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Free agency, in one form or another, is an idea whose time is now. Phillie Pitcher Tug McGraw thinks the hassling among owners and players is a healthy sign. "It's to the benefit of everybody that all this surfaces," he says. "We are no longer going to be fooled into thinking that it is just a little boy's game we are playing out there." During his eight years as a Met, says McGraw, "the line had always been that we were a part of this big happy family. We were always the 'sons' of management. Well, that's not the way it was, or is, not at all. Let a problem come up, like the soreness in my back, and the Mets moved quick to make a good deal for me before word got out that I was hurting. But that's the way it should be. Baseball is primarily a business, and the Mets acted in their best interest. My only objection is, let's quit kidding about it."
But if McGraw is a businessman, he is one after Bill Veeck's heart. It may not be just a boy's game, but last year while the Braves were taking batting practice, McGraw hid out of sight with a hose and periodically sprinkled then-Brave Ralph Garr, who kept staring at the sunny sky in amazement. You often get that kind of thing in baseball. Once before a game in St. Louis, Bob Uecker, then a journeyman catcher, now an ABC announcer, borrowed a tuba from a band that was playing on the field and used it to shag flies. "Everybody loved it," says Uecker. "Except the tuba player."
Innocence and ebullience—these are realities of baseball that transcend contracts and lawsuits. Bill Veeck sits in his Chicago office, looking at the 15-in. file drawer on his desk that contains some 1,500 promotional ideas, pondering which one to spring on his White Sox followers next. It is no wonder he expects more than a million paid through his gates this year. Milwaukee Brewer Boss Bud Selig, 41, comes right out and calls baseball show biz. His competition? Not other sports, but "movies, the circus, rock concerts." His market? Youth. A 1975 survey showed that the average age of Brewer fans is 25; the young have discovered that the game is cheap at the gate and fine for a date ($8 is tops, in Houston; 85¢ is bottom, in Baltimore).
The players are faster, stronger and bushier than ever—New York is a notable exception now that George Steinbrenner has decreed short hair in order to instill "Yankee pride" in his players—but they still fit into the diamond in such a way as to generate the same slow magnetism of yore. Football fans pay up to $18 a seat for thrills, chills, shocks and jolts. Baseball fans welcome thrills, too; last year's rousing World Series remains a vivid memory. But for their money they just ask for flavor. It won't be easy for the sport to reconcile its players' new clout with the need to keep ticket prices down to a daily digestible level, but then it isn't easy to throw or hit a nice pitch either. Showmen like Bill Veeck and operators like Ted Turner seem to be up to the new challenge, and baseball appears to have the momentum to keep rolling along. Asked what he likes most about the game's format, Tug McGraw ponders for a moment and replies, "The shape of the ball. We must never change the shape of the ball."