Baseball Springs Eternal

By Tom Callahan

After a mean season, soft sights and sweet sounds of renewal

On a fresh Florida day in Winter Haven (one of God's waiting rooms), where the old gray heads in the grandstand seem to go back to Abner Doubleday, baseball has gone back to baseball. Last season was interrupted for 50 games by shrill lawyers and labor leaders, and the grace note of laughter never quite returned. Some wondered if it ever would. But the talk this spring is once again of hopeful rookies and aging veterans, an endless line streaming in and straggling out. Born hitters who can do it all and hurt you in a lot of ways. Stylish lefthanders who throw aspirin tablets and wear CAN'T MISS tags if they stay out of the hitters' wheelhouses. Joy is back in Mudville.

Sparky Anderson is hitting fungoes. "They've forgiven us," marvels the Detroit manager. "Baseball has to be the luckiest business in the world. Whatever we do to louse it up, we can't." Johnny Pesky is chewing tobacco. Everything Sparky says, the wrynecked coach of the Boston Red Sox endorses with a streamer and a splat. "Baseball," Sparky says, "is bigger than the people running it."

In a nook around the corner from right field, Mark ("the Bird") Fidrych is warming up. What is more poignant than a bird with a lame wing--who was once Rookie of the Year? Fidrych is 27 years old and in the fifth year of his comeback. He won 19 games for Detroit in 1976 talking to the ball, but last season Mark mopped up in the minor leagues talking to himself. The Tigers finally gave up on him, and now the Red Sox are having a look. Close up, it is hard to feel too sad because he appears so happy. "As soon as I get the uniform on, I'm happy," Fidrych says. "Getting dirty, you know. Being a kid again. I love it. Oh, I'm still a free spirit. You won't see me lose that." And, at least on this day, he experiences no pain.

The swift rise and fall of Fidrych puts some in mind of Mexican Phenomenon Fernando Valenzuela, provider of about the only sweet note last season and about the only discordant one now. But even Fernando's holdout with Los Angeles has been kept a fairly light quarrel. Says Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda: "All last year we tried to teach him English, and the only word he learned was 'million.' " Softer, Lasorda says: "He was a big hero last year, but people are beginning to turn on him. It could hurt him."

Fans never stop being awed and appalled by sports' high finances. (Cincinnati has surrendered its outfield in toto to New York--Ken Griffey and Dave Collins to the Yankees, George Foster to the Mets--for contracts amounting to more than $20 million.) But they are growing used to grand sums, not to mention outlandish arbitrations. Mike Flanagan, the Baltimore pitcher, submitted a figure of $485,000 and then found out that the Orioles' recommendation to the arbitrator was $500,000. Deferring to their superior judgment, Mike instantly gave in.

Belittled and beleaguered Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, whom some of the owners would like to drum out of the job, says that three-quarters of the teams are reporting increased ticket sales, and there is no cause to doubt it. Even when it isn't, a baseball game seems a bargain--a bargain for the heart.

Approaching prosperity in a refreshing way, Free-Agent Pitcher John Denny turned down the richest offer tendered him, that of the Yankees, in favor of Cleveland's. He said George Steinbrenner made him nervous. Think of it: less money and Cleveland. It is a nice counterpoint to the unfeeling explanation Reggie Jackson gave for choosing the California Angels over the Orioles: "The only trouble with Baltimore is it's in Baltimore."

The Orioles will have to try to get along without him and, after this year, without Manager Earl Weaver. Baseball's Rumpelstiltskin swears he is retiring to his tomato plants "unless the stock market crashes." Others who may not be around much longer and are worth making a memory of include Willie Stargell of the Pirates, Joe Morgan of the Giants and Carl Yastrzemski of the Red Sox. More than a year between homers, Stargell has announced this will be all. "It's been a banquet," says Pops, smacking his lips. "I'm on the dessert." Hoping for just three more victories to make an even 300, 43-year-old Gaylord Perry, alleged dispenser of an unhygienic spitball, is with the Mariners in dry Tempe, Ariz., drooling to get to Seattle. "The thing about Perry," complains Oakland Manager Billy Martin, "is he's so quick-dissolving."

About their age, but in his own class, Philadelphia's eternal equinox Pete Rose led both leagues in hits a year ago and says, "I'm looking to do it again." With 3,697 hits in 19 seasons, he stands 494 below Ty Cobb's major league record, or 2 1/2 years away even by his standards. When Rose arrived at Clearwater, Fla., with a creaky back, walking like one of its citizens, doubts were raised about whether he would last. Rose's injury was suffered in a tennis match with his agent, so Valenzuela's agent hasn't caused the only pain this spring. Pete sighs. "I asked the doctor, 'Can I start saying it's my side?' Nobody ever says you got a bad side from old age." Rose will lightly note his 41st birthday the second week of the season.

If he breaks Cobb's record, it will probably be with a Japanese bat. Japanese gloves and shoes have proliferated around the majors, but as yet only Pete goes to the plate with a chopstick. He has an endorsement deal. "People driving Toyotas and Datsuns have been blaming me for the recession," says Rose, who has a happy sense of mischief, "but the leather for the Japanese gloves comes from Texas and the wood for the Japanese bats comes from Louisville."

The baseballs come from Haiti, and the covers have not been made of horsehide for years (they are cowhide now). So it is somehow nice to know that the bats are still bolts of mountain ash. Progress is one thing (Chicago heretics are talking about putting lights in Wrigley Field), but a van marked MIZUNO has been touring the camps and delighting the players with experimental microwave gadgetry; for example, battery-powered catchers' mitts and pitchers' gloves for push-button signaling of fastballs, curves, sliders and fork balls. No more flashing fingers self-consciously to pitchers who are publicly cold to every suggestion. Some gloves calculate the speed of the pitch. Perry should hope none of them register relative humidity.

In spring training, the essential word has always been "spring." It is more a time of year than a program of exercise, and a state of mind more than a geographic location. Spring training may be more for the fans than the players. Except for the pitchers, whose coddled arms must be toned gradually, a couple of weeks' preparation would be ample. Managers need no more time than that to make up their minds about the rosters--not infrequently made up going in. All of this was proved in 1976 when an owners' lockout of three weeks had no great effect on the quality of training--just on the quality of spring.

Spring is for romance, new beginnings and warm weather on the way. Also for young men with high numbers on their backs, signaling at least another year of seasoning, until eventually, like Cal Ripken Jr. and Chili Davis, they are ready for the big club. Cal Ripken Sr. is the Baltimore third-base coach, and now Cal Jr., his father's happy bonus for 25 years of Oriole service, is the new starting third baseman. Chili Davis, a rookie San Francisco outfielder, is as necessary to the Giants as he is to spring.

He's the New Willie Mays.

--By Tom Callahan

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.