things too quickly, if at all.

You see, the park is actually a cash register. They can sell turkeys all year round, not just on Thanksgiving. They sell out early. They pack them in throughout the summer and don’t have to depend on the heat of a pennant race or the personality of a legitimate star, a drawing­card, to put fannies in the seats.

So the Red Sox are never forced to get tough, make trades, cut players or, when you get right down to it, compete in order to succeed. The bottom line in pro sports is financial success, not first place. This is a bank before it is a ballclub. They are winners before the first pitch or verbal assault is thrown. Management can tolerate nitwits because the faithful accept losers.

Yet, certainly, this assembly of sullen solo acts cannot be called a team. That implies unity and there is none here, only a meanness of spirit that lingers in the hazy air.

Friday night, sap that I am, I sat at the ballpark and was struck by the fact that a majority of Red Sox players had faces that looked as if they had been soaked in cement. They resembled a pack of surly, spoiled teen­agers, mad at the old man for not allowing them to have the car that evening.

My friends, the problem is not a lack of talent. It’s simply a lack of heart, desire, spine, spunk, soul, whatever. This club is not a collection of major­leaguers. It’s merely a group of selfish, disagreeable, unattractive, unappealing little boys who have jobs paying big dough and bosses who allow them to take the months of July, August and September off. Why, Hemingway once wrote a book about the pitching staff. It was called “A Farewell to Arms.”

And the clubhouse might as well be a day­care center called Fenway­R­Us because the players, not all of them but more than should be allowed, act like they have chronic diaper rash. They’re good at whining, complaining, making excuses, pointing fingers at others and picking up their paychecks.

But they’re unable to act or play at a professional level. Like I said, I love the game of baseball but I hate the games this particular crew plays.

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Originally published October 7, 1990, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

In the ballpark the other night, not many wanted to move after Brunansky made his marvelous catch and the fact that so many voted with their feet ­­ standing still in a stadium rather than head toward the reality of the street beyond ­­ should not come as any big surprise because things are fairly lousy. The people who refused to leave were all smiles and living a pleasant dream.

Past the summer green of Fenway it sometimes seems as if there is only Iraq, taxes, drugs, murder and politics. While between the white lines, where the game is played, there were a few men, especially a guy like Carlton Fisk, who somehow seem capable of delaying the arrival of their own night; so their continuing skill manages to keep us all a bit younger.

And you can feel that beautiful illusion of youth all around this morning. Baseball has a way of dominating the pulse of this region unlike anything else. Certainly, no other team comes close to maintaining a monopoly on mood the way the Red Sox do, whether winning or losing.

Given their history, rooting for this year’s edition is like cheering for September strangers. They have no speed, only limited pitching depth, and large volumes of home runs are from highlight films of memory. Yet the players actually seem to like one another and perform, incredibly, as a unit; a team instead of 24 guys bathing in jealousy and unearned hatred of sportswriters.

They are, literally, the talk of the town. Today, they set the agenda. They are the object of every verb, most thoughts and nearly every wish and prayer.

Their success, carved out of a three­week roller coaster ride, has returned sport to the sports pages. The Red Sox, thankfully, push sexism and stupidity to the back of the paper. They have given us a brief reprieve from stories of which athlete is on drugs and who is holding out for more dough. The Olde Towne Team is playing a game that, despite the effort of owners and ballplayers, is bigger than greed and beyond being tarnished by selfishness, free agency or rootless mercenaries who take directions from agents and never hear a child’s cheer.

Friday, trying to decide what to type for today (a murder, a rape, a school system incapable of finding a slot for a kid in kindergarten were my choices), I drove around, mind changing faster than a red light at Fields Corner. The sky was high, blue and without a hint of clouds. The sun was July­warm and yet nearly every streetcorner arrived like a blotch of ink.

Here, on Topliff Street, I recalled a shooting that started a gang war. And, over there, coming up Ashmont, I remembered a young boy, a teen­ager, an innocent with terrific dreams, going down dead on the sidewalk a few hundred yards from a Catholic church where nuns cried when told of the murder. He was 200 yards from his house when he was shot in the back by someone still out there, free. His family was shattered and, no doubt, remains so because nobody ever comes all the way back from tragedy like that.

