The Column: A home run for the soul, baseball's back

Jittery nation, at ease. Baseball survives.

It was tense for a while because the millionaire players and billionaire owners were in a labor standoff that led to a 99-day lockout imposed by the bosses, delayed Opening Day for a week and threatened to blow up the season.

Yes, as the population contended with a list of crazy-making worries — inflation, political discord, a possible new pandemic surge, Vladimir Putin — labor and management attended only to their net worth and, in familiar style, said phooey to the public interest.

For a half-year, baseball is the only thing that keeps Americans just this side of sane, as any modestly competent psychiatrist could tell you and the prospect of a shortened or lost season threatened nervous collapse.

All those disconsolate fans were sure to take out frustrations one way or the other.

Young men would install even louder automobile mufflers. People would grow more agitated when Dunkin’ ran out of chocolate Munchkins. Certain would be a surge in self-destructive behavior like ordering ham-and-pineapple pizza or drinking energy beverages the color of windshield deicer.

Did the potentates bargaining in balmy Florida care about the mental state of a fatigued country?

“People struggling and having a hard time, and they’re trying to figure out how to divide billions of dollars,” one dejected fellow told The Associated Press as baseball negotiations dragged on. "It is what it is.”

True enough, forlorn fan. It is exactly that.

But, OK, players and owners finally struck a deal assuring that the rich will be richer and the national pastime preserved until talks begin again in five years.

Let there be no hard feelings, though, what do you say?

This is just capitalism at work — good old supply and demand. Players have remarkable skills. Customers want their nine innings and a couple hot dogs. Owners are selling a high-end product and lots of hope.

Ah, hope, that elusive commodity.

Wait’ll next year, we used to say in Brooklyn when the Dodgers again fell short of a World Series win. Then came 1955, and a seven-game thriller against the Yankees. Next year was upon us, you betcha. Faith and hope, redeemed.

Coming home from high school, I saw people dancing in the streets outside a place called the Dodgers Cafe on DeKalb Avenue. Cars honked, the borough rejoiced, neighbors slapped one another on the back.

“Some game.”

“Our guys.”

“Beauty-ful.”

But it’s not just one person’s memories that matter. “I see great things in baseball,” said Walt Whitman, Bard of Democracy. “It’s our game — the American game.”

Exactly. Our game, it is, sea to shining sea — dream of spring, music of summer, distant, melancholy hearkening of fall. Winter? Who invented winter, anyway?

Baseball is part of us deep down even if you’d rather do almost anything than sit through nine innings so slow that people in the stands are apt to nap occasionally.

“What happened?”

“Double off the wall. You missed it.”

“Wake me next time.”

It’s the pace that’s so important — the familiar, unfrenzied rhythm — that sets the game apart and, in the wait for the next pitch, or ground ball, or lazy fly to center, reminds us that not everything need be fast and furious, that even the restless American tribe could use a little peace.

When our kids were little, we’d pack them, all four, into the Volkswagen bus and head from Blue Point, where we lived, to Shea Stadium. Upper deck general admission was $1.50 — six of us in the seats to watch the Metsies for $9! — and, sometimes, only pigeons for company.

We stowed lunch in a Scotch plaid carrier and ate Fluffernutters and apple slices, and drank lemonade out of thermos bottles, and those were very good $9 days.

Now a single ticket in the rafters at Citi Field can run three or four times the cost of those old family outings, and I am willing to pay.

These are curious times, jittery and unpredictable. For ardent fans and those who couldn’t care less about the infield-fly rule, baseball presents itself as a steadying force, a common denominator, a boring, blissful messenger of hope.

Our game is back, friends. We need it.