Baseball Still Number One

Back in 1960, baseball was the hottest sport in Buffalo. Not that any Buffalo sport was hot news. The Bisons of the International League, managed by Kerby Farrell and featuring such stars as Bobby Wine, Ed Kranepool, and Big Luke Easter, had nothing to contend with in the local sports news. Hockey, and famous names like Dennis DeJordy, Wayne Maki, and Ed Van Impe (who have risen to anonymity with hockey expansion), at that time still ended before May Day.

Every night we'd tune the radio in to Bill Mazur, known to national audiences as the hockey telecaster - with a toupee and contact lenses - that bombed this past winter. Away games with Bill were the most fun. Mazur would sit with a noise record next to the AP wire ticker tape. It was the same cheering all the time; Mazur would just turn the volume up and down as the pitch came. But it was fun to guess what was going to be said by listening to how excited the di-da-dit on the ticker tape got.

Well, suburbia killed the Bisons. For, while the fans would come on Sunday by bus to see Elbert "Golden Wheels" Dubenion and the Bills, a trip into the black section of the city at night kept my grandfather from taking me to any more games. First the Bisons lost their fans, and after playing before 100 fans for a season, they realized it would be cheaper to play on a park diamond. So, they lost their field and played on a Niagara Falls sandlot for two years. But 200 followers sitting in two bleacher sections along the foul lines were not enough to keep the team from heading to Winnepeg for a new start.

I was amazed when I came to Cambridge and found that people actually still go to afternoon ball games. Here it was April and the barber was talking as though it was the pennant stretch. Yaz had two hits yesterday. which meant he was better than last year, but he had no hits today, which meant he was better than last year, but he had no hits today, which meant he was worse than last year. Boston, I thought, was unique, if not peculiar.

But last weekend I went to Pittsburgh, and I discovered there that baseball still is the national pastime. Visiting a 70-year-old couple, the topic of conversation ranged from Stargell's stride to Oliver's glove. This couple knew Doc Eliss's repertoire of pitches better than Gil Hodges.

Baseball may be a deadly dull game to play compared to an individual sport like squash, but Vida Blue and Sonny Siebert can still snap 100,000 heart strings a day.