Baseball season used to be, well, more grounded

                              Daylight Saving Time is upon us and spring looms.  It's clear that baseball season is right around the corner and, as I have since I was a very little kid, I'm looking forward to it but with modest optimism.  I've got to be honest ----- it's just not the same anymore.
                              Okay, so the pundits are telling us that the Phillies will be, well, awful.  In fact, some say they are the worst team in baseball this year (at least the worst one that doesn't play in Houston).  I find that hard to believe ----- how they can call a team with more than a few really good players (Cliff Lee, the slowly recovering Cole Hamels Dom Brown, Chase Utley, A J. Burnett, Carlos Ruiz) awful, is beyond me.  I guess I'm simply not as smart as the sportswriters.  Worse yet, unlike them, I have to pay my way into the park.
                              This past winter, my wife and I reupped for our Phillies partial game plan.  We've done that pretty much since the late '70s.  (Yes, I was there for game six of the 1980 World Series when the Phillies, finally, won a world's championship.)  We like going to the park, enjoying the night out and, like spring, hope abounds.
                              As a boy growing up in Glenside, we had two Philadelphia teams to root for.  Connie Mack's A's in the American League and Bob Carpenter's Phillies in the National.  For a while, in the late '40s, the A's actually seemed to be poised to make one more run at the flag for their elderly owner-manager.  In 1948, they were in the thick of the pennant race all the way until Labor Day ------ the Indians finally won it.
                             And while this was going on, the Phillies jettisoned racist manager Ben Chapman and brought in college man Eddie Sawyer to guide their young and talented team toward better days.  Richie Ashburn, Robin Roberts, Del Ennis, Granny Hamner, Dick Sisler, Puddin' Head Jones, Andy Seminick ----- this was a team to get excited about.
                             But in Philadelphia, you were a fan of whatever team your father supported, and in our case that was the Athletics.  In fact, research showed that Republicans supported the A's, Democrats backed the Phillies.  And in the late '40s, early '50s (odd as it may seem today) there was a Republican (Bernard Samuel) in the mayor's office at City Hall.
                             So when the 1950 season rolled around, the sports pundits (the ancestors of today's deep thinkers) picked the A's to win the American League (it was Mr. Mack's 50th year as skipper) and the Phils to finish somewhere around third or fourth place.
                             As it turned out, the A's were dreadful ----- they lost over 100 games ------ and the Phillies won the pennant when Dick Sisler parked one in the left field seats at Brooklyn's Ebbetts Field for the pennant on the last day of the season.
                             I was conflicted at first.  I wanted to root for the A's.  I wanted to get all their Bowman baseball cards.  Bobby Shantz was a favorite, ditto Ferris Fain, Sam Chapman, Eddie Joost.  And I did.  But I found myself gravitating toward getting all the Phillies cards I could find, too.  In fact I decided that outfielder Del Ennis was my favorite Phillie and that meant his card would be hard to find, and it was.
                             That summer, when I was just 9, was amazing.  The Phillies (really pretty dreadful for most of my life) were the talk of the town.  Their new red pinstriped uniforms were cool and the red cap with the script "P" in white on it was a "must-have" for all the kids.
                             The players of that day were our idols, but they still seemed accessible.  Many of them lived in the neighborhoods throughout the city.  Ennis was from Olney, lived locally.  Schantz was from Pottstown, settled in Ambler.  Robin Roberts lived in Meadowbrook.
                             Today the players live, isolated from the fans, in penthouses or gated mansions.  In the '50s, many ball players worked in the winter as school teachers, mail carriers, salesmen, just to make ends meet.  The great Jimmie Foxx sold paint, even drove a truck to pay his bills.  Today the players (even the subs) cash checks in the seven figures.
                             Ballplayers got injured when we were kids, but they weren't out of action long.  Why?  Well there were only 16 big league teams and lots of guys in the high minors ready to take their jobs.  Today's players sign contracts and think nothing of taking off the whole season to nurse a boo-boo.  Of course they get paid in full.  Their agents see to that.  In my boyhood, players signed one-year contracts based on what they did the last season.  Now, they sign multi-year deals based on what they may do at some point in the future.
                           The game, in those days, seemed more human.  The players were guys you could root for ---- guys you liked.  Today, not so much.  Rooting for today's young millionaires is kind of like rooting for Microsoft.  It's there, but it's not something I can feel warm and fuzzy about.
                           But when the first pitch is tossed, I'll be watching their every move and living and dying with the locals.  A part of me will revert to my boyhood.  That's the way I'll continue to be forever young and always a baseball fan.