Tall Tales of Promise and Hope

In A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas’ after Christmas celebrations are of the uncles telling tall tales amid a cloud of cigar and pipe smoke. The last of the 2008 holiday turkey has disappeared and the New Year awaits under its own cloud of inescapable economic uncertainty. Yet with all of the off-season drama that Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia have generated, the 2009 season should provide the stuff of story telling around the fire for years to come. Baseball has always created larger than life figures that provided an escape, and in the current state of affairs we may need them as much as the Welsh needed their poets.

During the 1930’s baseball legends such as Ruth, Gehrig and Dizzy Dean held out for opulent salaries when unemployment ran as high as 24.9 percent. The baseball heroes of the era dressed in cashmere overcoats and dined at elegant restaurants without remorse or much apology to those queuing in soup lines. So when Manny Ramirez is forced to take less this off-season by a baseball industry worried about its bottom line in the months to come, bet on him to cry foul in ways that make Ole Diz proud.

For working Americans 2009 promises to be a dismal one, but for all of the dire forecasts, Major League Baseball begins the New Year in relative prosperity. The business enterprises of wealthy owners may have been hard hit by the stock market tumble, but the game heads into the new season at a high point of prosperity. Owners made money on the baseball side of their ledgers last year and while they may be ratcheting back on free agent offers, the competition between the Steinbrenners and John Henry–or any other members of the club–does not look to be any less fierce for now.

Despite the attempts of the Yankees in recent days to buy their way into the playoffs, competitive balance is at an all-time high. No better example of that will be seen than in the AL East in 2009 as Daddy Warbucks faces off against the lean, mean Rays machine. And to complicate the plot line, there are the perennial contenders–the Red Sox Nation–sitting largely on a pat hand. It will be a great new season with more drama than we have seen of late and lots of surprises, new heroes and more conventional wisdoms to deflate in 2009 than there are top prospects in the Rays farm system.

The Congressional Christmas tree will be coming down soon to reveal an inaugural stage ready on the southern side of the Capital for the swearing that will take place in only a few weeks time. The winds of change are sweeping the nation and where they will blow no one knows. But crisis breeds opportunity and baseball stands as ready as any cultural institution to make the most of it.

So while it may not matter as much, many eyes will focus this year on whether the poster boys of competitive balance–David Price and Evan Longoria–can beat the best that money can buy–Teixeira and Sabathia. Baseball’s great story lines for the 2009 season should provide some lift as we make our way through challenging times, but the both New Year and the 2009 season await us amid portents of promise and hope.