By EUGENE J. McCARTHY

By EUGENE J. McCARTHY

Rappahannock News Contributing Writer

The noted historian Bruce Catton wrote in 1977 that baseball is a game that cannot be ruined by forces either internal or external. The strength and resiliency of the game in the face of both internal and external change during recent years seemed to prove Catton right. Some of the changes were absorbed into the game, others were rejected. The integrity of the game remained.

Night games, artificial turf, covered parks, the use of designated hitters, although they raised some questions about the validity of statistics and some accidental aspects of the game, left the basic game intact.

There have been innovations generally associated with the terms of Bowie Kuhn as commissioner, such as the abolition of the reserve clause, the adoption of the free agent rule, three tier compensation rules, the player draft, etc. These were all designed to make teams more competitive, to even out their strength, and did not destroy the basic inequality of baseball.

Although some of these changes are questionable, they were offered under the protective standard for “the good of the game,” proclaimed by the most noted baseball commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Landis, and followed faithfully by his successors. Under this standard, baseball was judged in itself like classical theatre, with its own unities of time, space and action. No higher purpose for the game was recognized, and no objective beyond the good of the game.

Thus, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and others involved in the “Black Sox” scandal were banned for “the good of the game,” not to give a good example to the youth of America, or for some other “good of society.”

Higher and outside purposes have been accepted for the national football and basketball organizations, but neither game, in any case, could be conceived as self-contained, or good in itself. National football and basketball games are inter