Back To Basics In Baseball

The steroid era is finally over. It leaves with an Alex Rodriguez whimper after a Jose Canseco roar. 

Now we can get back to b-a-s-e-b-a-l-l. 

The teams that do that the best will be the best. 

No more artificially enhanced Giants bashing baseballs for game ending home runs.

No more curiously powerful shortstops gaining 50 lbs in two years and becoming number three hitters. 

The new game will be remarkably like the old game. The game we grew up playing. A game of skill and strategy and speed and defense and beauty. 

Last years world series gave us a glimpse of the future. 

Pitching. Defense. Role Players. An occasional bopper built more like the Pillsbury Doughboy than Arnold Schwarzenwhatever. 

Don Kessinger was my favorite player growing up. Kessinger never hit 20 home runs. No one ever turned a sweeter pirouette on the left field grass and fired to first with more accuracy. 

Met fans would probably argue for Bud Harrelson. 

Orioles fans would harken back to the days of Mark Belanger. 

And there was Ozzie Smith and before him Tito Fuentes.

Oakland had Campy. 

Last year we saw little Jimmy Rollins (whose power is a product of hitting the ball hard in a small park) and little Jason Bartlett lead defenses that led teams to the October Classic. 

We saw A-rod at home. We watched all  the big names of the last decade fall off with mysterious injuries—many tendon, joint and ligament related. Things that seem related to steroids. 

Older players suddenly got older again. The nicks and bruises of the season took their toll. By playoff time teams were looking to people like Ben Zobrist to step up. 

There was a time every team had a Zobrist or two. Paul Popovich in Chicago. Darrel Chaney with the Reds. Wayne Garret with the Mets. 

Managers rested players for big games again. 

The stolen base started a comeback. 

Pitchers held runners on. Catchers played defense and called games better, because they were catchers again, not overstuffed designated hitters hiding behind the plate. 

The season starts up monday. I can't wait. 

Baseball used to be the game. Home run derby was practice. Baseball used to take us back to our youth with players who looked like they could still be in high school doing things our thirty something frames just weren't capable of anymore. 

Steroids were the Viagra of the game. A fountain of youth that enabled people to do things in public that no one really wanted to watch. 

Watching the old men of the steroid era was baseball's equivalent to senior porn. You could turn it on and take a look out of curiosity but you really couldn't help but feel a little disgusted by it. 

Those days are gone. Thank-goodness. 

No more heads riddled with gigantism, 240 pounders looked at as a defensive liability. No more muscle-induced lack of movement from pitchers' fast balls. 

Baseball is back. A kids game. A game of role players. A game any one can play, even a little fellow like Dustin Pedroia. 

Speed, defense, role players, bench strategy—now if we can get rid of the designated hitter all will be right.

At least in that little patch of paradise between the foul lines.