THE GAMES OF SUMMER                                                                                                           (…lingering on into the leaves of Fall)

Ah, baseball! This year’s season of it has just ended with the San Francisco Giants making a clean sweep to add another World Series notch to their belts, just in time for…Halloween. Yes, these games of summer seem to linger ever longer into the leaves of Fall these days.

There was a time, back in the day, when such was not the case, when baseball was all wound up and its World Series put away by the end of August, because its season had started early and was shorter. That is, as soon as Spring had barely sprung young men’s fancies turned to …baseball…not just to thoughts of love (although that still got its share of fancies, if only in a backseat sort of way, so to speak).

So balls, bats, and gloves were hauled out of their winter storage to be fondly fondled by every young stud in America, becoming obsessed with another season of the game…to the exclusion of everything else. And soon every empty open space, sandy or not, became the scene of impassioned pick-up contests between whomever cared to do so, echoing with hoots and hollers, the thwack of balls deftly caught by well broken in mitts and gloves, and the crack of wooden Louisville Slugger bats sending errant line drives crashing through neighbors’ front parlor windows or unfortunately parked cars.

And every small town in the land had its homegrown team playing on Saturday afternoons in home-rigged ball parks of timber and bailing wire, with local merchants “sponsoring” the costs, thereby earning good-will brownie points from their communities. It was truly an all-American pastime, culminating with leagues of “pro” teams, with players paid to perform the game by deep pockets having the means to buy the name and colors of a club representing whatever city…NY Yankees…Brooklyn Dodgers…Boston Red Sox…Chicago Cubs…       St. Louis Cardinals…Detroit Tigers…et al…to become those games of summer everyone avidly followed on whatever radio could be had.

But as with everything else in professional sports these days, such games now linger on, longer and longer into Fall, overlapping into –Football- which now overlaps into – Hockey- , which overlaps –Basketball- which then…having come full circle…overlaps into the start of a news season of…Baseball. Such extended seasons for each of these sports means more revenues for the club owners, the players, the cities, the advertisers, and of course, good old ESPN which now provides hordes of couch-potatoes across the land with a 365-day long feast of every conceivable type of sports content.

Sports…has now become an industry, much like cars, and in the process that sense of former anticipation between these sporting events has been diminished, if not lost. And whatever distinguishing aspects they may have are becoming more blurred with each passing year…further eroding both their meaning and their values.

Tiddlywinks anyone?

CENTURION