Was a time, baseball was huge…
I shoveled snow, mowed lawns, saved my money – anything to get a buck to buy a 24 count box of baseball cards. With luck, I’d get cards of childhood heroes like Mickey Mantle, but my real objective was to get Kansas City A’s players like Norm Siebern, Jerry Lumpe or Bob Cerv.
I look back on those days as a time when baseball mattered.
Unlike today…
I mean, what else in sports really mattered in the 1960s?
After I completed my passage from loser kid to loser adult, like many, I became a Chiefs fan. And judging by some of the crowds at Arrowhead and the team’s Super Bowl rallies, there are lots of those.
All of that said, in the scheme of things, I’m still far from fervent.
So tearing down Royals Stadium – or as Greg Hall anointed it, The K – is close to the bottom of my list of things I’d like to see happen here – if it’s even on such a list at all.
Frankly, I’m more worried about preserving downtown’s Gallup Map and Birdies than I am a giant slab of concrete.
And as an Arizonan, recently relocated back to Kansas I didn’t get a vote in the matter. However, in truth, I look at a “downtown ballpark” here as an unnecessary waste.
I mean, it’s not like the current stadium is on its last legs.
Rather, that in the scheme of things baseball strikes me as a dying sport. Not that it’s going completely away, but just as gladiatorial combat beat out javelin throwing, old school baseball reminds me more of watching golf on TV as a child. Continue reading