In a scene from A League of Their Own, a movie about women's baseball during the 1940s, the following takes place. Tom Hanks, the grizzled old baseball manager, chews out one of his players. She breaks down crying and sobbing. Confused and out-of-touch, Hanks proclaims "There's no crying in baseball."

I have to disagree with Tom, I have cried plenty during my 56 years as a baseball fan. I cried then and I still cry now when I see Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson on the banquet circuit, reliving that horrible moment in 1951.

I cried when I saw a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougal strike Herb Score in the face and ruin the prospective great career of the young Cleveland pitcher.

I cried when Tony Conigliaro's baseball days were over when hit in the eye with a pitched ball. "Pistol" Pete Reiser was carried out of Ebbets Field on a stretcher when he collided with the centerfield fence (sans padding) for the third time, as I listened to Red Barber describe it on the radio.

Pictures of Jeff Heath, a Boston Braves player, sliding across home plate with his leg broken in two also haunts my memory.

These incidents were part of the game. What I am addressing is the violence that is unnecessary and gratuitous. They seem to be growing in number and intensity.

In a game I attended in the 1950s, I saw both benches clear and break into a series of fistfights when Don Drysdale of the Brooklyn Dodgers plunked Braves shortstop Johnny Logan in the ribs. This incident was reprised recently in my mind when Roger Clemens just missed breaking apart Mike Piazza's face.

Last week two fans in Chicago viciously attacked the first-base coach of the Kansas City Royals. Why a first base coach? They are usually so innocuous.

I have sat in the stands in Yankee Stadium when fans hurled the grossest epithets at the right fielder of the opposing team. Over and over they chanted the same degrading curses, batteries and bottles flew out of the stands

Why? Why? Why?

Is it the growing divide between the people in the stands and the people on the field? Is a sports event the proper outlet for the hate and frustrations of the masses? Is the opponent to be vilified and pilloried and, finally, punished physically? Is that the lesson we wish our children to view while attending a baseball game?

Yes, there is "Crying in Baseball!"

We are all crying for the civility that is being lost from the once beautiful and pastoral game that is truly American in origin, baseball.

For shame!