Ahead of me there was a small bus, a van really, transporting youngsters with disabilities from school. Halfway down Dorchester Avenue, the bus pulled to the curb in front of a three­decker where a woman sat waiting on the stoop.

She got off the step to help a little boy get off the vehicle. He was 8 years old and greatly disabled. When he came down the ramp in his chair, he wore an enormous smile and, on his head, tilted just perfectly, a Red Sox cap. The scene was deserving of a cheer at least equal to the rush of noise that greeted the right fielder Wednesday night.

“He likes the Red Sox?” his mother was asked.

“He loves the Red Sox,” she replied. “I let him stay up late every night to watch them. He just loves them.”

The boy had difficulty speaking. His limbs were frozen. His face, however, became a simple statement of cheer as baseball was discussed. You think of everyone who regards a parking ticket or an extra six cents a gallon as the absolute end of the world, true gloom, and then you see a little boy who needs a wheelchair and perspective arrives. That, plus the knowledge that no matter how hard people try, no one can really place a foul hand on this perfect game.

So this one is for the Red Sox. For all they mean to all those anonymous dreamers who sit today worrying about Oakland and their strapping all­star strength. Remember, the true national sport used to be ­­ and ought to be again ­­ optimism.

This one is for the Olde Towne Team and everything they do to breath life and hope into those who would otherwise willingly begin the long, gloomy winter in October. And, most of all, it’s for baseball, which isn’t exactly a matter of life and death, but the Red Sox are.

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Originally published February 27, 1990, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

It was a big weekend for obituaries. Johnnie Ray, the singer, and Malcolm Forbes, the publisher, disappeared from the stage. Vinnie Teresa, the mob stoolie, died of unnatural causes ­­ an illness. And Gen. James Gavin, along with Tony Conigliaro, also hit checkout time.

Gavin was a thoughtful, honorable, gentle man. He was one of the youngest American generals in World War II, a commander of paratroopers who went out the door with his men and walked from Normandy across Europe in the fall of 1944.

He was an expert on warfare and an eyewitness to an awful lot of death. He never forgot what he saw and could thus provide compelling arguments against the ease with which so many old Washington politicians, out to earn their letter sweaters, committed so many young men to a war in Vietnam that no general knew how to win and few soldiers wanted to fight.

In 1976, he was back in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where Joe Levine, the producer born on Billerica Street in the West End, was making a movie of Cornelius Ryan’s book “A Bridge Too Far.” Thirty­two years earlier, Gavin had been part of an Allied operation to cross the Rhine, cut into the heart of Germany and, hopefully, end the war by Christmas 1944.

The plan failed. A lot of good men died. Gavin, a quiet hero for all his days, saved a regiment from the brutal German counterattack. Then, on this one October night, after a day watching a film being made, the general went to dinner at a restaurant on a narrow street in Nijmegen. When the owner was told that Gavin was his guest, the place became a shrine.

After accepting a hundred tributes with embarrassed charm, Gavin and the rest of his party made their way to the street. It was nearly midnight, yet there were perhaps 200 local residents standing in the darkness, waiting for him. And while he made his way to a car, people he had helped liberate three decades before quietly applauded. Gen. James Gavin was history.

And Tony Conigliaro was summer. He had a special magic that exceeded even his ability to hit a thrown ball with a wood bat. He lived and played on a permanent field of dreams located in his back yard. He went quickly from St. Mary’s High of Lynn to the major leagues.

In 1960, at 15, he made the Hearst All­Stars. The ballgame was at Fenway Park and every kid on the team walked onto that grass, glanced at that wall and absolutely believed, totally believed, that he was born to play in the bigs.

“Tony didn’t start that year and he was pissed,” Chet Stone was saying yesterday. “I can remember him sitting on the bench, fuming. I think he played a couple innings that year. I started. I was 18, and I said to myself, ‘Oh . . . him. He’s only 15. He’ll start three years from now.’ Three years later, he was in the big leagues. He was great.”

Today, Chet Stone runs Harvard University with help from Billy Cleary, Derek Bok and Artie Clifford, who used to throw a baseball with tremendous authority for Archbishop Williams High. Clifford, too, played against the kid from St. Mary’s.

