An asterisk for an *******?
On Sunday, Oct. 1, the last day of the 1961 baseball season, the Red Sox were at Yankee Stadium. A person named Tracy Stallard threw a 2-0 fastball to Roger Maris. The ball never came back. The game seemed to change. And an asterisk nearly replaced the exclamation point.
Gone was Ruth’s hallowed mark of 60 home runs in 1927. Yet even before the shouting and tumult subsided, Maris’ feat seemed tarnished. This was the first year of major league baseball’s expansion era. Two teams had been added to the American League – the Minnesota Twins and the Los Angeles Angels–and the schedule had been stretched by eight games, allowing batters about 30 extra at bats. How to justify such advantageous opportunities? How to redflag the difference? The little asterisk had become a big issue.
True baseball fans nibble on numbers and devour statistics. Fiddle with or falsify the figures and you trespass on holy ground. Pepper the record books with footnotes and notations to differentiate between pre- and post-expansion baseball (154 v. 162 games) and you’ve glutted an already voluminous tome into an unwieldy, unreadable multi-volume monstrosity. It couldn’t be practically done. And it wasn’t.
That year the Yankees had a couple of rare outfielders, Maris and a person named Mickey Mantle. Both were in their prime; both ignited early and stayed hot while trading homers for handshakes in pursuit of the Babe’s record. In his 11th season with the Yanks, the Mick was the worshipped, hometown favorite and rightful heir, through DiMaggio, to Ruth. Maris was a necessary afterthought, a long-ball hitter to keep opposing pitchers honest by following Mantle in the batting order. (“Walk him and you face me.”) He was in his second year with the team, the product of a trade with Kansas City.
Yankee fans cheered when Roger hit one. They roared when Mickey unloaded. Virtually everyone in New York knew the morning line on the “M” boys in that glorious and controversial season. Fans everywhere knew about this one-time-only struggle. Into September went the race and into the 50s went the home run count.
Then with about three weeks left, Mantle, like a thoroughbred, pulled up lame and went down with a leg injury. Like it or not, the excitement of the morning liners was halved while the pressure on Maris doubled. Outstanding performance is one thing; pressure and extreme hype are two others. He had always been the quiet one, often stoic, usually in the background. All focus and attention fell on him. He kept stroking homers but started to lose patches of hair. As the days dialed down, the tension kept up. He kept pace in his one-man race and, given his disposition, must have felt lonely, even in a crowded news conference or a packed stadium.
Finally, endgame. The fourth inning of the season’s finale. Was it smart for pitcher Stallard to throw a fastball on a 2-0 count? Ask the Boston catcher – presumably he called it. The ball was not throttled out of the park. Nor was it a cheapie. Somewhere between a loft and a liner, it lost itself among the cheering throng in the lower right field seats.
The human body has about 700 muscles, give or take. Functioning properly, they provide the power, pull, flex and response to get us through the day. If, over time, something is added to enhance muscular performance, a change can occur. In simplest layspeak, muscles and their owners get bigger. They outperform both themselves and the muscles of those who do no tampering. In a world of superdeveloped bodies, cars in road accidents could get hand-lifted faster and higher. Tiger Woods might add untold yardage to every drive. And batsmen could and do propel the ball even farther with more frequency.
The major leagues have about about 400 players, give or take. Functioning properly, they provide action, thrills, strategies and plain enjoyment to their followers.
If, over time, the pureness of the game is falsified, a change occurs. In simplest plainspeak, legitimate, honestly-earned records are invalidated. Fans (who support it all) are disrespected, swindled. And baseball, as sport and business, does great damage to itself.
Of the body’s 700 muscles, there’s a subset of 40 or so classified as sphincters that spend a lot of their time contracting and expanding. These include muscles in the pupil of the eye, the stomach’s pyloric valve and the rectum. Let’s leave off with the anatomy lesson and consider a way of identifying honesty from corruption in the matter; a modified punctuation mark to differentiate truth from sham. Or is it shame?
Remember Maris and the hoo-ha over eight extra games? Back then it was a pumped up schedule. Today it’s pumped up millionaires in knickers. Time to resurrect the asterisk. Not the one that failed back in ’61, but a freshly redesigned, ad hoc symbol to denote fraudulent baseball statistics. An asterisk that bespeaks fan disenchantment and rage. An asterisk that would justify the alternative spelling: assterisk. An asterisk to befit the king of sphincters. Indeed, an asterisk that Barry Bonds and a few other bulked-up pharmaceutical behemoths can lay claim to–without pride and without losing a patch of hair.