The Weak In Rock

Is it me, or has professional baseball gone dull?

Try as I might, I cannot seem to care about any of the games I’ve watched so far this season.  It could be that my team, the Oakland Athletics, are about as much fun to watch this season as toenail fungus, that I hate the other Bay Area team, the San Francisco Giants like the recently unemployed hate bill collectors and that my favorite NL team, The Los Angeles Dodgers, are doing their best to win the “expensive AND feeble” prize for 2010.

These are, however, logical explanations, and I’ll have none of those.

I blame Bud Selig, again.

Look, if you love baseball you simply have to hate Bud Light.  The man is a scourge upon the game.  He’s good at coming up with novel tricks to get people temporarily fascinated with the game, but he clearly has no sense of the game’s history or its place in American culture.  He pats himself on the back constantly for creating the most competitive balance in the league that it has ever had.  Blow me, Bud.  Competitive balance?  Really?  Tell that to fans of the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, Toronto Blue Jays, Pittsburg Pirates, Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals and Cleveland Indians.  Perennially sucky teams are still sucky. My favorite team, the Oakland A’s, still play in a lousy stadium, with a cheap-ass owner, and basically no solid fanbase, (It could be argued, by the way, that the Giants don’t have a fanbase either.  They merely have a gorgeous ballpark that’s one of the few nice places in San Francisco in which one could spend a summer evening, and with a moderate willingness to field a talented team they manage to semi-contend every year in the least competitive division in baseball, but I digress.).  Bah and feh to your competitive balancing act, Bud.

As I started to say, Selig is good at coming up with gimmicky notions that will put butts in seats temporarily, until the novelty wears off.  Case in point: the Wild Card.  The Wild Card round of the playoffs has given more teams a chance to make it to the World Series.  That might seem like a good thing, except for two big problems I have with it:

1. It rewards mediocrity.
2. It means playing the World Series in weather unsuitable to baseball and to watching baseball.

To the first point - baseball used to reward the best performing teams throughout the season with a trip to the championship.  You won a pennant by having the best record over the course of a long season in your league.  I’d argue that the framers of the baseball constitution, as it were, were pretty brilliant.  Who needs a playoff series to determine the best of each league.  The baseball season is LOOOOOOOONG.  It’s not only an endurance contest, it’s a contest of strategy and planning.  If you’ve filled out your roster with strong talent, built a strong coaching staff and the players gel so they can play collaboratively for six months, you can win it all.  Things got muddled when divisional playoffs entered the picture, but those were really necessitated by the expansion of baseball beyond the model of 8 teams in each league.  Even then there was some natural symmetry to things.  You had a West and East division in each league.  The best teams from each division played each other for the right to go to the championship.

Selig mucked it all up when he realigned the leagues into 3 divisions each.  No more symmetry.  So then adding a Wild Card seems like it would make sense.  It doesn’t.  Why 3 divisions?  No one has ever been able to explain that to me in a way that convinces me of the necessity for it.  Don’t even get me started on there being 14 teams in the AL and 16 in the NL, or the ridiculous mess that is the NL Central.

So, what do we get?  We get two teams in the playoffs every year who really don’t belong there.  They aren’t the best of the lot.  No, they’re the best of the teams that aren’t very good, and it has warped the season.  Instead of playing to win your division, build the best team you can, etc., now there are teams who just try to hang in there, not get hurt and squeak into the playoffs and pray for randomness.  And it works.  Just look at the 2004 World Series as an example.  The 2004 Cardinals were the best team in baseball that year.  The Red Sox were the luckiest team in baseball.  Ugh.  It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it.

My second point doesn’t really need too much elaboration.  Baseball is a miserable game to play and even more miserable to watch in frigid weather.  I stopped going to Opening “Day” games several years ago because I got sick of freezing my nuts off by the 5th inning.  Baseball is a joy and thrill to behold in warm weather or on a clear night.  Rain, cold, freezing wind and (seriously) snow make baseball intolerable.

