Baseball announcers often say that if you watch the game long enough, eventually you see it all.
And that really is the trouble. Because by mid-life, you really have seen it all—including the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.
And so opening day doesn’t mean as much.
In order to remember how it used to feel, I watch the old games on YouTube—games from the time that I was discovering the meaning of baseball (and, it seemed to me, of American manhood).
This week, I watched a game from April, 1981. I would call it a random game, but it wasn’t: It was the NBC “Game of the Week” that we all sat down in front of every Saturday afternoon. This week, the then-defending America League Champion Kansas City Royals were taking on the up-and-coming Milwaukee Brewers.
It looks cold in Milwaukee. Cold, and gray. But it’s warm, sitting on the two-inch yellow shag carpeting in my parents’ bedroom, my back against the bed, my face two feet away from the only color TV in the house, an old RCA.
I’m 11, about to turn 12.
It’s a truth about America, then and now: Most of what you learn, you learn from the commercials.
For instance, before the first pitch of this game, I learn that men can attract women by wearing a certain kind of deodorant. (Old Spice, “A man’s scent so many women love.”) Also, a man’s day involves tons of difficult, unpleasant work, and then tons of beer (which tastes great, and is less filling).
Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek are the announcers—wonderful former ballplayers and to my generation, the human sound of baseball.
Mark Twain said, “I am not an American, I am the American.” Kansas City Royals’ third baseman George Brett might have said the same thing, about being a baseball player.
On the other hand, the Brewers’ pitcher, Pete Vuckovich looks like a guy you wouldn’t even want to sit next to in a bar. In the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, drunken dishevelment had a moment. I would say this mostly applied to pitchers, except the Brewers’ right fielder Gorman Thomas looks like this.
And that exact bum, in fact, just made a sweet sliding catch to rob the Royals of a hit here in the first inning.
But Grossburger Vuckovich is getting shelled. Kansas City is out in front 3-0 after one inning.
Now I’m going to list first names of these teams and their managers, that really just don’t exist anymore: Amos. Dick. Clint. Ned. Dwight. Robin. Rudy. Cecil. And Willie (between them, these teams have three).
The game is mainly a vehicle for deodorant commercials, who are having the fiercer contest: not just between Right Guard and Speed Stick, but between stick and aerosol! Yes, kids, back then you sprayed a fucking aerosol can, just like a spray paint can, into your fucking armpits, except tons of the stuff shot out into the bathroom or locker room air and everybody inhaled tons of it and it was supposedly bad for the ozone, too.
Of course I’d never seen Milwaukee or Kansas City when I watched this game the first time, 43 years ago. Gradually I developed what felt like a legitimate sense of the character of every major American city, based on the aesthetics of their ballpark. And I was in no rush see Milwaukee, I’ll tell you that. God do those people look miserable in the April cold.
Gorman Thomas just froze a runner on third with a long rope from right field to the plate on a perfect line, no bounce. He’s singlehandedly keeping his team in the game thus far.
Now shifting from deodorant to razors, and here comes the Schick Super II “for the macho shave.” With this razor, the announcer says, “Don’t just get close, get macho close!” Vuckovich and Thomas, we’re looking at you.
I pull the frozen pizza out of the oven and I get back to see Thomas hit a home run to centerfield. Kansas City Royals 3, Gorman Thomas 1.
There was a FedEx commercial earlier. Now, a rival named Purolator Courier airs a commercial claiming it is “the giant of the overnight package delivery business.” Never heard of Purolator Courier, while you’ve gotten four FedEx packages today? Yeah, there’s a lesson in that, I just can’t think of what it is.
Okay, the umpires just reversed an important call—but not using instant replay, which wasn’t part of the deal back then. No, in order to determine whether a Royals player fouled a ball off his foot, the umps checked the ball “for shoe polish.” Shoe polish found, call changed. Shoe polish!
When was the last time you saw an ad for a disposable pen? (The fine-point Flair, with a good slogan: “To make your writing easy to read.”)
“Pete Vuckovich should get along well in this town,” Kubek says, further educating me about Milwaukee. “He has a Polish wife. He’s Serbian.”
In 1981, it was still very important, when you became a man, to choose the right spark plugs (Champion) and motor oil (Pennzoil, or ARCO, or Valvoline), dandruff shampoo (Denorex) and pipe tobacco (Royal Comfort, because “If it’s a cool smoke you seek, take Comfort”).
We go to the bottom of the sixth with Kansas City still leading Gorman Thomas, 4-1. Paul Molitor leads off with a double. A wild pitch to Robin Yount advances Molitor to third. Cecil Cooper brings in Molitor with a sacrifice fly, and the inning ends 4-2.
As we go to the seventh, both starting pitchers are still in the game. No one has mentioned how many pitches either has thrown.
“Old Spice presents … the Seventh-Inning Stretch!” Some grainy black-and-white highlights from the career of Hall-of-Famer Lou Boudreau, once known as “The Boy Wonder.”
The Whiskered Wonder, “Stormin’” Gorman Thomas, strikes out.
Garagiola plugs a day planned to honor Vietnam veterans. Kubek talks about efforts to curb fan violence, then a problem in Major League Baseball, when fans occasionally threw objects at players. “Baseball fever … catch it!”
To the ninth, still 4-2 Royals.
Brewers down to their last at bat. One out. Garagiola and Kubek are confident enough about the outcome to name Royals’ starting pitcher Larry Gura, still in the game, the game MVP—sending a check for $1,000 in Gura’s name, to the Special Olympics. Two outs. Gura throws a great curveball—it must be his 150th pitch—to Ben Ogilvy, then gets him to pop out to right, to end the game.
The 1981 season was split in two by a players’ strike. The Royals didn’t make the adjusted playoff bracket; the Brewers did, but were eliminated in the first round. So this game didn’t really matter after all.
None of the games really matter after all.
But they sure as hell mattered before all.
And I like to get in touch—like to keep in touch—with the kid that all that mattered to.
Don’t you?
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