. Bill Smiley= * The ball game ts : By BILL SMILEY ‘Drove. about 200 miles the ‘other night with-a couple of ’ other idiots to watch a big- league - double-header baseball game:. New York . Yankees vs, Toronto Blue- jays. ’ “How can you just. “sit "there for six hours, watching -a group of grown men do something we used to do in PAGE 2, THE TOWNSMAN, Thursday. August 4 Ww wife asks, with amusement and nota little scorn, public school, at reeess?"” my. Well, it’s # little difficult to explain, without sounding childish. In the first place, these are not grown men. They are professional ball players. Secondly, they don’t Baseball - players, like hockey - players, - grown | men. highly paid for something they'd rather. do ". thameat. .- doit quite the way we did it . at recess. Thirdly, baseball, once you get it in your blood, is lke a low-burning fever, and the only anti-biotic that cools it out is watching a ball game. . For Up To 425 © 125 Air Conditioned Suite & Rooms With View. 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There’s an extra charge in the knowledge that one of the dancers is going to make a misstepat any time and come up with egg on his face, in- stead of the baseball.: Finally, I played baseball, in a baseball town, from the time I was about eight untill . was 16 or so, often for hours . aday My heroes, in those days, were the members of our local professional team, even though it was Class D ball: They were tall and bronzed and lean, college boys and coal miners from the States, many of them with unpro-. — that... sounded exotic in that small. * Anglo-|rish-Scottish com- ‘nounceable names munity.’ They. weren't ballplayers; went up to the major leagues; but they were pretty, good. To us kids, they were Her- great cules and Achilles rolled inio ¢ one. To the girls in town, ” they were Adonis. ‘They chewed ‘tobacco, and ~ them with . we imitated licorice. They spoke with a variety of Yankee drawls and we tried to copy them, much | to the dismay of our. “. mothers, They ambled and slouched, and ‘we did the same, a We couldi't afford the ad- - mittance price ate. not - They’ are - overgrown boys, who are. doing - few of- them. _in ‘those Depression days, but we _ Hever missed a game. There were ways: over the fence; through a hole in the fence; ’ carrying in. players’ equip- .. ment; bucket; shagging pop or beer — _botiles and turning them in ° for the refund. tending ithe’. water “It was always summer, in . those summers long ago. It never rained, or blew, or turned cold. The sun always _shone, the pop was always ice cold, the popcorn was ~ grisp with real butter, the hot dogs were red hot, There was no’ night baseball then. We didn't have lights. But.about five _ o’clock on. a summer even- _ ing, the merchants began rolling up their awnings, kids — _, were gulping down their ear- - ly suppers, and everybody headed for the ball park. Everybody knew practical-. ~ ly everybody on every team in the league. Everybody knew that the umpire, Pete O’Brien, was blind as a bat. Everybody knew that Izzie. Mysel, all six-two and 280 pounds of him, would go for the fences every time, and probably strike out four times ina row. There was no fancy elec- tronic scoreboard, but everybody knew exactly. how - many balis and strikes there -were on the batter, how Many strikeouts the pitcher ~ had made, and how many _- hits each player had. It wasn’t so difficult then, , - Usually, nine men played the. — ,, entire game. were a Pinch-hitters rarety, because, naturally, all your best hit- ters were already playing. When you had, and could: only afford, a rotating pit- ching staff of two, the pit- cher was seldom pulled. - There was no artificial turf, with its exact bounce. | There were pebbles and tufts of grass that would give a ball a bad hop and put it over the fielder’s head, or through his legs, and makea singlei in- toa triple. ’ And' — this is one of the grand things about baseball — there was always a chance, even when it was 5-3, fora — ~ _ hometeam rally in the last of the ninth, witlrall its wild ex- ° citement. That’s where baseball has . _itover other spectator sports, . Hf the score in hockey is 8-2 with two minutes to go, it’s game over, Not even the. Lord could score-that many . _ in that time. Same in foot-. ball, “Score 30-10 and a minute and‘a half lefi, there © is no way. But in baseball, the game ° ~is never over until the last player is -Tetired, A real - . * baseball fan never gives up. In those days, you didn't see '~ the fans fiting out.early if” their team was away behind. We sat tight, waiting for the ‘ miracle, _ Greatest humiliation of my life was taking a called strike with the count three and two and the winning.runs on se- cond and third, two out, last of the ninth. And| still swear ~ that ball was low, ; _ ” And maybe those are the reasons [went io.. that double-header, Never mind® the four hours driving. Never: mind’ the horrible traffic. Never mind the rip-off prices. and the claustrophobic feel- ing of being in a mob of 40,000 trying to get out ofa | stadium. The game still has some of its old magic, on a mid-— summer's eve. The players still boot that crucial ball, The coaches still make allthe - wrong decisions. The um- pires still have myopia. 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Secret . agent mustusea pretty Russian . ballerina: as bait in order to discover the mesns by which the Russians are kidnapping: and smuggling defectors back to Russie. a, GUILTY OR INNOCENT: THE CASE | * George Peppard stars In this. World Premiere drama based on the wall-known 1954 case in. - SAM SHEPPARD MURDER which @ Cleveland osteopath, Dr. Sam Sheppard, was con- his wife, imprisoned, and eventually, retried and freed. Willlam Windom co-stars as a reporter who befriends Shep- pard; Nine Van Pallandt plays | Sheppard’s sacond wife; Walter McGinn portrays his flamboyan second defenge attorney; and" Barnard» Hughes plays an } earlier defence attorney.