To be fair, I don’t solely blame Bud Selig for the post-season going into early winter at both ends of the season.  I’m pretty sure the bigwigs in New York, when they came up with the Wild Card, realized the best way to make it work would have been to shorten the regular season by 15 or 20 games.  The obstacle there was the player’s union, who would have had to agree to players being paid less for working fewer days.  Not a chance of that happening with those short-sited halfwits (yes, I love baseball, but the current configuration of your typical pro baseball player is sort of disgusting in it’s greed and lack of perspective - sort of just like Mr. Selig).

I could go on, and on, and on, detailing the faults of Bud Selig, but I’ll spare you, gentle readers.  I do have one last thought though…

I recently finished reading a fine book by Bruce Weber called As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels In The Land Of Umpires.  Weber spends several years amongst the umps, training with them at umpire school in Florida, working minor league (and even a couple of big league spring training games) and getting them to open up about their profession.  I’ve always done what most fans do, and hated the umpires, and I still sorta do even after learning a lot more about the kind of crap they deal with on a daily basis.  Now, however, I realize that the umps are often probably the only people on the field in a pro baseball game who are actually enjoying themselves.  They love the game, and you would have to in order to endure the hatred, the contempt and the abuse they endure for a job that no one admires and that pays pretty poorly considering its importance to the sport.  Throughout Weber’s book though umpire after umpire says the same thing - for everyone else in baseball, be they coaches, players, owners or league officials, it’s a business.

Maybe that’s why I’m losing interest.  I think I’m beginning to see the businesslike nature of the game come through on the field more and more.  Sure, players still make dramatic diving catches, but there’s a sense that these are mostly because the individual player involved is just trying to get himself on SportsCenter that night (actually, I’ve been told by a couple of seasoned baseball folks that it’s rare that an outfielder will dive for a ball unless he could catch it by simply running under it - diving plays are showboating done to get oneself on TV, which feeds an individual player’s popularity, which leads to All-Star Game ballot placement, which enhances one’s next contract negotiation position).  And yes, we still see monster hits and clutch plays, but it is beginning to look just a bit too mechanical.

As a kid I used to love watching professional basketball.  I pretty much can’t stand it anymore.  The players are too skilled and out-sized for the court.  Again, it’s too mechanical and automatic.  I hope that doesn’t happen to baseball.  Much as I detest the Giants, I love that their star player is a fat guy.  Now that’s the baseball I grew up with.

Selig comes out today and says that A-Rod “shamed the game” by using
performance enhancing drugs.

You have got to be kidding me. So, one player, albeit a very high
profile player, brought shame to the game through PED use, but Selig,
all 30 MLB team owners and the half-wits who run the Players’
Association who conspired to keep a lid on PED use for 20 years
because more home runs meant more money for MLB are blameless?

Give me a friggin’ break.

And don’t even get me started on what’s happening to Miguel Tejada,
who is looking at the very real possibility of spending time in
Federal Prison because he used PED’s and lied about it (along with
Selig, Donald Fehr and a host of other jackasses) to Congress.

I have said it before and I will say it again - so what? Professional
sports are entertainment, pure and simple. They are not
“institutions” nor do any other overblown, hyperbolic
characterizations of pro sports deserve anything but a sneer and
derision by anyone with half a functioning brain. We do not threaten
movie & TV actresses with jail time for wearing inflato-bossoms or
claim that Bruce Willis or any other follicularly-challenged actor is
setting a bad example for our youth when they sport a rug in order to
appear more attractive or youthful. No one is horrified that the
crowd scenes in recent epic films like Gladiator are digitally
enhanced rather than populated by real live extras, the way they did
it in the olden days.

