Theyll come to Iowa for reasons they cant even fathom. Theyll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why theyre doing it. Theyll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.
Of course, we wont mind if you look around, youll say. Its only twenty dollars per person. Theyll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.
And theyll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. Theyll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And theyll watch the game, and itll be as if theyd dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, theyll have to brush them away from their faces.
People will come, Ray.
The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.
America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. Its been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.
This field, this game its a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.
Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come...”
That monologue was running through my mind as I read the article. I’m thinking that it wasn’t so long ago that “Field of Dreams” and “Bull Durham” were romanticizing baseball — not just MLB. Now I couldn’t give a d@mn. Baseball will survive our indifference and be re-discovered by our descendants. But for the immediate future I expect MLB will have to live on a much reduced allowance.