Credit for the hotter than a match quote goes to Hall of Famer Marty Brennaman who is oft heard to pronounce it over the magical airwaves of the Reds Radio Network, usually in reference to a team's manager that is arguing vociferously and in a most animated way with one or more of the umpires. That Martyism also is reflective of how I feel about some of the dictatorial and illegitimate decisions being made during this Hot Stove season by or at the direction of the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball (four times using "of" in a single sentence is three times too many. I assign blame for that occurrence to the Commissioner's Office as well). To wit:
1) Broad expansion of instant replay
I support this decision in the abstract as a worthy and righteous thought experiment. In this post-modern age of high-speed computerized processing, high definition digital cameras and monitors, satellite telecommunications, NASA-sourced miniaturization technologies and a whole host of other multi-hyphenated Skunk Works-derived gizmos too multitudinous to include here, we baseball game viewers at home are instantaneously bombarded with a dozen rapid-fire super slow motion high definition replays from six different 800x-zoom digital camera angles for a bang-bang play at second base before the pitcher goes into his next wind-up even for a getaway day game the third week in April between two last-place teams (which, by definition, must therefore include the Chicago Cubs). In other, more brief words, in today's game we have multiple video replay sources that verify instantly and with near-absolute certainty (as near-absolute as imperfect humans may ever deign to aspire) whether an umpire has or has not made the correct call on the field. All sides say, and I agree, this subject is about getting the calls right.
My primary objection is with the means by which Major League Baseball vis a vis the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball proposes to apply a more broadly expanded use of instant replay.
Any intimation that Major League Baseball might incorporate one or more of the single brain cell so-called innovations of the Professional League of American Rules Football (better known in these parts as the PLARF) is outrageous and would justifiably merit a response among baseball fans akin to that of Minuteman resistance at Concord and Lexington circa April 1775. I was on the verge of apoplexy when hearing of one proposal to have managers throw a flag onto the playing field in order to signal their desire for umpires to review a call, as we see in the PLARF. The only flags associated with baseball are the gonfalon banners of Franklin Pierce Adams and championship pennants. Providence interceded and, by all reports, that particular recommendation has been banished to the ash heap of misguided propositions. The dark forces of meddlesome stratagem have evidently succeeded in importing to baseball the PLARF policy of permitting each coach (or in baseball, each manager) one "challenge" which may be extended ad infinitum via a successful overturn. My instinctive reaction is to oppose this idea on the grounds of it being sourced from the PLARF alone. However, that's too easy an out, if you will forgive my obviously intentional pun. Here's my better, more reasoned basis for objection:
MLB is over-thinking the practical application of expanded replay, and one trade union is missing out on a golden opportunity.
Stipulating my recitation [above] of all the modern technological elements involved which would facilitate that which you are about to read [below], what follows is my own proposal - in brief outline - for a simple, streamlined way to incorporate more replay into professional baseball.
a) Add a fifth umpire (you're welcome, Umpire's Union) into the standard four umpire rotation currently in use. The fifth umpire - on days when he is not umpiring on the playing field - mans a video replay booth in the stadium, accompanied by the official scorers and, if you like, one or more representatives of the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball. The official scorers (and perhaps reps of MLB) may serve as independent witnesses to the actions and decisions of the fifth umpire. Thus, the fifth umpire is not sealed away in a secretive, unobserved location wherein no one else bears witness to his activities in the same way the field umpires are observed by multiple eyes at all times as a means to ensure propriety. Whether the crew chief is eligible to man the video booth or not I will leave to others to decide as an argument could be made that a crew chief should be on the field and close to the action and with direct interaction between himself and the respective managers at any and all times possible (excluding illness, injury, etc).
b) The crew chief and the home plate umpire (and for those games when the crew chief is umpiring behind the dish, the senior or next-most senior umpire) shall wear a secure Bluetooth-type device which permits them to be in direct communication with the fifth umpire. Having two field umpires thus equipped gives fans the confidence of technological redundancy.
c) Blue lights will be affixed at various, widely visible points around the playing field; At one or both ends of the dugouts, on the numerous scoreboards throughout the ballparks. Blue is the color traditionally associated with umpires and simultaneously is not a color that will be confused for signaling balls (green) or strikes (red), for example, as one sees on the scoreboard at Fenway Park. Whether the dugout lights display a solid blue light or flash like a police strobe and whether the scoreboards turn a solid blue or flash blue I will also leave to trained programmers and graphic designers who are better appointed to make that decision. These blue lights will be activated at the direction and sole discretion of the fifth umpire any time he sees a potentially erroneous call on the field. The blue lights alert the field umpires, teams and fans that a call is under review. Action on the field is paused when the blue light is activated, and the fifth umpire will simultaneously be in communication with the two field umpires so equipped. Pending the decision of the fifth umpire, the field umpires will execute the final replay-based decision and the game will then continue. This process shall be performed any and every time the fifth umpire observes a potentially overturnable (I think I just invented a word) call.
d) In the event of technical difficulties, whether with the video replays, the communication devices, blue lights, etc, then the game will proceed just as it has for almost 140 years with umpires on the field being the final arbiters.
