Fisch Tank: He-Man or Stick Figure?

Happy Holidays and thanks for diving into the Fisch Tank!


Not being home for Christmas makes me think back to when I was a kid. From there I jogged my memory and realized some of the great gifts I received from my family. For example the Dukes of Hazard General E. Lee car, roller blades, Nintendo , G.I. Joe and my all time favorite; the Starting Lineup baseball figurines. My favorite team is the Philadelphia Phillies and one year my mom managed to get all the stars on the team. But when I think to those plastic images of Von Hayes, Juan Samuel and Mike Schmidt, I don’t remember any of them being overtly ripped or muscular. Hayes and Samuel were slap ball hitters, but Schmidt is one of the greatest home run hitters of all time. He is part of the five hundred home run club and won three National League MVP awards. Yet, he appeared similar in stature to the others I placed him next to on my dresser as a kid. Call it a vague memory or lack of attention to detail, but I am fairly certain that if Starting Lineup made those baseball icon figurines today. They would look more like He-Man instead of a slender Mike Schmidt. Back then Barry Bonds would have been wearing a Pirates uniform and came with a bat or glove in his packaging. Today’s Bonds dawning a Giants uniform and come with a bat and a syringe. It’s bad enough the baseball icons of the seventies and eighties hit in dungeons like the Vet or Three Rivers where the left field wall was 392 feet to the pole. Today, it’s a sand wedge shot into the Aquafina water sponsored swimming pool located to the right of the Joe’s Crab Schack Beach behind the fence. I believe it’s great for athletes today to strive to be at peak physical performance on the ball field. While I also know the seventies and eighties saw rampant party drugs in the game. Yet I appeal to the players of yester year because they were human. They made mistakes; they didn’t look like a science experiment. Now I am not condoning what the abusers of the previous decades did. Yet I believe they appealed to the fans because it showed they were human like everyone else. Baseball is a game with a stick and a ball that people spend their hard earned money on to watch, not a competition of laboratories. And as people exchange gifts and pleasantries with one another this holiday season, we should give baseball something as well; our forgiveness.

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