Summary:
As much as baseball appears to have been tainted in recent years with the steroid scandal and prima donna players, in reality, it still comes down to the many little subtleties involved in each pitch, each swing, each defensive alignment. And even for those who aren´t hardcore fans, baseball still offers one of the best entertainment atmospheres available.

Details or Sample:
In the age of steroids, and overpaid players, and strikes, and egos that are bigger than the national debt, it´s easy to give up on the game of baseball--especially given the cloud of suspicion that hangs over Barry Bonds right now. Once considered America´s national past-time, baseball has become one of America’s discarded hobbies.

There´s enough blame to go around--from major league officials´ slow reactions to steroid usage to players who don´t have any knowledge of or appreciation for the generations of players who went before them. But the game has always had problems. They just weren´t brought to the light as quickly, or sometimes ever, because the sports media wasn´t as expansive as it is now.

If you´ve lost interest in baseball for any of the above reasons, then I´d encourage you to pick up a copy of a book called The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil´s America by Joe Posnanski. O´Neil, the face of the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City and a former Negro Leagues player and manager, saw more changes in the game than you or I will ever see.

In fact, he played at a time when African-American players were denied the chance to play in the major leagues simply because they were of African-American descent. If anybody had a right to give up on the game, it would have been O´Neil, or one of the hundreds of other players in the Negro Leagues. But they loved the game too much to give up on it.

Buck O´Neil died last October at the age of 94, but right up until the end, you could find him sitting in the same seat at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City most summer nights. He loved baseball--even in its current form. In Posnanski’s book he said that before one particular game in Houston, O´Neil came across a shoeshine man and before long they were talking baseball.

Here’s part of their exchange:

"You going to the game today?" Buck asked.

"Naw. I don’t go to baseball games anymore. It´s changed."

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Written by: Lee Warren
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