Columnist Steve Carp: Baseball shows its resiliency

STEVE CARP is a Las Vegas Sun sportswriter.

JERRY ROYSTER was never involved in a perfect game. He was on the losing side of a couple of no-hitters, but never a perfecto.

But that didn't stop the Las Vegas Stars manager from being excited in talking about David Wells' performance Sunday as he set down 27 Minnesota Twins in order. The fan in Royster loved it.

"That was great," he said. "It just shows you that baseball has a way of taking care of itself. The capabilities are always there for something special to happen."

And that's what makes sports in general, and baseball in particular, different from other forms of entertainment. Go to the ballet and Swan Lake ends the same way every time. Go to a Broadway show and you'll hear the same songs in Miss Saigon. If you go to see Godzilla this summer, the storyline doesn't change.

But we never know how things are going to turn out at the ballpark or the arena or the racetrack. You don't know when Michael Jordan's going to drop 60 on someone or if somebody is going to put the puck past Dominik Hasek or if Real Quiet is going to outlast the rest of the field in the Preakness.

Baseball has always been the ultimate sport when it comes to the unexpected. You have no clue when you go to Wrigley Field that Kerry Wood is going to strike out 20 batters. You don't show up at Busch Stadium figuring Mark McGwire is going to launch a 540-foot home run.

And the 49,820 fans who showed up at Yankee Stadium Sunday sure didn't expect anything more than one of those Beenie Babies they were giving away. Of course, they got more than some giveaway item which cost under a buck to make. They got a memory which they'll cherish for the rest of their lives.

It's those memories that will keep sustaining baseball.

Despite its best efforts to impose self-inflicting wounds, the game survives. It has survived strikes, it has survived free agency and it will even survive the mindless dismantling of the defending World Champions.

What is happening in South Florida is an absolute disgrace and the owners who run baseball should be ashamed for letting the Marlins be broken up and their fans being sold down the river. Of course, if the game had a real commissioner, this wouldn't be an issue.

You can bet your Bowie Kuhn baseball card it wouldn't. If ol' Bowie was the Village Idiot according to the late Charles O. Finley, he looks like Einstein compared to Bud Selig, the Nero who stood idly by and watched Pro Player Stadium burn.

Mike Piazza won't be a Marlin by the end of July. He'll be rented out by the Giants or the Astros or whoever is locked up in a pennant race and needs a potent bat in the middle of its lineup. By then, the Marlins will have been passed by the Arizona Diamondbacks and have the worst record in the majors.

Yet the game will survive. Baseball gets knocked down, it picks itself up, dusts itself off and says, "Play Ball!"

So before you go out and purchase a Mike Piazza Marlins jersey that will probably be outdated by the All-Star break, do yourself a favor: Leave the Piazza gear on the rack and buy a David Wells jersey instead.

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