The Play's The Thing

Come out of that closet, disenfranchised baseball fan, and listen up. You know who you are. You're the one who has stopped going to the ballpark. You don't dare stretch a dollar or a vocal cord in support of owners or players, not after they shut down the game for 8½ months and iced the World Series last fall.

Yes, you're proud that at week's end attendance was down 20% from a comparable period in 1994, proud that you didn't come rushing back as you did in 1982. That was the year baseball set an attendance record (broken many times since) the season after a 50-day strike. "I think the fans are trying to teach us all a lesson," says San Francisco Giant president Peter Magowan. "They won't come back until they feel we're properly spanked—and that could be after a whole season goes by."

In the meantime, when you think no one is looking, you flick on the tube to watch a game. Strike fallout? Not on ESPN: The drop in its baseball ratings is almost imperceptible (.1 of one rating point, or 66,100 homes, as of last week) with a clear spike upward ever since the NBA carnival folded its tent for the year. (Despite all the hoopla, the NBA Finals, with a 13.9 overall rating, once again didn't come close to pulling down World Series numbers, a 20.2 overall rating for the past four Series.) The ratings for local baseball telecasts have been healthy too, "which indicates people are interested in baseball and still interested in the team they root for," says Philadelphia Phillie president Bill Giles.

You don't dare talk baseball around the watercooler, not unless someone else gripes about it first. You tell your colleagues you are tired of the O.J. trial, you floss regularly, you've never seen Baywatch, and you don't care about baseball anymore—which reminds you to check the box scores to see how your Rotisserie players did last night.

You were happy to see that Luke Perry, one of many celebrities asked by ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY to define what's cool and uncool these days, picked the old national pastime as the epitome of lameness. But on second thought, that worries you, this validation from Luke Perry.

You wonder just what it will take for baseball to be cool again. So far some terrific story lines haven't been enough. Chief among them have been the phenomenal impact of Japanese pitcher Hideo Nomo, the Los Angeles Dodger rookie who led the National League with 109 strikeouts through Sunday; the thunderous comebacks from injuries by Ron Gant of the Cincinnati Reds and Mark McGwire of the Oakland A's, who combined for nine homers last year and at week's end were leading their leagues with 18 and 22, respectively; and nearly everything about the Cleveland Indians (page 24), whose runaway success this season included designated hitter Eddie Murray's becoming last Friday the 20th major leaguer to get 3,000 hits.

The opportunity for you to resurface has arrived, as baseball has moved to the forefront of the professional sports stage. With school, the NBA and the NHL all on recess, baseball reaches its traditional halfway point next Tuesday with its All-Star showcase, which also will mark the major league's 1995 debut on network TV. (Think about this: Over the past 11 months Salman Rushdie has been on network TV more than big league baseball.)

This year you treated the All-Star balloting like a primary election for a city council seat. The total votes cast (5,808,000) didn't even match the support Ken Griffey Jr. alone received (6,079,688) in '94, when more than 14 million ballots were punched overall.

"I think it's a critical time," says Pittsburgh Pirate coach Tommy Sandt. "We need some pennant races, somebody getting hot, somebody to get on a hitting streak, to get interest back in the game."

Consider last week a sneak preview. In five of the six divisions, the first-place team played a series against its closest pursuer, with three of those matchups falling over the Fourth of July weekend, typically among the biggest drawing weekends of the season. For those of you who think of replacement commissioner Bud Selig and union executive director Donald Fehr when your thoughts turn to baseball, the showdowns stood as affirmations of how grand the game still can be. And yes, attendance was showing signs of picking up in most places, though, as Magowan warns, "there should be no satisfaction in that because it always picks up this time of year."