“The only time he ever faced me, all he got was a foul ball off me,” Artie Clifford said. “Tony hit the ball about 550 feet foul. Then I walked him on four pitches.”

Joe O’Donnell grew up in Everett, went to Malden Catholic and played three sports against Tony Conigliaro: baseball, basketball and football. “He was the best athlete I ever faced,” O’Donnell said. “An amazing athlete. He never knew what it meant to quit. That’s why I always thought he would beat this thing. I never thought he’d die.”

The first time the two tangled, O’Donnell, bigger and burlier, was assigned to guard Conigliaro in a basketball game, and he figured he would shoulder Tony into the seats all night. But Conigliaro made O’Donnell look as if his sneakers were made of cement. He scored 24 points while O’Donnell fouled out in the second period.

Later, despite the fact that he never had any luck with high, outside fastballs, O’Donnell got a scholarship to Harvard and became captain of the baseball team. One day in 1966 when the Red Sox were working out behind Harvard Stadium, the two men who began getting in each other’s face when they were 13 years old stood together on a diamond just about as far away from Lynn and Everett as you can get. One wore college crimson. The other, the red stockings of a child’s dream.

Now Tony Conigliaro is dead, but in a funny way he’ll never die because memory and all those games carve their way into permanence. So he’ll be with us as long as boys play baseball, stepping into the batter’s box with that swaggering move and big right­hand stroke, making us believe that you really can go from St. Mary’s to the bigs and that summer might never end.

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Originally published April 19, 1990, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

 

Mr. Michael Greenwell of Fort Myers, Fla., and Yawkey Way is upset at the way his baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, is portrayed in the newspapers. Mr. Greenwell thinks reporters are unfair, too negative and don’t spend enough time writing about all the nice things that happen in and around Fenway Park.

Mr. Greenwell is paid millions to play a game. He seems like a nice boy, although in left field, his position, he has less range than Margaret Thatcher. Here is what he has done thus far in a miserable young season with a bat in hand: At the plate 30 times prior to last evening, he has a .200 average with 6 hits, no home runs and no runs batted in.

His problem ­­ one he shares with many athletes ­­ is that he never learned a thing from his elders, people like Greta Garbo and Steve Carlton. Garbo, of course, was a horrible actress who knew enough to get lost, stay lost and say nothing on the public record for decades. Carlton was an excellent lefthanded pitcher who remained mute for years: no interviews, no comments, not even an occasional grunt. Perfect.

I suppose it’s human nature to wish that everything was portrayed well in print and on TV. But when you have a pack of whining, marginally talented malcontents gathered together in one clubhouse it’s kind of tough to constantly wear rose­colored glasses.

Greenwell, I guess, doesn’t understand the function of papers and sports reporters. That’s all right, too, because a lot of fans don’t have the slightest clue, either.

If people in the news business operated the way the left fielder wanted them to, things would surely be different each morning when you bought this product and each evening when you watch the news for free. Everything would simply be swell.

Unfortunately, that’s not reality. Sometimes the truth is hard to swallow: We have a bumbler for governor. We have a pack of gutless swine in the Legislature. There are too many murders. Some kids are real maggots. Our schools have slipped. The family has faltered. The economy isn’t booming the way it was 6 years back. Money is owed. It rains. People get sick. Some die.

For comic relief, relaxation, pure joy ­­ a host of reasons ­­ a lot of New Englanders turn to baseball to bail them out of the doldrums. Well, we’re not getting baseball.

Instead, we’re getting a poorly prepared excuse for the sport. It’s played by men who get a good check to perform, and when they don’t, the least they could do is take their lumps like millionaires should.

No doubt about it, it’s a tough crowd around here. This is not San Diego, where the sun always shines and fans go to the ballpark to eat tacos and watch a chicken dance. It isn’t San Francisco or L.A. where, when you get bummed out about the score, you leave early, put on a purple body stocking and go dancing with 10 friends and 4 complete strangers.

There are a lot of angry, aggravated human beings in New England. For a lot of them, life is like scratching a sore. They spend half a year humping their way through a long winter, packing coats on little kids, fighting flu, skimming taxes, avoiding meter maids. When April appears and baseball returns, you can actually hear a huge sigh of relief.

