Old Time Family Baseball

There is a common thread that’s passed around that the older and established sportswriters are cranky, moralistic, and out of touch with the game they’re covering. It’s important to remember that those tendencies have nothing to do with age, but rather with the writer’s themselves getting lazy. Robert Creamer proves this in his amazing interview with Graham Womack over at Baseball: Past and Present.

Creamer, 89 and having written for Sports Illustrated before it had even published a single issue, responds intelligently, passionately, and with a great sense of humor on a number of issues.

When asked if players like Babe Ruth would have used steroids, Creamer fired back:

“Sure. Yes. Absolutely. Hell, for decades before the big scandal about steroids in baseball, clubhouses used to have plates or dishes filled with little candy-like pills players gulped or chewed on routinely. My mind is gone – I forget what they were called.. Uppers? Bennies? I can’t recall. But that was standard. Athletes are always looking for an edge and that was a way to get them fired up. I have never been as upset by steroid use as the moralistic holier-than-thou baseball writers who vote on the Hall of Fame. What a bunch of self-important phonies!”

Creamer has thoughtful responses on a lot of issues including the role the BBWAA has today and what has changed about the game in the last 80 years, but the answer that touched me the most was when he explained why he still cared for baseball:

“I have occasionally quoted my long-ago family doctor who once said to me, “Baseball is a game of limitless dramatic possibility.” We’ve come close to the limit — Bobby Thomson’s home run 60 years ago, the Cardinals last fall — but we haven’t reached it yet.”

There are probably not many people who have watched as much baseball as Creamer, and yet he’s still able to explain exactly why it’s such a thrill.

The full interview is more than worth your time, regardless of your hourly wage, so be sure to click through and read the whole piece.