JEFF TULLY
When it comes to watching baseball players run, hit and throw
their way to success, forget about taking in any major league
baseball games this weekend.
Instead, if you want to see players taking part in the sport just
for the fun of it, head to Olive Park this morning. Starting at about
9:30, the best players the Burbank Park, Recreation and Community
Services Department leagues has to offer will be taking part in the
47th annual Hap Minor Baseball Civitan Day Jamboree.
With a parade that begins at 8:30 at Mervyn's in the Media City
Center Mall, the players will wind their way to Olive Park for an
end-of-the year skills competition. The competition involves
baserunning, hitting and throwing events, and the day is capped with
food, refreshments and a lot of awards.
Following in their counterparts' footsteps, the city's softball
players will hit Olive Park July 20th for their own event. The
athletes will take part in the annual Ponytail Softball Jamboree --
sponsored by the Foothill Civitan Club -- where the players will get
a chance to show their stuff in their own skills competition.
With the Hap Minor leagues, this is baseball at its purest. These
players compete in the Park and Rec leagues for the simple fun of the
game and the joy of just taking part. They are a world away from the
over-paid, coddled, money-hungry athletes who have helped infect
major league baseball.
With these youth players, there are no steroids, no big-money
contracts and you bet there won't be a strike prior to the
festivities.
It's unfortunate these players have such poor baseball role models
and have to follow a professional game that is hemorrhaging badly
from recent problems and scandals.
There is no fun and no redeeming value that can be derived from a
game that threatens to be passed up in popularity by NASCAR (parish
the thought).
But professional baseball has been its own executioner. With
strike threats, players accused of everything from using illegal
substances to being gay, home runs cranked out of parks at a fever
pace, and teams facing extinction because of revenue problems, the
game is in big trouble.
And if that isn't enough, the game suffered another black eye
Tuesday at the 73rd All-Star game at Milwaukee's Miller Park. With
the game between the National and American leagues tied at 7 after 11
innings, Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig instructed umpires to end
the contest when both teams ran out of pitchers.
The All-Star contest is supposed to be the sport's mid-summer
