Slow Baseball

Major league baseball wants to speed up the game to make it more interesting for the fans. What a laugh! They have done everything in the world to take the fun out of the game, and now they are saying ‘uh oh’.

Without even going into the ridiculous routines that players use to drag out the game, like glove tightening, batter timeouts, and finger wetting acts by pitchers, let me just hit the top three.

1) Institution of the designated hitter in the American League: For a real baseball fan, half the fun is in the strategy revolving around the pitcher batting. Then too, how do you compare batting statistics, when careers are extended for half-players. How would Mickey Mantle’s career stats have looked, if after his knees went bad, he only had to bat?

2) Allowing blatant use of steroids to destroy power records for all time: it was bad enough when they gave us too much of a good thing by extending the season, allowing Roger Maris to beat Babe Ruth’s home run record with more games. Now the thrill of watching someone chase the single season home run record will never again happen. Blame major league baseball for taking the short-term publicity while allowing the credibility of the game to be destroyed.

3) Umpiring with video replays: It’s hard to imagine anything that could have taken more fun out of the game for fans. Yes there were wrong calls and bad calls! So what? Over the course of a season they all evened out, and how I miss the fun of players jumping up and down, while managers charge out of the dugout and unleash their own special tirades at the umpire.

As long as I am knocking my favorite game, I might as well hit the other complaints as well: Umpires who act as if people are there to see them. Warnings and quick expulsions to pitchers who throw inside. Hit batters who stare down the pitcher, and later whine about their million dollar careers being jeopardized. Bench emptying, trash-talk only, brawls. Uniforms dolled up with symbolic numbers, names or colors. Politically correct announcers telling us what a great father Jason is to his six children by five  different women. Players who draw attention to themselves by pointing up to Grandma in Heaven every time they get on base, or go through their practiced, little-girl routines in the dugout after a big hit. (I know, I know, they are just having fun. I enjoyed it the first thousand times too, but like Gatorade drenchings, and pies in the face, they are no longer amusing.)

I guess that’s enough for now. Most of my friends who like sports think I’m nuts, and while it may not sound like it, I am addicted to the Miami Marlins, and baseball is still the only sport I can watch from start to finish. The classy players who understand how fortunate they are, more than make up for the crybabies and showoffs, and the one on one battle between pitcher and batter, delivers excitement for me that is not present in any other team sport.

Be Sociable, Share!

Leave a Reply

Security Code: