MLB I Loathe Thee

 

Between the dodgers getting Skubal and the Guardians posturing over a bunt attempt, it's hard to like the MLB right now.

It is hard to imagine a pair of headlines that better capture the modern fan's frustration with Major League Baseball:

1. Financial Oligarchy: The Dodgers—already stacked with a surreal concentration of elite, highly paid talent—go out at the trade deadline and pull off a deal for Tarik Skubal, a back-to-back Cy Young winner. It makes the regular season feel like a minor inconvenience for a couple of super-teams with blank checks while small-to-mid-market fan bases are left acting as farm systems.
2. Fragile Unwritten Rules: Meanwhile, you have the Guardians getting their collective blood pressure up and clearing the benches in the pouring rain because Tim Tawa had the audacity to try a bunt in the sixth inning of a game.

The Guardians situation is a textbook example of how backwards the logic of "unwritten rules" can get. The 6th inning isn't even late-stage! A hitter is trying to spark an offense against a pitcher who is currently dominating them. To act as if a batter owes the opposing starter a pristine, unbunted environment halfway through a game is absurd. Expecting an opponent to play soft-ball for your guy’s stat line cheapens the competition.

When you stack giant market teams hoarding all-world arms on one end and teams throwing tantrums over basic competitive strategy on the other, it’s completely reasonable to feel alienated by the product.

 

Baseball Ray! Baseball Jose! TV:(

Both my boys, ages 12 and 10, looove baseball. They've been in little league since t-ball and they currently are in Spring ball. 

I've tried to impart some things to them along the way though I was an average little leaguer and didn't play at the High School level. 

One thing I've talked about, especially with my 12 year old, is attitude, approach, mindset, and hustle. 

This is hard to get at below 12 when there are just so many walks and few chances to drive a good pitch or field a hard-hit ball, but now at 12 pitchers have more control and the baseball improves. 

When I grew up I was able to watch the Indians (now Guardians) on channel 43 for every game. The team stunk but I still remember watching Len Barker's 1981 perfect game with my mother from our tiny 8 inch in the kitchen. 

My boys rarely get to see baseball on tv because television has changed so much. We don't subscribe to cable and don't have an antennae for Red Sox games. 

Apple TV has a Friday night game (too close to bedtime), ESPN has a sunday night game (too close to bedtime) and MLB will occasionally have a free game.

Well the free game paid off...BIG TIME. And I am more than happy to report that it is because of José Ramírez of the Guardians. (I think I helped a smidge:))

He hustled (like his hair was on fire - something I like to tell the boys) to first base to prevent a double play and score a run. We watched the game together and I was excited when he prevented the double play and make a big deal about his hustle. 

Now cut to the little league games this week and check this out, both my boys hustling to first a la José Ramírez. It doesn't get better:

How can you not love this? Two youngins hustling to first like a pro.

Maybe MLB could offer more games so that kids can learn from the like of José Ramírez.

What's A Hero?

 On a run the other morning I thought about Jackie Robinson.

I don't know a ton about Jackie Robinson; a little more than the casual baseball fan I would guess. The Ken Burns 'Baseball' documentary enlightened me a bit and the movie 42 followed what I learned from the documentary. These coupled with the book I read to my sons (who are in full baseball obsession mode at the moment) Jackie and Me by Dan Gutman solidified my view that Jackie Robinson was a hero.

Despite the question the Coen brothers ask in The Big Lebowski, What's A Hero?

Well, in my estimation Jackie Robinson is a hero because of what he did...for so many others...at great cost to himself.

Now what got me on my run the other morning was how I compared Jackie Robinson, who's life was so clearly cut short because of the stress from breaking the color barrier in baseball, to my parents.

Now my parents were not heroes, to many, but their lives were most definitely cut short from the stress of raising six children in abject poverty. One of the things that slaps me in the face most days is how fortunate my children are: food to eat, clothes to wear, resources like health insurance and dental coverage. Most of this is provided by my wife just so we're clear, but the children are fortunate and, gulp, privileged. 

Despite my own generational poverty trauma I carry and I impose upon them indirectly.

So my parents had no resources and still managed to get us out of childhood alive. Maybe not mentally/emotionally top-tier, but breathing and operating on a level with the average citizen. Again, they did this with no resources. No safety net (no health insurance, no dental coverage), no net to catch parents falling with six children in tow. Did I mention we were all crammed into a 2 bedroom house. 2 bedrooms. Our current home has 4 full baths. 

Imagine the mental toll. I honestly can't. I hate taking my car for an oil change because I fear news that x is broken and its going to cost y, even though I have a little money saved.

What the fuck is it like to avoid going to the doctor for an entire life because you just can't afford it? What is it like to get up and go to work even though you are sick as a dog? Cory Booker, in an interview with Jon Stewart, talked about how a speeding ticket can ruin people working in a gig industry. My father was self-employed and if he didn't work, he didn't eat - no personal days, no vacation days, no sick days, no my kid has this or that day. Work, or else. 

That's pressure.

That's stressful.

It shortens lives.

So my parents died early. 

Did they die heroes?

I don't know. 

What's a hero?

Baseball And The Afterlife

I am not going to say that Ken Burns is ruining my life.

I am not going to say he's bettering my life either.

Alas, I ruin and better my life. I leave it to you dear reader to decide if I have bettered or improved.

I am going to say that the Ken Burns Baseball documentary is taking up my time. Whenever I fold laundry I take the time to catch up on the Baseball documentary. 

Now here is the reveal: the damn thing makes me emotional; often welling up tears, sometimes near sobbing. What can I say, the historical drama resonates with me. This probably has a lot to do with my mid-life crisis (now in it's tenth year or so), marriage crisis (coincidentally in it's tenth year), parenting crisis (huh, also in about the tenth year) and career crisis (too many years to count) but it also speaks to the depth and power of the documentary. The fact that my sons are smitten with baseball right now and that we are reading through the Dan Gutman Baseball Card Adventure books before bed is also playing a role.

But that it not what I want to tell you about today. I will connect the documentary to another thesis in my life however. 

The documentary covers the Black Sox and the Shoeless Joe Jackson bribe in the 1919 World Series. And Shoeless Joe Jackson is part of the backdrop for the plot of the movie Field of Dreams, which this fool decided to plop down and watch on...wait for it...Father's Day, with his baseball loving sons.

I had to fight off tears for a good portion of the movie (I know I know, get some help you stubborn idiot - something is amiss!) because there is so much of the movie that hits my heart. 

Now you know that he crux of the movie is Ray Kinsella's relationship with his father and the the denouement is his having a catch with his father at the end of the movie.

But there is a trope that runs through the movie that highlights the main thesis of my life right now: There is no afterlife; you and mammals like you, are finite. 

Really? This is in Field of Dreams? The movie about baseball? 

That's the one.

You see, when Shoeless Joe (played by the *late Ray Liotto) first appears, he asks Ray, "Is this heaven?"

To which a beaming Ray quips, "No, it's Iowa."

Upon reuniting with his father, after never getting the chance to apologize..."Son of a bitch died before I could take it back,"

his father also asks, "Is this heaven?" And Ray again says, "It's Iowa," but follows by asking his father, "Is there a heaven?"

It's where dreams come true.

And Ray looks around at his land, his wife and daughter on the swing and realizes:

There is no afterlife.

I wrote this for my Writing In the Public Interest Course:

"I can hear you now: our souls will be in eternity. Souls can’t be anywhere. But I’ll look past this and still ask, how are you going to enjoy eternity when you can’t grab anything? What’s even the point if you can’t grab a beer, hold a lover, whack a golf ball, strum a guitar..."

Or in the case of Field of Dreams, have a catch with your dad.

Heaven and the afterlife is a bad idea. It doesn't help the species. It's regressive. It's unhealthy, on the individual and public health level.

After the movie I went out and threw batting practice for my sons. I tucked my daughter in that night.

Old School Baseball

In the 8^th inning of a 1-0 Red Sox Indians game, Eduardo Nunez swung and missed a pitch from Corey Kluber.

NESN Broadcast and former MLB player, Jonny Gomes said that Nunez took a big swing or swung for the fences or whatever parlance-of-our-time you prefer.

On the next pitch, Nunez was hit in the elbow.

Jonny Gomes said this was “old school baseball.”

This implies that Kluber hit Nunez on purpose.

Which raises questions like:

Was Kluber personally offended that Nunez swung hard?

If so, why?

Would Kluber have been personally offended if Nunez swung medium or light or instead of swinging for the fences (plural) only swung for a fence (singular)?

Or would Kluber have been offended if Nunez swung for a gork or a groundball with eyes to quote Crash Davis?

Why would any kind of swing personally offend Kluber?

Maybe the swing didn’t offend Kluber but instead, disrespected the game?

And this is why, per old school baseball, Kluber intentionally hit Nunez.

How does any kind of swing disrespect the game of baseball?

Is a bunt swing disrespectful? If so why? How?

Does any kind of swing disrespect competition?

I don’t know but I do know this, because Kluber’s intentionally hit batter took first and Brock Holt took second and then scored on a swing of some sort which apparently offended no one and not the game of baseball.

Help me understand how a swing disrespects anyone or anything.

I ask to learn.

Because after Gomes said that this was old school basbeball, implying the bean ball, I thought he was incorrect.

I thought that the competitor in Kluber knew that Nunez’ swing, be it hard or soft or medium or light or tepid or colossal or monstrous or hackneyed or uppercutted or Dave Kingman-like, is irrelevant.

Kluber the competitor knows that the real competition is with himself and locating his pitch, calibrating a baseball, on a level that an infinitesimally small proportion of the world’s population can do, into a catcher’s mitt 60 feet 6 inches away at speeds we mere mortals can’t really fathom.

But I’m wrong.

Kluber hit him on purpose.

And the Indians lost.

Competition Tatters, Competition Matters

I had a couple of sports related conversations with my father in-law (FIL) this past weekend.

1.       Pete Rose

Me: he’s a piece of shit that doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame because he bet on his own team. He was a great hitter.

FIL: He was a great hitter who belongs in the Hall of Fame even though he is a piece of shit who bet on his own team.

2.       Golf Pro retires so as not to break a course record set by Arnold Palmer

FIL: knows a golf pro who is killing it one day on a course and the caddy tells him “by the way, if you keep playing well, you are going to set the course record.” So the pro asks who owns the record and is told Arnold Palmer. So instead of tanking his round, decides to retire as a pro prior to finishing the round…so as not to set the course record.

Now my FIL intimated that this really shows you the pro’s respect for Arnold Palmer.

I think it is just the opposite. And I reference the above mentioned piece of shit in my reasoning.

Now, regarding Pete Rose:

I asked my FIL, “why doesn’t professional wrestling earn as much as the NFL?”

The answer is because the fans, the people who shell out the dough, believe that there is genuine competition in the NFL; that men compete and that the men and team that want and work and toil and bleed and endure the most…win.

While the WWE and the NFL share entertainment value, the income difference alerts you to the fact that the belief in genuine competition, matters, a lot. Billion = a lot.

So this brings me back to Pete Rose, the piece of shit. Baseball, and all of its history, matters, for the same reason, that people believe there is genuine competition.

Pete Rose ensured there wasn’t.

He bet on his own team.

Please don’t be a sap and ask whether to win or lose.

Fair enough, what does this have to do with the golf pro?

Well, the reason a golf course record matters at all, be it held by Arnold Palmer or Saw Palmetto, is again, competition…one man trying his hardest against another man or woman or satyr or whatever.

But now you have Joe Blow “retiring” because of his respect for Arnold Palmer when in fact it is the most disrespectful act.

Imagine (like Kant would have us do) if every golfer that went up against Palmer, tanked or retired or half-assed it. We wouldn’t appreciate Palmer, we wouldn’t think that he was great, that he overcame nerves, that he had mettle or grit or determination or was a winner or anything like that.

Competition matters people.

The Pete Roses of the world and the golf pros who retire when they are about to break a record, do a disservice to competition.

Competitors WANT to earn it, they want nothing handed to them, they need not ill-gained records and shun anything less than the best from their foes.

So don’t be a dick, try your best.

Stewards of Baseball

Mike Greenberg of espn’s mike and mike wants to admit Pete Rose into the major league baseball hall of fame, “warts and all.” 

One of the warts is betting on major league baseball, which is verboten and to which Rose denied for a long time. Add to that the fact that Rose bet on his own team while he was manager of that team. Add to that the fact that Rose bet on his team to lose while he was manager of that team.

Enthusiasts love the statistics of baseball and how statistics have become the living history of baseball. People don’t watch old baseball games, they monitor stats and records. 

With that in mind:

The stewards of baseball have to have an eye on the future of baseball not just the revered past of baseball and the stewards know the risk of the hall of fame becoming meaningless because Pete Rose bet on his own team to lose. The stats which are so revered in baseball become meaningless when the game is doctored for gambling purposes; like overusing your bullpen, pinch hitting at inopportune times, stealing at inopportune times, which Pete Rose most assuredly did do, to better ensure his team’s chance of losing, and his personal chance of winning. When Pete Rose bets on his team to lose he not only impacted his team’s stats but the other team and its players as well.

There is no hall of fame for the WWE and there aren’t box scores in the morning newspaper because we all know the stats aren’t meaningful or representative of true competition. Letting Pete Rose into the hall of fame runs the risk of rendering meaningless, true competition.

Measuring, statistics, and records are de facto meaningless if a competitor is trying to lose.

Pete Rose was trying to lose.

Mike Greenberg should know that if Pete Rose is allowed into the Hall of Fame, baseball will lose.

The Royal You

We asked, the Royal You answered

The Los Angeles Dodgers parted ways with manager Don Mattingly.

Was the Dodgers early exit from the playoff’s Don’s fault?

Playoffs. Yer talking about playoffs?  - Jim Mora Sr., Mini Golf Manager

Sorta, Tommy Lasorda. -Tom Lasorda, Pasta Consumer

Gotta play better, gotta coach better. -Bill Belichik, Mumbler