Yet not too many Red Sox players understand their summer surroundings. The players are swollen with greed. Their principal loyalty is to an agent and free agency. Their love is concentrated on contract extensions and perfomance bonuses. Not one has ever offered to return any cash after a bust­out season. Instead, they hawk autographs for $8 a pop to little kids.

And, sadly, the money and premium pay ­­ most of it hard earned ­­ has affected the Red Sox and baseball more than it has any other sport. The Bruins are a small unit of personable, immensely likeable human beings. The Celtics play as if their lives depend on it. Both winter teams are a part of the community at large. They show up for charities. They smile. They at least act as if they are happy to be here.

Too many of the Red Sox walk around as if they are waiting for a call from the governor to commute their sentences. Off a roster of 24 players, there are about 6 truly nice guys. The rest of them just don’t get it: Fenway Park is the only true star. The players are merely part of a franchise that doesn’t have to work that hard because sellouts are a rule of thumb long before the team heads north with no pitching staff, no first baseman and nobody to dent the wall on regular basis. Fools like me still sit in our seats.

Sure, Mr. Greenwell has a right to complain about what is read to him in the newspaper. But I’d have a lot more respect for his dumb, hurt feelings if he simply did his job instead of trying to do mine. His job is simple: Shut up and perform.

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Originally published October 1, 1991, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

A friend of mine from San Francisco called yesterday to gloat about the demise of the Red Sox and wonder whether or not baseball fans across New England had shed any tears on their pillow after Sunday’s brutal loss to Milwaukee. I thought this was ironic coming from someone who lives in a city where people blow kisses and wink at ballplayers instead of booing or cheering them during games but, out of politeness, I gave him a reply anyway.

“Bleep you!,” I explained.

Then, later in the day I heard several of these radio disc jockeys, most of whom have room­ temperature IQs, carrying on about “how the Red Sox have done it again.” A string of nitwit callers were saying the club choked or that they do this every year or that Boston will never win a World Series because of the tired old Harry Frazee­Babe Ruth thing and, more than likely, Chuck Stuart, the Police Department, the media and the incredibly grim racial tensions around here.

The fact of the matter is that the Red Sox, after throwing up on their shoes during July, gave us back a summer. They came from 12 games behind to provide us with an interesting, exciting September.

They played hard. They played hurt. And they played well above their collective heads because they don’t have much pitching and it requires someone with a Browning .9 millimeter in hand before any one of them can steal a base. The bottom line is there wasn’t any quit in them and I don’t know what else you can ask of or expect from a team these days.

The whiner syndrome is a tough thing to shake. Yet in this town it’s become a way of life, and it is totally unwarranted but completely expected because the truth is that Boston is a provincial tank town, a minor­league burg with an isolated, warped, and unbelievably provincial mentality that causes too many to think that the sun rises above the harbor and sets just past Route 128 each day and that nothing else exists.

Let’s start with sports. We have three pro teams: Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins, although ice hockey is tough to categorize because most of those who follow it require three minutes to answer the question “What color is the blue line?”

In the last few years, the Red Sox have done far better than teams in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, all of them large cities with big buildings, phone service and running water. But what do we hear around here? “Holy mackerel. They do this every year.” I guess all other major­league American cities have teams that make it to the finals each year.

The Celtics win more than they lose. And the Bruins seem to be there every spring, but I admit that’s kind of a phony point because it seems in the National Hockey League nearly everyone from Marla Maples to the Malden Catholic Drum and Bugle Corps have a shot at the Stanley Cup.

You may have noticed that I omitted the football team from this analysis. That, for a simple reason: The Hoodsies ­­ or whatever it is they are called ­­ play in a toilet near Providence and exist only to provide renegade bike gangs with a place to gather each Sunday in the fall.

Oddly enough, one of the few things that allows Boston to cling to the reputation of being a major league city is the fact that it does have three professional franchises. That, plus a lot of good schools and some unbelievable hospitals are about the only thing between us and Des Moines.

I mean, think about it: The entire nation stumbles beneath the weight of a recesssion of near­ depression proportion and people in Boston walk around whining and blaming a lightweight former governor for present unemployment, as if no other area of the country has been hit.

