It's not church music, Garth
Friday, March 19, 1999. Chicago Sun Times
Story by Story by Rick Telander

I don't know about you, but I like this Garth Brooks thing.

The balding, chunky country singer is messing around with the San Diego Padres in spring training, actually playing in games, batting, catching and the like, and I think that's OK.

The Church of Baseball brigade, I know, is appalled by Brooks' heresy.

Those are the tight-collared prigs who see baseball as a grassy religion, an inviolable American fortress of purity, grace, hook slides and sacred statistics.

To them, every at-bat or warmup toss taken from a legitimate contender by a pretender like Brooks is a mortal sin.

They're idiots.

First of all, baseball has its roots in dirt, nastiness, profanity and, yes, plain old fun.

Major-leaguers in the late 1800s and well into this century were an uneducated, bigoted mass of spitting, cursing, brawling hicks.

It took pinheads with typewriters, bifocals and nostalgic visions of vanished youth to turn baseball into some sort of hallowed Camelot of the greensward.

Please.

Midget Eddie Gaedel looms almost as tall in the checkered history of the sport as, say, Albert Belle.

This is what a Church of Baseball manager, as quoted in Sports Illustrated, thinks of an interloper like Brooks: ``What'd he hit in high school, .280? Pathetic. I've got players in my clubhouse who are only now starting to hit after living and breathing baseball for 15 years, and this guy thinks he can become a hitter in a couple of months? It's a disgrace to the game.''

``So shame on them for their cynical manipulation of the public,'' SI editorialized about the big-league club for allowing such a travesty. ``And shame on them for feeding [the player's] matchbook-cover delusion--BECOME A MAJOR-LEAGUER IN JUST SIX WEEKS!''

Thing is, this was from an SI issue five years ago.

And the ``pathetic'' player was a fellow named Michael Jordan.

And the ``cynical'' ballclub was the White Sox, for letting Jordan soil the training-camp roster.

Then, shortly, baseball went into the ugliest labor-management dispute in its history.

The World Series was canceled.

Embarrass baseball?

Please.

I'm not a big country music fan, but I have listened to some of Brooks' CDs and have watched his occasional videos that cross over to MTV or mainstream television.

This guy is a hell of a talent.

He's bowlegged and 37 years old, but up on stage, he works the crowd like a 10-gallon-hatted Bruce Springsteen or a cowboy-booted James Brown.

And his lyrics transcend the Mom-got-run-over-by-a-pickup-and-I'm-drunk-as-hell country standards to become, at times, near-poetry.

Right. I know.

None of this means the guy has any business thinking he can play major- or minor-league baseball, even if any money he makes from baseball is guaranteed to a children's charity.

It doesn't mean he should be allowed to come to bat against athletes like the Sox' Jim Parque or Bill Simas, even if Parque said some faintly kind things about the singer/would-be slugger.

``He's actually got a good swing,'' Parque said after Brooks bounced the ball back to him at the mound. ``He's just a little late.''

Like maybe 15 years or so.

So far, Brooks is 0-for-Arizona, but there is always hope.

On Wednesday, starting in left field for the defending National League champion Padres, he took the collar at the plate (0-for-4) but made his mark in the field.

He snared a towering fly ball hit by the Sox' Frank Thomas that just stayed inside the park.

``I was like, `I wish my dad was here,' '' said Brooks, whose music career is on hiatus while he does this baseball thing. ``I mean, this was the Big Hurt.''

Baseball isn't hurt by any of this.

Competition will take care of him, just as it takes care of people like the Spin Doctors or Billy Ray Cyrus.

I now know why the Church of Baseball folks feel so proprietary about the game.

It's because they, like everyone else in America, played baseball at some level. And they know they could go oh-fer in a major-league game, too.

Jealousy is ugly. Let a lucky guy like Brooks have his hoot.

As he sings in one of his best hits, a triple at least, ``There's a fire that's burning deep in my soul/Constantly yearning to get out of control.''

As long as it's not chin music, let it happen.