This obsession with purity in sports has got to stop. It has to stop
if only because it cannot be reconciled with our cultural preference
for everything else around us being completely fake and
technologically enhanced. We love fake stuff in the country and we
love technology. Heck, we even love technology when it’s applied to
sports. Do you see anyone moaning about the mechanically wound
baseballs that are precisely manufactured to ridiculous industrial
tolerances in automated factories and how that’s detracting from the
game because we don’t use hand-wound baseballs anymore? How about
bats - ever hear anyone complain about the finely machine crafted bats
(other than about the handles breaking too often these days) that
allow a player to whip the bat around with considerably more speed
than Babe Ruth ever had at his disposal? And every year you hear a
new chorus of malcontents who want to replace the live umpires behind
the plate with sophisticated cameras that can precisely call balls and
strikes with no risk of error. We love that shit.

We also love things that are bigger than big and grander than grand.
Stadia full of tens of thousands of people do not pay outrageous
prices to watching low scoring pitchers’ duels (much as I wish they
would, but that’s more about the general stupidity of the modern
baseball fan and is fodder for another post some other time). People
come out to pay piles of money ($20 for ticket + $20 for parking + $8
for a beer + $7 for a hot dog = $55 - and that’s not counting
transportation to and from the game) to watch a ballgame because they
want to see dingers, and if they pay any attention to the pitching at
all they want to see 100 mph fastballs. We are not a nation of people
who appreciate nuance and subtlety.

The shame here is that the old white men in suits are wagging their
accusing fingers at players for doing precisely what the league
bosses, union heads and team owners wanted them to do - hit the ball
farther, throw it harder and break some records.

Can’t say it better than this…

Dock Ellis’s No-No
by Chuck Brodsky

It was a lovely summer’s morning
An off-day in LA
So thought one Dock Ellis
As he would later say
His girlfriend read the paper
She said, “Dock, this can’t be right…
It says here that you’re pitching
In San Diego tonight”

“Got to get you to the airport”
And so off Dock Ellis flew
His legs were a little bit wobbly
And the rest of him was too
Took a taxi to the ballpark
An hour before the game
Gave some half-assed explanation
Found the locker with his name

Time came to go on out there
Down the corridor
The walls were a little bit wavy
There were ripples in the floor
He went out to the bullpen
To do a bunch of stretches
Loosen up a little
Throw his warm-up pitches

All rose for the national anthem
People took off their hats
Fireworks were exploding
The cokes were already going flat
Dock was back there in the dugout
So many things to watch
Some players spit tobacco juice
Others grabbed their crotch

The umpire hollered, “Play Ball!”
And so it came to be
Dock’s Pirates batted first
And when they went down 1-2-3
Dock’s catcher put his mask on
And he handed Dock the ball
It was 327 feet
To the right & left field walls

The Pirates took the field then
And Dock stood on the rubber
He bounced a couple of pitches
And then he bounced a couple others
You might say about that day
He looked a little wild
The lead-off batter trembled
Nobody knew why Dock Ellis smiled

You walk 8 and you hit a guy
The things that people shout…
Especially your manager
But he didn’t take Dock out
Dock found himself a rythym
And a crazy little spin
Amazing things would happen
When Dock Ellis zeroed in

Sometimes he saw the catcher
Sometimes he did not
Sometimes he held a beach balll
Other times it was a dot
Dock was tossing comets
That were leaving trails of glitter
At the 7th inning stretch
He still had a no-hitter

So he turned to Cash, his buddy
Said, “I got a no-no going”
Speaking the unspeakable
He went back out there throwing
Bottom of the ninth
& He stood high upon the mound
3 more outs to go
He’d have his name in Cooperstown

First up was Cannizzaro
Who flied out to Alou
Kelly grounded out for Dean
The shortstop yelled, “That’s two”
It must’ve been a mad house
The fans upon their feet
The littler ones among them
Standing on their seats

Next up would’ve been Herbel
But Spezio pinch-hit
He took a 3rd strike looking
And officially, that was it
It was a lovely summer’s morning
An off-day in LA
So thought one Dock Ellis
As he would later say

Technorati Tags: Dock Ellis

Ok, I cannot help myself.  I have to pile on with everyone else who is guffawing at Barry Zito’s recent demotion to the bullpen by the Giants.  I make no secret of this, I loathe the SF Giants.  There are worse teams in Major League Baseball, but I’d wager there are no worse run teams that have the sort of resources at their disposal that the Giants have.  Case in point - Zito.

