WAYNE TWITCHELL AND Terry Harmon.

These are the names I remember.

Yes, yes, of course I recall Schmidt and Carlton and Bowa and Maddox and Luzinksi and Boone. But when I think back on my earliest — and I mean my very earliest — sports memories, the Phillies of the mid-1970s, it was players like Twitchell and Harmon and Jerry Martin who lodge in the back recesses of my mind, where more important things should rest.

On lazy, endless summer days, theirs were the names Harry Kalas smoothly announced on radio broadcasts — on KYW 1060, I believe. I’m back in Upper Darby, playing step ball in the center of a block-long strip of row homes, AM radio squawking, drenched in treble, Twitchell and Harmon toiling on the brutal, sizzling Veterans Stadium artificial turf.

And, yes, I also distinctly remember watching afternoon NLCS games in 1977 and 1978, Phils and Dodgers, and night games, too, Lefty slipping off the mound in the pouring rain, Bowa snaring a carom and throwing out Davey Lopes only to have the first-base ump mistakenly call him safe, the Bull fumbling a fly ball against the left-field wall.

When Tugger somehow threw a limp fastball past Willie Wilson, securing the Phils’ 1980 World Series win, I can still see where I was: in the family room in our South Jersey home, wearing a Richie Ashburn bucket hat that my dad and my brother and I were handed before a Sunday-afternoon giveaway game a season or two before. Tug leapt off the mound, bouncing on his tiptoes, and Boonie arose triumphantly from home plate, hands raised high in victory, and Schmitty leapt onto the pile at the mound, and I grabbed my hat and tossed it high toward the tilted ceiling.

I remember this. I remember it clearly.

This is to say that I love baseball. It has been my sport since the very beginning, even through high school, when it was never the cool sport. I played Little League ball for six years, made the freshman high school team, and still regret not trying out for the varsity squad.

Major League Baseball is cranking up to start an abbreviated, 60-game season in a month, and I think it’s a potentially tragic mistake. I love baseball, and I want it to shut down until next spring.

Seven Phillies players have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Seven.

Several team staff members have also tested positive.

COVID-19 is not the common cold. It is a vicious, often lethal disease, even among those who are otherwise healthy. And it spreads like mad in close quarters … such as locker rooms and clubhouses. There is, of course, no effective treatment. There is no vaccine.

Is it worth playing a 60-game season for our entertainment if players and front-office members die?

I love baseball. I love it. Which is why I don’t want it played this season. | DL