The Only Game in Town

By Paul A. Witteman

The rain arrived in a rush, sweeping out of the hills and across the wooden outfield fence at Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, obscuring the sign that proudly proclaims the Berkshire Medical Center the OFFICIAL HOSPITAL OF THE PITTSFIELD METS. The grounds crew, so to speak, sprang into action. There was nothing big league about it. The soot-gray tarp, patched in several places, did not cooperate with the motley squad of Mets employees in baggy shorts who gamely attempted to pin it to the ground like frenzied wrestlers.

The tarp won. Infield red clay turned to instant ooze. Game called. Ten grand or so in gate receipts and hot-dog sales down the drain. "That's life in the minor leagues," said one of the vanquished, assistant general manager Richard Lenfest, as rain ran down his legs and into his sneakers.

No problem. Fans got two games for the price of one the following night. This week life in the minor leagues is all that baseball fans in serious need of a fix are going to get. Venal owners and petulant players in the majors should take note. This is baseball the way the game is meant to be played: on intimate terms. It is baseball virtually free of mortifying drug scandals -- no player making $1,000 a month can afford a cocaine habit for long. It is baseball on a human scale. When Peoria Chiefs designated hitter Alex Cabrera was fined $50 this month for illegally grooving his bat, he complained that it was "too expensive." A carpenter or a schoolteacher can relate to that. Fifty bucks is a lot of money. By comparison, the average millionaire in the major leagues seems to be laboring, or not laboring, in the far reaches of fantasyland.

In the minors this week there will be few millionaires but no shortage of baseball. The 222 teams competing in the 20 leagues sprinkled across the landscape from Portland, Maine, to Rancho Cucamonga, California, are scheduled to play more than 500 games during that seven-day stretch. The games in the rookie leagues may draw as few as 500 fans; in Triple A the crowds average between 5,000 and 7,000. "The minors are not a get-rich-quick scheme," says Bob Sparks of the National Association of Professional Leagues, which oversees all but one of the leagues. The minors are on track to draw 32 million spectators this season, buoyed in part by the attendance explosion in Birmingham, Alabama, where Michael Jordan has mastered the craft of striking out.

As in previous strikes, some minor league games will find their way onto TV, but most will not. Nothing wrong with that; baseball is a feast best served alfresco. And the minor leagues dish it up in refreshingly affordable portions. The last time a grandstand seat in the major leagues cost $3.75, Willie Mays was still patrolling center field at the Polo Grounds. At Pittsfield's Wahconah Park, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, a $5 bill buys not only a hot dog but also a seat less than 40 ft. from home plate.

From that vantage point spectators can watch the wondrously gifted Jay Payton's attempt to match Ted Williams' feat of batting .400 for an entire season. Williams was the last major leaguer to do so, in 1941, finishing at .406. Payton has a .403 batting average as the Pittsfield Mets begin their pennant-stretch run. He's facing pitchers from the minors, sure -- but the lighting around the New York-Penn circuit is bush league too, giving the pitchers an edge. In addition, Payton and every other hitter at Wahconah has to deal with a delightful idiosyncrasy. In 1919 Wahconah was laid out with day baseball in mind. Home plate faces west -- precisely the wrong direction for Mets games that now begin at 7 p.m. As the sun slips toward the horizon, it slides into the line of sight between pitcher and batter. This is the only instance in organized baseball when an umpire can be accused, without rebuttal, of being blind. But more to the point, the batter too is blinded. At that juncture the umpire decrees a sun delay, and sunny songs issue forth from the park's loudspeakers. The game resumes as soon as the offending celestial body disappears behind a linden tree.

Before and after the game, young fans can badger players for autographs to their heart's content. The players, innocent as yet of the trappings of celebrity, happily respond. They may even know their admirers' first names, since players live with local families during the summer. (Can you imagine Dwight Gooden living with you?) Fans at Wahconah this season get an added bonus -- an opportunity to chat with the member of the Presley family who, in Pittsfield at least, is the second best known after Elvis. That would be the King's third cousin Kirk, 18, a right-handed pitcher whose sizzling fastball usually sends opposing batters skulking back to Heartbreak Hotel.

Presiding over this brood of prospects and scufflers is manager Howie Freiling, 28, who never saw the Bigs. "I had a cup of coffee in Triple A," he says with disarming candor. "I was a first baseman who didn't hit for power. The fact that I was a well-below-average runner didn't help." Pitching coach Dave LaRoche did make it to the Show, compiling a 65-58 record in a career that lasted 14 seasons. Yet the minors attract him on a gut level. "If I wasn't in baseball," LaRoche says, "I would live in a town with a minor league team so my kids could go all the time."

That's a sentiment shared by Bill Gladstone, former chairman of Ernst & Young, who persuaded four friends to join him and buy the team for $850,000 in 1992. This is a pittance compared with the macroeconomics of the majors, where teams sell for $150 million and up. "Buying a major league team was out of the question," he says. "My friend Peter O'Malley, president of the Dodgers, suggested that we look at the minors, where the cost is more reasonable and you have the same amount of fun."

This week Gladstone is having far more fun than O'Malley. Gladstone has a team in the thick of a hot pennant race. O'Malley has an empty park. "Minor league baseball is not a microcosm of the big leagues," says Gladstone. For that, fans should be eternally grateful.