In summation; Good call, game proceeds as usual. Questionable call, blue light is activated by fifth umpire in video booth, game play pauses, video replay umpire communicates to field umpires correct call. Game play then proceeds.
Ergo, my proposal eliminates the farce of PLARF-inspired manager challenges and puts into action a system by which all questionable calls are immediately adjudicated.
For fans of Lou Piniella, do not despair. There will always be situations for which volatile managers will have wont or cause to storm the field and make an entertaining spectacle of himself. For example, the fifth umpire may have misinterpreted the rule book as evidenced by his opting to not review via video replay what to a manager appears to be a questionable call (or "no call") on the field and - blammo! - out of the dugout pops Sweet Lou Piniella, soon followed by the grand theatre of first base being chucked into right field. Twice. My proposal simply reduces the frequency of such outbursts while making sure that every suspect call is reviewed, double-checked for accuracy (like your McDonald's Quarter Pounder with extra cheese no pickle & fries), game play is not interrupted or delayed unnecessarily by sometimes irritable managers and, most importantly, the correct calls are made as often as humanly possible.
2) Prohibiting home plate collisions
This vague Utopian proposal, while not yet formalized, is ridiculous and will make a mockery of Major League Baseball.
As most of you know, Mr B was a great ballplayer back in those halcyon days of mid-century Pax Americana yesteryear for the Redskins of Miami University (Prodesse Quam Conspici; I'm wearing out the Latin here). To this day, any time there is a play at the plate Mr B is not roused from his seat, he doesn't cheer and to him it matters not for which team the catcher plays. Mr B does not like to see any catcher get blown up.
I grew up, as did - I suspect - most baseball fans, being thrilled by the most dramatic play in the National Pastime - the home plate collision. Anyone who played catcher for any length of time, as Mr B did himself, has been run over while blocking the plate. It hurts. Players may be injured. Yet it's an integral part of the game (see preceding link). No one roots for injury, you won't find schadenfreude in the grandstand. But with the game on the line, 9th inning, 2 outs, down a run or perhaps tied, a base runner charging for home and a throw coming into the catcher.... what else would you have either the base runner or the catcher do? Give himself up? Willingly pull up and be tagged out or step aside and allow the run to score? We already have the so-called sweep tag. We already have base runners attempting to slide if they have access to any part of the plate in an effort to avoid said tag.
The play at the plate is the very embodiment of the game; Run scoring and run prevention. The play at the plate must be allowed to resolve itself without, as some suggestions have been made, requiring base runners to always slide into home plate, the umpire determining if the throw arrived early enough (and thus making it an automatic out if the throw beat the base runner to the plate), transmogrifying any play at the plate into an automatic force play (wherein the catcher is required only to control the ball and step on the plate ahead of the base runner). Look, very simple real-life examples illustrate why no rule that eliminates the home plate collision is sensible. Players sliding into home plate sometimes miss the plate altogether. If the base runner misses the plate but beat the throw is he still going to be ruled "safe?" Catchers sometimes fail to catch thrown balls or drop the ball when transitioning into a position to apply the tag to a base runner. If the throw beats the base runner but the catcher fails to catch or control the ball, is the base runner still going to be ruled "out?"
As a brief aside, if home plate collisions are to be proscribed by rule, then what of a base runner breaking up a potential double play at second base by purposefully taking out the second baseman or shortstop? First basemen have spent time on the disabled list from injuries sustained by inadvertent collisions with base runners (typically as the first baseman attempts to field an errant throw). While one is purposeful and the other inadvertent, they can and do have the same outcome, that being an injured fielder spending considerable time disabled. While I might stipulate that a rule cannot protect a fielder from accidental, unintended contact (although I suspect there are those in the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball who disagree), creating a new rule that seeks to eliminate or prohibit a base runner from breaking up a potential double play [as we all know; you cannot assume a double play] would upset the delicate equilibrium of safe/out outcomes that has graced baseball since the game was first codified by Alexander Joy Cartwright circa 1845 and would violate all historical paradigms of base running and competitive spirit which define the game of baseball as it applies to the base paths and, to its ultimate expression, scoring runs.
Arguments in favor of eliminating home plate collisions are made citing Peter Edward Rose "ending" or "ruining" the career of Ray Fosse when the Hit King barreled into, over and through the Cleveland catcher in the deciding play of the 1970 All-Star Game. Fosse went on to be an All-Star the following season, too. And won a Gold Glove in 1971, also. Ray Fosse batted .301 in 300 plate appearances for Cleveland in 1976. In limited action with Seattle in 1977 Fosse batted .353.
