The Fan's Game 3

Baseball is about character. It couldn’t be about anything else and remain so popular for so long. Sure, we admire expertise and we root for our team. But in the long run, fans are theatergoers, and the thing that attracts us, like any theatergoers, is the revelation of character. Within the confines of that visible sliver of a players’ life that we see, day after day on the field, fans decide that a given player, beyond his mere ability, is “reliable,” or a “hot dog,” One is an “example for our youth,” while another is a “head case,” a “malcontent,” or, worst of all, a “choke up.” To the discerning fan, numbers are just the beginning. It is character that counts – what we call a player’s “game.”

For example: Most fans, even casual ones, know who Willie McCovey is. Hall of Famer. 500-plus homeruns. Holds the NL record for grand slam homers. But among these ciphers and trivia-game answers, there is a deeper reality. Yes, McCovey won the NL Rookie of the Year Award playing barely two-thirds of the 1959 season. But in 1960, he was a bust. His homers fell off sharply. His average dove into the low .200s. He would overswing on off-speed stuff and chase bad pitches. He was a poor baserunner, and an indifferent fielder.

 Worse, he was a tall, gangly, African-American man with a southern accent who fit the racist stereotype that many white fans still harbored. The Giants, under manager Alvin Dark, were not so secretly known in some Bay Area venues as “Dark’s Darkies.” Besides, he was booed and ridiculed, and – finally – sent down to the minors.

Baseball history is filled with players, who do well until – inevitably - their weaknesses are discovered in the glare of everyday play. Most are never heard from again. It seemed to many that McCovey was, after all, one of these. But fast forward ahead to 1965. I attended a night game, Giants against the Cincinnati Reds. In this quite remarkable game I saw McCovey:

1)   Bunt for a base hit

2)   Take second on a grounder which he expertly punched through an overshifted defense.

3)   Steal second on a delayed steal with an expert slide.

By now, he was laying off the high pitch. Twice, he led the league in walks. Defensively, he made all the routine plays and many of the very difficult ones. For several years, along with people named Aaron and Mays, he was the NL’s most feared slugger. He had worked, and worked hard, to repair his shortcomings and fill the holes in his “game.”

And it is the fan's game to notice such things, to look beyond the numbers and see the person and those indications of humanity, of character reflected in the game.