At Least, There’s Justice in Baseball

One of my favorite novels--and movies--is Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage.� In it, there’s a medical student, Philip Carey, hopelessly addicted to an unrequited love for a sluttish waitress, Mildred, who keeps scorning him, cheating on him, abusing him, throwing things at him until you couldn’t bear to look. Nothing deters him. He’s hopelessly obsessed. He keeps coming back for more.

Baseball fans can relate. Baseball fans are a million Philip Careys. They keep after their two-timing love, the erstwhile national pastime, the game they love. Their Mildred. Their bondage is inhuman.

Look what the game has done to them: Canceled a World Series. Interrupted a whole season. Delayed another.

I don’t know whether you know it, but baseball’s appeal is decimal points. No other sport relies as totally on continuity, statistics, orderliness of these. Baseball fans pay more attention to numbers than CPAs.

To interrupt them is to trifle with the fan’s love, to cuckold him. You wipe out part of a season, you show you don’t care about his affection. What he holds dear, you don’t.

Yet here he comes again, limping up the front stairs anew with a bouquet of flowers in one hand, a box of candy in the other and hope in his heart, praying you won’t do this to him again. And Mildred--er, baseball--will probably be standing there ready to throw his gifts at him “Dimwit! I told you--not roses! And I hate chocolate!�

You don’t think so? Check the opening-day attendances. In the first nine home openers, the American League had 330,041, or an average of 36,671 a game. The National League had 332,746 for eight home openers for an average of 41,593.

That’ll teach ‘em not to mess with us! We cut the attendance by 58 people in Toronto. We actually had 18,230 more people at Cincinnati.

Philip Carey is alive and well and sitting on the third-base line with a hot dog in one hand, a Coke in the other and wearing a warm-up jacket with the home team logo. You think he wants to press charges?! Buy him some peanuts and Cracker Jack. He don’t care if he never gets back.

I went out to Dodger Stadium the other night to check the relationship between Philip Phan and Mildred Major Leagues. See if either side needed to get into counseling.

Forget it. Philip is still batting his eyes and looking adoringly on his beloved, while Mildred is still figuring on taking him for all she can get. He’s as smitten as ever. It’s business as usual. So, butt out!

Someone once said trying to wise up a sucker is the most thankless job in the world; so we might as well find something good about baseball.

One of the things good, it seems to me, is the Atlanta team. With a three-time Cy Young Award pitcher, a two-time Cy Young runner-up and a promising closer on the staff and a lineup of .300 hitters, this club is armed and dangerous.

And the right fielder has Hall of Fame written all over him.

When David Justice was coming up in the Braves’ organization, he was universally conceded to be the “best-looking young player to come along in a long time.�

They didn’t necessarily mean his (1) swing, (2) arm, (3) bat, (4) speed, (5) power.

They meant his looks. David Justice looks like the pro from Central Casting. Movie star good looks. Matinee idol stuff. The Great Profile.

He’s 6 feet 3, 200 pounds, nice smile, big brown eyes, and if you wanted a poster boy for Baseball ‘95, David Justice should be it. He’s a poetic Justice.

He was rookie of the year in 1990. He drove in 120 runs in 1993. Pitchers curse when they see him up there with men on base and no place to put him. A free-swinger, he nevertheless walks almost as often as he fans.

But what really titillates the scholarly fan is, he comes, if not exactly in duplicate, at least in tandem.

He follows Fred McGriff in the batting order, and this means big trouble for the National League East.

You see, throughout history, great sluggers have come in partnership. Look it up. Take the greatest sluggers in history--Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron. Ruth was part of that middle-of-the-lineup crash attack--Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Aaron came with Eddie Mathews attached. Between them, they had 1,267 home runs--Mathews had 512 of them.

Ruth and Lou Gehrig had 1,207 home runs between them. Mickey Mantle had Roger Maris hitting alongside and, while their joint lifetime total, 811, is not so high (Maris had 275), they have the one-year record, 115 in 1961.

Willie Mays and Willie McCovey had 1,181 homers between them (Mays had 660).

Two big bats in the middle of the lineup take a lot of weapons out of pitchers’ hands. They dare not for instance, flirt with walking their man. They usually have to make “good� pitches. And good pitches frequently end up as gopher balls.

Justice and McGriff have been frustrated by baseball unrest. In the truncated ’94 season, McGriff had hit 34 home runs, Justice 19. The year McGriff joined Atlanta, he hit 37 home runs (18 in San Diego before the trade); Justice hit 40.

Is Atlanta on a path to deja vu --i.e., another Mathews-Aaron? McGriff has 264 big league homers, Justice 132.

David Justice doesn’t look for it. On this case, Justice may be blind. But this Justice for all doesn’t think so.

“Look at it realistically,� he said as he stood in the middle of the Dodger Stadium locker room the other night. “I’m not your basic home run hitter. Fred is going to get his 30-35 homers a year. I’m more of a line drive hitter. I go up there looking for the hit, the opposite-field hit--whatever works.

“I’ll give you at least your 20 or more homers a year, but I’m not looking for the seats on every pitch.�

What about the 40 homers he hit in 1993? That’s more than McGriff has ever hit in a season.

“Well, yes, I hit 40. But Fred is still more apt to hit it out than I am,� Justice insists. “He has more of a home run stroke than I do. I concentrate on getting a hit.�

Oh, well, he’s still better-looking. And he can hit, field and run. As Shakespeare said, thrice is he armed who hath Justice on his side.