The Giants are now, at least temporarily, paying $18 million a year for a mediocre long reliever.  They’re saying they’ve moved Zito to the bullpen so that he can work out his mechanics and return to the rotation.  Thing is, there’s nothing wrong with Zito’s mechanics.  His dramatic 12 to 6 curve ball just isn’t being called for strikes by the umps, and without that curve Zito is left to rely on a feeble fastball, a bush-league slider and a pretty impressive change-up to make it through an opponent’s line-up.  If you’re a big league hitter and you see that the umps aren’t going to give him the curve (traditionally Zito’s out pitch) for a strike then you can sit fastball and tattoo it when he serves it up for you.

The irony here is that Tim Lincecum, is currently sporting one of the best ERA’s in the National League, has won 4 games (that’s doubly impressive when you consider the tepid hitters, and mediocre defensive players the Giants are fielding this season) and is doing it all for a little more than 1/10th what Zito is getting paid.

The Giants signed Zito because their front office apparently does not understand baseball fans at all.  They signed Zito to try to balance out the impending loss in star power they knew they were going to suffer when Barry Bonds left for free agency.  The trouble with that theory of running a baseball team is that while Barry Bonds may have had sufficient star power and draw to distract fans from the poor performance of the team, Zito was never going to be close to that, and what really matters to any sports fan isn’t the names printed on the jerseys, it’s winning.

We invest our egos in our favorite teams.  When they lose we feel like losers.  When they win we take credit and carry that around as if we’d done more than just scarf down hot dogs and drink beer.  The Giants have two very talented home grown pitchers, Matt Cain and the aforementioned Lincecum.  It stands to reason that there’s other talent in the Giants organization, or at the very least that their scouts know where to find young, inexpensive talent.  This is one of the biggest reasons I hate the Giants.  They consistently rely on overpriced, under-performing veterans to flesh out their roster.  That’s a questionable move with hitters/fielders.  It’s brain-dead with pitchers.  It’s likely that Zito’s curve doesn’t cross the plate anymore because he no longer has the strength or flexibility to throw it with the proper bite.  Mechanical tweaking isn’t going to fix that.

Technorati Tags: Barry Zito, SF Giants, Major League Baseball, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain

This is just too funny not to comment on.

Barry Zito has now tied the record for most consecutive opening day losses for a starting pitcher at four. Who did he tie?  Rick Reuschel.    Another pitcher who wore a Giants uniform, and who was mostly mediocre in his career with a few years where he was pretty great.  Yup.  That’s Zito.

I’ve said it before many times.  Zito is overrated and does not deserve top billing in anyone’s rotation.  Yes, he has a brilliant curve ball, but if the umps aren’t calling it for a strike the guy’s got nothing to fall back on.  He throws a great change-up, but the fastball that’s supposed to set it off is one of the worst to come out of the hand of a big league pitcher.  If the hitters are able to sit fastball on Zito because the umps aren’t calling his curve for a strike they’ll light him up, just like the Dodgers did tonight.

This is going to be a rough season to be an A’s fan, but we can be consoled by reminding ourselves that at least we’re not rooting for what looks like the worst Giants lineup in a decade.  Actually, I don’t feel the most sorry for Giants fans.  I feel the most sorry for Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum.  On any other team these two would be a great one-two punch in the starting rotation, but with the team they’re pitching for Cain and Lincecum are mostly going to just get really good at maintaining a stiff upper lip in the face of an endless stream of losses.  At least for them no one is going to be screaming about their inflated salaries.  That honor will go to Zito.

Technorati Tags: Barry Zito, Rick Reuschel, Giants, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum