Diamond Death, Diamond Life
by Judith Kamilhor

The Flamingoes are up to bat, the bench is cheering, and three bright pink stuffed flamingoes poke their beaks through the dugout fence. My team is called Las Fuertes (which means strong women in Spanish) and we're here in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, doing what the big boys do, trying to prolong or recapture our youth. They make millions; we play for free, but the game is more or less the same.

I find myself hanging on one more time as a player. There have been many leagues and many teams; I can hardly remember the names of the teams or my teammates. Gradually, the fire for playing the game has cooled, my ultra-competitiveness has waned, along with my skills. It's not satisfying most of the time anymore, because the great catches are just out of my reach, and the homerun power is long gone. The highs are not as high, and the lows are lower. It's still softball, though, and it still has the power to draw me back again and again. I came back this time, searching for a fountain of youth, after I promised myself I would be well enough to play softball one more time following a sudden life-threatening illness. I bought a new glove on my birthday as incentive, and I made it back onto the field. I'm not as good, but I'm a hell of lot more grateful than the last time I played.

Most of the fun is slipping away from the major leagues now, at least for me as a spectator and critic. All the talk of labor, drug, and personal problems has distracted me from the game and its magnificent talent. I resent it when real life intrudes. Baseball has always represented a safe haven, a return to simpler times, in the life of the country or the country boy. There's even something tribal about it; when you go to a major or minor league game, everyone is wearing team hats or shirts, to claim their place in the lineage of fans, like we are trying to backpedal on the road of evolution to a less complicated age.

Since September 11, the irony is that our desperate need to return to our naive younger selves has been overshadowed by our increasing impatience with the suddenly obvious childishness of many of those involved in trying to run baseball.

We can't believe how self-absorbed the owners and players seem. Have they always been like this? Yes, of course, but it didn't feel so important. In a time that demands unity and trust for the good of the game, the country, and the world, we see selfish temper tantrums and hear cries of economic calamity. "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" For heaven's sake, close the Miller Park roof.

Baseball historians know that players and owners have distrusted each other and tried to wrench every last penny out of the enemy since at least the 1880s when an earlier version of the players' union was plotting to form their own league. The Players League was a short-lived disaster, but they made their point. The game hasn't changed much, but we have.

This year, my first game at Shea Stadium in almost a decade happened to be the Saturday the Cardinals found Darryl Kile's body in a Chicago hotel room. I heard the news from the announcement on the giant TV screen in left-center field while the Met reserves were taking infield practice. One minute the fans are clustered near the dugout yelling for Joe McEwing to turn around, and the next we stare silently, trying to comprehend the message. The news hit me hard, as it always does when a current athlete dies, especially one I've been watching and reading about for years, like Kile. I cried on and off for a couple of days, in between wondering whether the Mets' lethargic play was a result of their feelings about Kile's death, or just more proof of a lost season. Or maybe, they are as distracted as I am by all the stupidity.

The money has gotten out of hand; even the players know that. For them, it seems to be more about respect than about the actual dollar amount. Give them more than lesser caliber players and they are happy. It's more about a pecking order than a string of goose eggs on the paycheck. People also forget that even with a hard salary cap, there would still be competitive imbalance. Teams with GMs like Beane, Sabean, and Cashman would dominate, and the rest would still have virtually no chance each April to win a World Series. Maybe the fairest thing to do would be to force the small market teams to hire the best player development guys, and make the Yankees hire Syd Thrift. Personally, I don't want every team to be mediocre. People remember the best and worst teams of all time; no-one remembers the .500 teams. If you want parity, watch the NFL.

Steroids, speed, and all the other exotic edges players use, are about restoring or even creating youthful vitality. The potent brew of fear of failure and fear of aging can lead players to risk their health and their lives. Some of them probably do not even see it as a risk, either because of denial of the side effects, or an actual desire to die young and powerful, to get their names in the record book for all time. I remember hearing about a poll of Olympic athletes years ago who said that they would rather win a gold medal and die young than to not win a medal and live a long, normal life. I can't tell you I wouldn't make a deal with the devil to guarantee a National Book Award, even it meant an early death. Modern ballplayers want to hit like Ted Williams, but they're scared to death to end up like him (feeble, not frozen). Would you turn down an invitation to immortality?

I feel angry at the state of major league baseball, but mostly I feel sad. These men are not heroes. Baseball players never were. They weren't even considered respectable until the middle of the 1900s. Generations of fans just needed them to be heroes so much that everyone hypnotized themselves into believing it was true. Today I see young, often immature, men in their twenties and thirties mostly (and thank God for Rickey and Jesse Orosco, the only two guys older than I am), many of whom do not act like outstanding citizens, or even people that I would like to have a conversation with. I admire their skill and natural strength, and I sincerely hope the players, agents, and short-sighted, impulse-control-challenged owners do not destroy the major leagues.

Whatever happens, they can't destroy the game itself. There will always be women and girls, men and boys, playing variants of a ball and bat game played on a diamond. At its best, the game makes everyone feel childlike and joyful; at its worst, it makes us nostalgic for times that never were. If they are foolish enough to shut the major leagues down again, don't give up on the game, just find a more joyful expression of it at your nearest park or minor-league stadium. The Flamingoes can always use some more fans.

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