We have one fairly sensational murder case and instead of being able to see it for exactly what it is the demented work of a single, insane fruitcake who was not smart enough to pull it off ­­isolated whiners make it the crime of the century. We refuse to learn from it and then let it go.

We have black people who get beaten by whites and we have whites who get walloped by blacks.

It happens a lot from coast to coast because, trust me, race is still the single biggest factor and issue in this life of ours. But, according to some whiners in the media, no other city suffers from the weight of violence and discrimination the way Boston does. I guess the mobs in New York, the hate in Chicago, the bullets in L.A. are nothing compared to the stuff here.

Around here, people don’t know how to drive very well. They are incredibly rude. They can’t cross streets properly. You can’t find a decent restaurant that stays open late. We have very little perspective on life beyond the 617 area code, yet we act as if everyone in the world wants to live here and the only reason they don’t, or won’t, is the Red Sox.

Get a life.

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Originally published July 25, 1991, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

I was out there again yesterday, trying real hard, which is what I always do, but, in the end, the thing I thought I had went south so, toward dusk, I returned to my dingy little hole in the Globe newspaper building in order to sulk among people who simply would not understand my temporary depression, because missing out on a story seldom bothers more than a handful around here. Under normal circumstances at this location, coming up empty is no problem because the reporter simply waits for an editor to leave a meeting, rushes up and says: “My personal aerobics instructor was sick today and I had no exercise so therefore I cannot write for tomorrow.”

That always flies. However, due to the fact that genetics dealt me a bad hand when it comes to employee­employer relations, I felt the need to plow on. You see, despite the bluster, being Irish and on the payroll of journalism’s equivalent of the Mayflower ­­ the boat, not the hotel ­­ there is always lurking in the background a slight tendency toward insecurity.

Thus, I arrived back at my office, one eye on the clock, the other on the door, waiting for a thought to tumble to the front of the carousel that revolves within my head. All I needed was a simple idea; something that stopped long enough for me to reach out, pluck it from my brain and put it down on paper.

I sat. I waited. I wasted time. I drank enough coffee to float the Fifth Marine Division. I read seven papers. Finally, I cried. It’s a terrible feeling to cry over nothing. Especially when you consider the fact that there is so much to legitimately cry about in life.

Then, the phone rang and my grief only increased. It was a friend of mine from Washington who wanted to know if I could send him the proceeds of a bet made in April.

The bet, of course, was that the Red Sox would do the whole thing in 1991. All of it: division, league and world titles.

The reality of my situation made me think about the marvelous line in one of the great Nelson Algren’s fabulous short stories about a gambler from St. Louis who went bust­out betting the Cardinals. In the story, the guy’s wife is asked how things are going and she says: “Not so good. Our house took a bad hop over Red Schoendienst’s head last night.”

That’s how I feel. My whole baseball year bounced over Steve Lyons’ shoulder the other evening and the plight of the Olde Towne Team has truly gotten to me, more than at any other time in the four decades that I have been paying attention to the standings. What bothers me most is I think they’ve given up, surrendered to mediocrity.

You can’t do that. I can’t do that. Not many people can unless they want to risk a string of payless Thursdays. But these guys with their big salaries have thrown in the towel and it is only the end of July. They would be great at the Department of Public Works: We go home at noon. It has gotten me depressed. Seriously.

In the spring, I actually thought this was going to be the year. Really. I really did. On paper, they had hitting, pitching and defense, too. Now, they are heading toward last place in a division that is just a cut above the Cape League.

They can’t hit or run, have difficulty fielding and most of their pitchers throw like the overweight guys you see trying to knock over milk bottles while blindfolded at county fairs. Yet, the players appear as loose as sand and as untroubled as a career criminal would be by an arrest for double­ parking.

Actually, that’s what they are: felons. The charge, of course, is larceny over a thousand dollars. In addition to stealing our summer, they are playing with our money, too, because, in truth, we help finance their salaries.

And this absolute fact of baseball arithmetic has, for the first time, gotten me to the point where I am seriously considering whether to retain my season tickets next year. I’ve had them for years and they are about the best seats in the ballpark but, now, I am thinking that life just might go on without the Red Sox. That’s how low I’ve sunk.

What else can I do?

Yell? Scream? Rant? Rave? Boo? Call them bad names? Put Marshmallow Fluff in their shoes? Tell their wives they’re playing games on the road and it ain’t baseball?

We are nearly helpless, powerless in the face of huge money guaranteed to men who are without shame, pride or loyalty to any town or team. And if they do not care, why should we pay?

I mean, they don’t even play baseball. They don’t run the bases properly. They don’t know how to hit the cutoff man. They can’t hit behind a runner, bunt, take the extra base or score from second on a ball in the gap. The only thing they know how to do is steal; that’s what occurs when their checks clear. Like I told you, larceny over a thousand.

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Originally published October 29, 1991, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

I’ve been to three heavyweight title fights and two Super Bowls. Once, I stood at the rail for the Kentucky Derby.

I’ve seen several NBA championship games and attended the NCAA finals. I’ve traveled to Williamsport and Cooperstown, too.

I’ve watched the Stanley Cup being won and Wimbledon being lost, but I have never, not ever, witnessed a better sporting event than the World Series that just ended when Minnesota finally beat back Atlanta. Unbelievable.

Until early Monday, I thought the best Series I ever saw took place in 1975 when the Reds beat the Red Sox in seven games. Both teams were stocked with stars.

A couple of games were like great prizefights. And nearly every one had something you still remember: Lynn crashing into the wall, Evans’ catch in the right­field corner, Tiant absolutely willing a 160­pitch victory, interference at home plate, Denny Doyle unable to hear the third­base coach, Carbo’s electric home run and Fisk’s memorable shot off the foul pole.

It was terrific baseball.

But it wasn’t better than the Twins and the Braves. This was a monster.

Yesterday, driving to work, I found myself replaying the seventh game. It was an incredible thing and would’ve been a fantastic event had it been played in April or August. Put it on during a Sunday night in October when men play for all the marbles and you have the single biggest reason why other sports can never really compete: Baseball is the best game.

This wasn’t some one­time­only freak festival like a Super Bowl, the annual Chamber­of­ Commerce ritual where corporate wheeler­dealers get so whacked out by kickoff time they don’t even know which teams are playing or what town they’re in. Face it: The Super Bowl is the Republican Party of sports. It’s a media event, not a ball game.

And it wasn’t pro basketball or the National Hockey league, where any club with equipment and carfare qualifies for the playoffs. You can finish next to last in either league during the regular season and come away with a ring. Wonderful.

No, this was the seventh game between two clubs that had been playing since spring. This was a whole year reduced to one week of escalating tension and a constant churn of the stomach.

This wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about individual statistics, MVP trophies, rings, history, TV appearances, incentive clauses or anything else other than two teams playing for the right to be called winners.

And neither one represented network TV’s idea of ratings heaven. The Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, White Sox, Red Sox or Cubs ­­ teams with huge markets or national followings ­­ were on the sidelines. All that was left was baseball.

And we found out again that the game is so strong it can’t be ruined by the momentary foolishness of owners in it for celebrity or connections. It can’t even be wrecked by the idiot children in uniform ­­ the players ­­ who once in a while steal a slice of its enduring magic by shaming everyone with their selfishness, pettiness or arrogant refusal to acknowledge that baseball is bigger than any ego or W­2 form.

Now, right here, I must point out that I personally know more about baseball than any 10 sportswriters you can stack in any room, anywhere, anytime. Still, I could not get over what I witnessed on TV.

I had no answers for dozens of questions: What were these guys on the field thinking about? Why didn’t anyone faint? Were they in the bullpen hoping the call would never come? Was anyone whispering, “Please, God, don’t let them hit it to me.” Or saying to each other, “Can you believe this?”

What was going through Jack Morris’ mind? What about John Smoltz, young, appearing in his first Series? How does anyone stand up ­­ pitch after pitch, scoreless inning after scoreless inning ­­ under such intense pressure? Why did I have the feeling that Clemens could not have done what Morris did? How come “our guys” never seem to have quite the class of “those guys”.

