Commentary: Diamonds are forever and so is baseball

[Guest JoesBros]

Baseball has had a bad few days. How’s that for putting it delicately?

Steroids remain a dark, ugly mushroom cloud hanging over the sport, destroying reputations and threatening its credibility.

It’s not just that some of baseball’s greatest players have been exposed as cheats. It’s that honest players also have been diminished by the scandal.

Even with a tough testing program in place, it’ll take years before baseball regains our trust.

No sport has punished its fans the way baseball has. Remember the Pittsburgh drug trials in the 1980s?

Some of us didn’t think anything could be worse. Back then, cocaine use seemed rampant among big leaguers.

Did you really want to take your kid to see a sport dominated by cokeheads?

Then as now, there were tell-all books, indictments and a perception that we knew only a bit of the truth.

And then there were the labor disputes. One after another, eight in all between 1972 and 1995.

Billionaire owners and millionaire players routinely shut down the game to fight over a pile of cash plenty big enough for everyone.

When players walked off the job in 1994 and Bud Selig canceled the World Series, many fans vowed to wash their hands of the sport.

Some surely have kept that vow, but 15 years later, the sport never has been more popular.

If baseball can survive cocaine and work stoppages, it can survive steroids, too.

Here’s why.

Because of the game itself. Because of the hold it has on our hearts and minds. Because despite its warts, it’s appealing in ways that we might never understand.

Through it all, there aren’t many better ways to spend an evening than at the ballpark.

No matter how bad my day has been, I feel stress roll out of my system when I walk into Minute Maid Park.

After all these years, I feel the same thing every time I see a baseball diamond.

Remember the first time you saw a major league diamond? Remember how it struck you?

You thought it was perfect, right? You were right then, and you’re right now. Other sports come and go, but none of them will be as good as baseball.

Diamonds are forever

A baseball diamond is one of God’s greatest creations. It’s perfection on every level.

Next time you walk into Minute Maid Park, take a moment to appreciate it. From the perfectly trimmed grass to the raked infield dirt to the chalked lines to the 90-degree angles, it’s a reminder that sometimes we get things just right.

Someone once said that in a thousand years, the United States will be noted for three things: our form of government, jazz and baseball.

Baseball’s worst parks are better than football’s best stadiums. If you’ve ever spent an evening at Dodger Stadium, you’d understand. It’s tranquil and energizing, if one place can be both.

If you’re really lucky, you’ll stand on the right-field concourse at AT&T Park and admire the view of San Francisco Bay, the aroma of garlic fries, the majesty of the place.

Baseball has the most skilled athletes on earth. Hitting a baseball is the single hardest thing to do in any sport.

Throwing a strike from 60 feet, 6 inches is the second-hardest thing.

The NFL and NBA have some phenomenal athletes. Not one of them is as gifted as Lance Berkman or Roy Oswalt.

I’ll take home runs for a thousand, Alex. It’s the best thing in sports. By miles.

Ever see Will Clark launch one? Or Junior Griffey?

It’s a combination of skill and strength and reaction.

That moment when a ball soars out of the park is indescribable.

Have you ever enjoyed anything more than Jeff Kent’s game-ending home run in Game 5 of the 2004 NLCS? Or Chris Burke’s 18th-inning shot that ended a 2005 NLDS series against the Braves?

Has anything in sports hit you in the gut the way that Albert Pujols bomb did?

Baseball isn’t just better than football or basketball or soccer. It’s better in dozens of ways.

The game itself is better. The ballparks are better. The players are more skilled, the announcers more talented.

Opening day is the best day of the year. The day after the World Series is the saddest.

Ode to national pastime

A baseball season is perfect. As Bart Giamatti wrote: “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come out, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone … and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.â€

Baseball will endure.

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