KIM MICHAEL

       

For the Love of the Game

by Kim Michael

Copyright May 2015

(Pictures by Leslee Mitchell-Marilou Woods )

       

        There was a time in America when life was different.  Kinder.  Gentler.  When the world didn’t revolve around the latest craze, or the healthiest bottom line.  When companies bore with pride the names of their creators proudly: Ford.  Rockefeller.  Disney; instead of being orphaned behind a nameless, faceless, board of investors--and wall street and main street, were the same street.   

And it was a time when sports were different.  When players weren’t driven by multi-million dollar contracts and market shares and TV ratings, but somewhere along the way the world changed.  We, as a nation, forgot the joy of playing sports simply for the love of playing sports, and in many ways, we lost a part of our innocence in the process.  Winning at any cost became the mantra; we learned about steroids and cheating and getting ahead at any cost; and it became the means to an end, rather than about sportsmanship and competing with pride.    

The great baseball strike of 1981, driven mostly by greed of the owners and players alike, did it for me.  I never recovered my love of the game, something I never thought could happen.  I grew up with baseball.  Back then it was the national sport and people would stop everything to watch the games.  I remember growing up in a two room school on the backroads of Illinois where the teacher brought in a portable TV and on a warm summer’s day, with the windows open and the fans humming; we stopped everything to watch the World Series, and on those days life was perfect. Now those days are gone.  Or are they?

    There are parks in Tennessee where a group of middle aged men still play the game as it was played in 1864, and it's called the Vintage Baseball League.    They wear bib-overhauls, and old denim shirts and newsboy hats from days long past.  And they play without fancy gloves and spiffy uniforms and metal bats.  There are no million dollar contracts, no owners, no bottom lines to be met; just the the love of the game and reliving a part of our past that was the best of what we were.  

        These men live for the thrill of the game, to hit away, a  stinger or daisy cutter; and run the bases, stretch a double into a triple; and slam into home base "stringing your stumps" as the arbiter looks on.  And though the game is played somewhat tongue-in-cheek, in many ways it is more real than the games we see see today.  And when they play, the field they play on is nothing less than a field of dreams; where people come on a warm Sunday afternoon to sit on hard park bleachers in short sleeve shirts and summer dresses, and sip glasses of sweet iced tea as they watch game.  And for those few hours they are transported back to another time and another place; when baseball was magic... and it is "magic" once more.     

And when the game is over, there are no castles or yachts or high performance sports cars to go back to, no crowds or fanfare; just the sound of an empty park as they gather up their belongings and drive away in Fords and Buicks and Toyotas.  But when they leave, they leave with much more than they came, something infinitely more valuable, something that professional sports lost a long time ago...the love of the game.

Visit the http://tennesseevintagebaseball.com