There was only one bad aspect to the Series: It ended. It’s over, and baseball is done for another season. The papers are without box scores and no games will be on TV for awhile.

However, unlike any other sport, we can talk about it for months and years to come. Who chats about tackles or touchdowns that occurred 16 years ago? Or even Sunday? Who remembers goals, baskets or all those faceless jocks playing games that merely blend together in the mind?

This World Series, though, was different. It was played out on another level, some high and memorable plane that will be recalled for decades.

They say it’s only a game. And they are right, but what makes it different is, this game is called baseball.

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Originally published August 6, 1991, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

In 1949, I saw my first baseball game at Fenway Park. I don’t recall a whole lot about it other than the fact that my father took me.

In the years since, I have wasted an awful lot of time watching the sport. Conservatively speaking, I have seen thousands of games.

Almost all have been here in the Back Bay. But, due to the fact that I am demented, I check the schedule whenever I find myself traveling between towns with major league clubs.

As a result, I’ve seen ball games in every National and American League park with three exceptions: Seattle, the new dome in Minneapolis and the hotel­ballpark combo that recently opened in Toronto. But I plan on being up there for the one­game Red Sox­ Blue Jays playoff game in October.

Now, during all the years spent sitting on my fanny watching baseball, I have only witnessed a single “racial incident.” It was outside Dodger Stadium when a group of unruly young Mexican­ American lads badgered and sexually taunted an outstanding looking young white woman with incredible legs and a dress that was not bought to hide them. Whew!

Thinking about it now, though, I’m not sure I’ve classified it properly. Was it racial harassment, sexual discrimination, or both? We do want to be correct.

In any event, the subject is raised because of a deeply disturbing report in yesterday’s Globe. According to researchers hired by this paper as part of a three­part effort about race and the Red Sox, only 71 black people attended Friday night’s game with Toronto out of a total of 34,032 fans.

I’m not sure what method, other than eyesight, was involved in this important social survey. For example, there is a Haitian fellow who sits in Section 16. And there is a Cuban woman I know who is at Fenway a lot and both were there Friday along with my friend Salvi, who is Italian, works for a landscaping firm and is outdoors all day and has a wicked, wicked tan and . . . well, what can I tell you? He’s pretty black.

But I’m not sure if any of them were counted by the Globe. And if they were, I’m not sure what it would mean. What’s the next step? Counting Jews, Mormons and Episcopalians out there? Keeping tabs on how many Irish Catholics have box seats? Finding out the salaries of season ticket­holders?

Say 2,356 blacks were at the game the other night. Would that be cause for civic celebration? A lot of self­congratulatory pats on the back from do­gooders who look for the racial angle in absolutely everything that comes down the turnpike?

Say there were none. Would it mean we lived in the American equivalent of Johannesburg? That Boston is the most segregated city in the United States? That the Red Sox don’t like blacks and their fans make blacks feel uncomfortable and unwanted?

Look, the truth is, this is not the most racially affectionate city in America. It’s not the worst, but it’s far from the best.

There’s too much agitation here over black versus white. Too much attention paid to silly numbers that are meaningless. Too much preoccupation with race at the expense of the deeper culprits: class, money and zip code.

Blacks are a distinct minority in Boston. They have pathetic political leadership, lousy access to decent schools, live in the most victimized neighborhoods, get trimmed on services and are geographically and economically segregated by an isolated white power structure that ignores things more out of insensitivity than out of ugly racial design.

And although I’ve not witnessed a single ugly incident at Fenway Park, I’m sure there are blacks who have been made uncomfortable, even threatened, by louts for no reason other than the fact they were black. I believe this to be true because I have seen people of other colors horribly mistreated by dolts who claim to be baseball fans. It’s amazing what a few beers and a little dust will do to someone with an IQ of 25.

Tossing the Red Sox into the race/affirmative action jackpot, however, is both old news and way off the mark. Sure, they didn’t sign Jackie Robinson when they should have in 1946. Sure, blacks, and plenty of whites, too, have had bad experiences at the ballpark. And, OK, maybe there were only 71 blacks there Friday night.

No doubt, that slim figure will provide ammunition to those goo­goos who want the country to be all about numbers, percentages and quotas. And I’m sure they will mistakenly use the eyeballed­ attendance Friday to continue painting both town and team as harsh, unfriendly territory for blacks.

However, this nation isn’t merely about numbers. It’s about people, and race. And the biggest knock on the Olde Towne Team is that they’ve dropped out of the race and our people ain’t playing the way they’re supposed to. That’s what counts.

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Originally published April 14, 1992, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe

Yesterday was no day to play baseball and the Red Sox went right out and proved it, losing to Baltimore 8­6 on a five­parka afternoon. It was an odd event, an opener conducted in weather colder than a Patriots finale.

Admiral Byrd would have had difficulty going five innings yesterday. By the bottom of the second, 30,000 bladders were bursting with more coffee than you’ll find in all of Colombia, the country not the college.

Still, it was baseball being played out there, the greatest sport ever dreamed up. The stands were split right down the middle between optimists and pessimists, which meant everyone in the park was handcuffed to the Olde Towne Team, prisoners of the past always looking forward to a future painted in dreams.

By the time the Birds went one up in the first at least 15,000 fans were certain that, once again, we would have to wait until next year. While, right alongside them, were 15,000 others who think every glass is half­filled.

One group points out that the Olde Towne Team is slower than Quayle. The other simply says, “No sweat. We don’t have to run because we’ll hit a ton of homers.”

Baseball is a form of constant redemption. It’s a cheer erupting for Don Zimmer when Sherm Feller calls his name.

It’s the crowd applauding Matt Young, who is on the verge of becoming a folk hero because he is a sad sack. He is the guy who never gets the girl, who always has his car stolen and misses out on the Honor Roll because of a D in Shop.

Sure, we make too much of it in this little big town but it truly is King. Always has been.

It dominates the front of our minds and the back of our newspapers. It pushes football, basketball and hockey to the rear burner 365 days a year.

Much more than all the others, it is a game of stories and endless flashbacks that allow the spectator, even the momentary pedestrian walking his or her way through an occasional afternoon in the ballyard, the opportunity to wallow in memory without feeling foolish.

It’s not nostalgia because the sport does not die or grow old. No calendar can capture, imprison or provide a mental boundary for baseball.

So yesterday, even with the discomfort of temperature, there was this kid ­­ maybe 8 years old ­­ coming down the street outside the park in the chill of mid­morning. The guy with him held his hand tightly and the two were engrossed in a conversation for the ages.

The kid talked about hitters. The man discussed pitchers, managers and disappointments.

The adult knew one of the fellows at the gate so they were let in early, hours ahead of the front running crowd, in time for the most important part of the ritual: batting practice.

They took the best seats in the house, right on the rail alongside the backstop, territory of the rich or connected. They sat there, checking out the two teams, watching as different members of the Red Sox emerged from the dugout to play catch or jog lightly in the brilliant green of the outfield.

This is when the park shines, when it is at its best: Uncrowded, nearly empty, filled only with the echo of balls off bats and the childlike banter of grown men who are paid to play a boy’s game.

They watched infield practice. They studied the swings of the hitters who prowled and pawed the dirt in the cage as a coach threw endless pitches right over the plate.

To the kid, the players seemed bigger than dreams. To the man, they looked the way they’d looked to him ever since his first trip to this same place a long, long time ago.

There was no school yesterday. There never has been on a day like that ­­ and work was only a place to be called with a good excuse.

As the sun pushed toward noon, the differences in their age seemed to recede. The conversation was one of equals, not kid and adult, not father talking to son. Just another baseball morning.

The boy almost jumped over the rail each time he spotted someone he’d only heard about: Dropo, Doerr, Pesky or Junior Stephens. And he had to catch his breath as soon as God made his entrance on to the sparkling stage wearing No. 9 on his back and a crooked grin on his famous face.

All he could do was sit there, mute, pointing his finger toward The Kid. The father merely nodded and smiled.

Maybe it was warmer then. Maybe life was simpler. Maybe we magnify this thing called baseball out of all proportion, seeking to turn a game into a metaphor.

Who cares? All I know is that my father has been dead for more than three decades and the only place he truly lives still is a place called Fenway Park. He was there yesterday and so was I and ­­ guess what? ­­ the loss only mattered to one of us.

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