Sports column: Take me out to the crowd — I don’t care if I never get back

Spring training is in full swing and Opening Day is Tuesday— can it be? Can and will, with the Dodgers playing the Cubs in Tokyo.

It’s the sixth time Major League Baseball has opened in Japan, which makes sense this year since the greatest player in the game today — and when he’s through, maybe ever — Shohei Ohtani is Japanese born and raised.

I’m feeling the way John Fogerty felt, when he wrote, “Well, beat the drum/ And hold the phone,/ The sun came out today/ We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field …”

Baseball is a lot of things, but for me a large part of it is memories, and whenever I see that new grass on the field, times past vividly return, like tasting a cookie as an adult that you first experienced in childhood and being taken to a long ago time and place (apologies to Mr. Proust, who could do many things, but not hit a curveball).

Friends and family are always there again with me, watching the slow and beautiful pace of baseball. Even non-spectacular days, evenings and nights at the ball park are stored, ready to return, like one from a few years ago.

I remember that the weather was perfect, in the mid-70s, no humidity, light breezes and blue-black skies above the lights of Citi Field. I was where friends tell friends, “I’ll meet you at the Apple,” a plaza centered around the big red structure that once rose slowly beyond the centerfield fence of Shea when a Met hit a home run.

I was waiting for Dr. Z., who was running late, texting that he was battling traffic. I, of course, had been the smart one, driving to my sister’s place in Queens, parking the car, and taking the 7 train to the ballpark.

Getting on board, I was already at the ballgame, with the train packed with Blue and Orange fanatics.

Looking at the Apple, I remembered that I once heard some out-of-towner saying the old ballpark was a “dump.” I was outraged. Beloved Shea? And then I considered: He was right, it was crummy, uncomfortable and years out of date. O.K. A dump. But our dump, am I right? Damn right I’m right.

It was a big game. The Amazins had lost a series to the Braves — the hated Braves — and then lost the following two games to the Cubs — the hated Cubs. But we had Jacob deGrom on the mound that night. Jake would be great and stop the bleeding.

MetsWorld was strolling through the plaza. It struck me that going to a baseball game is one of the few entertainments that crosses all generational lines. Families, oldsters, and lots of young people in their late teens and early 20s, a date night for some — one couple in full Mets regalia should have found a room, immediately — and groups of people fresh from work.

The words to a song meant something to me for the first time after hearing it every summer for decades — “Take me out to the crowd.” Even the $9 hot dog didn’t spoil the fun. Or the Mets dropping the game and the series to the Cubs.

We sat next to a man from Green Bay and his 10-year-old son. They were Packer fans, and so they talked a little football, asking if we were Giants or Jets fans and then we turned to the game at hand. The boy enjoyed Dr. Z.’s act, listening closely as the doctor discussed with me the intricacy of the hit-and-run, or the suicide squeeze, and how the Mets manager should be fitted for a straitjacket.

The kid nodded sagely, as you would listening to someone you were not fully convinced might not need extreme therapy himself. I could hear him telling his Wisconsin buddies about the night at the ballpark in Queens, and the New Yorker who wanted the manager institutionalized.

The Mets had been on a tear after playing dreadful baseball for months, winning 13 out of 15 and getting back into the playoff race. But that was then, and now they were in another losing streak. I emailed Donahoe about the latest swoon. He wrote back: “We were ascending towards mediocrity and collapsed back into a desultory debacle of lower division loserdom …You wouldn’t need a headline writer would you?”

Did any of this matter, though?

Two researchers from academia, Daniel C. Funk and Jeff James, have discovered a syndrome that they’ve named, “A Psychological Continuum Model.” This is an explanation of do-or-die loyalty to a group. Brooklyn Russian mobsters? MS-13? President Trump’s base? Me, a Mets fan? For those who stick by dog teams, there’s even a psychological term: “Basking in Reflected Failure.”

Tell me about it, Doc.

My brother, John J. Clancy, wrote a book about loyalty titled, “The Old Dispensation,” and how it intersects with business. It’s a compelling look at the meaning of loyalty and how it’s changed over the years, circling back at times to the idea that loyalty was once viewed not as striking a bargain, but as a virtue, which, as we all learned as children, is its own reward.

He also slyly quotes Ambrose Bierce’s definition of loyalty as a “virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.”

But then, maybe it’s fidelity to the sport, and not just a team. And being loyal to the sport is difficult these days, with the powers-that-be (who are these clowns?) changing something fixed and damn near perfect. First they brought the designated hitter to the National League — I refuse to recognize that other league.

The DH means there are 10 players to a side, and not the mystical number of nine players, corresponding in perfect harmony with nine innings, which relates to three, an unbreakable relationship with nine, as in three strikes, three outs.

But four balls, you say? Never contradict a person when he’s being mystical.

Some changes are appropriate, such as changing the rules to make the game nine innings.

This was back in 1871, when the National Association of Baseball Players decided to make a game nine innings, except when the game was tied and new innings would be played until a team scored more runs than the opponent. (“Timeless” of course is a mystical conception, but a reality in baseball, where there is no clock). Before 1871, games were decided by whoever got to 21 runs — which could take some time. So, nine was the number enshrined.

The Players Association also did away with the rule that the defense could record an out by throwing and hitting a runner with the baseball. Wise move, making the game one of skill and not brutality, like staged pro wrestling, our president’s favorite sport.

Seems he doesn’t like baseball, sending out the message recently that baseball is a “dying” game, and “should get off its fat, lazy ass” and put Pete Rose, an ex-con who did five months in a Federal penitentiary for filing a fake tax return, in the Basball Hall of Fame.

The president is considering a pardon for Rose, but for what, no one seems to know. As the New York Times has reported: “He was banned from baseball in 1989, when he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds, and was later declared ineligible for the Hall of Fame.

An investigator had found that he regularly placed bets on sports, including baseball. Rose denied for years that he had bet on baseball but later admitted that he had done so regularly. More recently, Mr. Rose has faced allegations of having sex with an underage girl. In 2017, a woman testified in a civil case that she had sex with him in the 1970s — when Mr. Rose was in his 30s and a star player for the Cincinnati Reds, and she was 14 or 15 years old.”

Sterling character, all around.

Worse than the president ranting incoherently on social media, is the idea that real live human umpires might be replaced by machines. Digital umpires are possibly on tap for the 2026 season, and would be used to augment live umpires in calling balls and strikes. But we know where this is going. The human umpire is probably going to go the way of throwing at a runner to get an out.

What will be lost? Characters, for one. I’m thinking of Cowboy Joe West who umpired from 1976 to 2021, setting the record for suiting up for 5,460 games. One memorable day during the 1991 season — which would never have happened with a robot ump — Cowboy Joe was behind the plate when he called Cubs outfielder Andre Dawson out on strikes. Dawson, raging at the injustice of the call, bumped Cowboy Joe, who promptly ejected him.

Dawson responded by going to the dugout and throwing 14 bats on the field. For his tantrum, Dawson was fined $1,000 by the league, and in the subject line of the check he wrote, “Donation for the blind.” Which got a laugh from Cowboy Joe.

Save the game. Keep the umps. And to all, a great 2025 season.