The most recent example which has been used as the fulcrum for those wanting to adopt rules that have the purpose of eliminating home plate collisions cite the season-ending injury sustained by the San Francisco Giants' Buster Posey in 2011. Note, by the way, the game circumstances; 12th inning, 2 out, tie game. The play at the plate - the game - must resolve itself naturally. It is unfortunate that Buster was injured on the play, but under the circumstances there is no other fair way to determine the ultimate outcome of that game. Buster Posey had been the National League's Rookie of the Year in 2010, he is a charismatic figure and there was a strong sentiment following his sensational Rookie season that Buster would be one of the enduring stars of Major League Baseball for years to come. And then in 2011 he got blown up in the collision linked above and suddenly there was vociferous consternation over Buster Posey's future playing career and the loss that would devolve upon the game of baseball and for baseball fans in general. In 2012 Buster Posey led the N.L. in batting (.336), was an All-Star and concluded his campaign by being honored as the National League's Most Valuable Player. Last season, 2013, Buster was again an All-Star and batted .294 in 520 at bats.
Violent collisions at home plate are a rarity and even when one examines the most infamous examples of catchers being injured - Fosse & Posey, the lingering effects of said injuries (as painful as they were, at the time, for the recipients) did not definitively alter nor provably diminish their future playing careers.
The concept of statistically rare events leads me to my next objection.
3) Requiring pitchers to hear helmets
Is Dodger superstar pitcher Clayton Kershaw a 7 year old child learning to ride a bicycle?
We are aware, of course, of examples of children playing Little League ball who have been struck in the head, in the solar plexus by batted balls and who died from their injuries. Today, first and third base coaches in the Majors are required to wear helmets when manning their respective coaches boxes following the death of a minor league base coach who was struck in the head by a batted ball and later died from his injury. These are sad, tragic incidents. Yet we should not confuse still-developing, physically immature Little Leaguers and aging, arthritic, immobile base coaches possessing neither fielders' gloves nor the dexterity to protect themselves with the full-grown, over-muscled, strong-like-bull athletic demi-gods who play Major League Baseball in general and who hurl the old horsehide in particular.
In the history of Major League Baseball, there has been but one batter struck by a pitched ball who was killed; the Cleveland Indians' shortstop Ray Chapman when he was beaned in the temple by Yankee pitcher Carl Mays in 1920. Somewhere on the information super highway you could find the answer (I did not but then again I didn't look very hard) to how many players in total have played Major League Baseball since 1876. An echo from deep within the recesses of my mind whispers something like 17,000. The statistical probability of being killed while playing Major League Baseball is remote on a scale of intergalactic remoteness. Yet, when one considers the corollary - and our subject at hand, someone who has not considered this matter as closely as I have [bragging; it's so unbecoming] might think of the statistical probability of a pitcher being catastrophically injured (or worse) by a batted ball by determining how many Major League pitchers there have been since 1876 (+/- 10,000?) and then formulating a mathematical equation that includes 0 [zero], or the total number of pitchers killed or otherwise permanently maimed. My Reily math says that statistical probability is... umm... zero.
But wait!
Don't calculate this statistical probability by the number of pitchers there have been throughout the history of Major League Baseball but rather by the incalculable number of pitches that have ever been hurled plateward and you begin to develop a mathematical formulation that has both a 0 [zero number of Major League pitchers killed, maimed, etc] coupled with a number that is comically-bordering-on-impossibly high [insert here an alien-like, plausibly fictional series of digits which represent the total number of pitches thrown in the timeless and unceasing arc of Major League Baseball].
MLB should devote its time, energy and resources to real, practical issues and not fantastical inventions of impossibilities the description of which could only be dreamed up by a used car salesman from Milwaukee masquerading as the Commissioner of Baseball.
4) Bonds, Clemens, et all, the HOF and Pete Rose
Both the alleged (Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa) and the proven (Palmeiro) users of so-called Performance Enhancing Drugs saw their vote totals drop on this year's Hall of Fame balloting (Palmeiro - he of 569 home runs and 3020 hits - dropped off the ballot altogether after failing to garner the minimum 5% of votes). This year's BBWAA ballot was exceptionally large, encompassing nearly 40 retired players from which to select a maximum of 10 names, and I think that factor played as much a role in the declining numbers for the above named cheaters as did anything else, such as a theoretical deterioration of support. As time wears on, I am observing an increasing number of BBWAA voters who express a softening of the formerly hard line position regarding those alleged cheaters who, despite a variety of accusational sources, did not fail a MLB drug test [see the 60 Minutes interview with Tony Bosch of Biogenesis infamy to understand what little significance should be placed on beating a MLB test]. I ascribe this gradual retreat of BBWAA voters to a simple desire to be viewed by the growing number of younger, analytics-based BBWAA voters who may be inclined to perceive their older colleagues as reactionary moralists and, therefore, "uncool." I do not doubt that in coming years we will see the recent declining trajectory of Hall of Fame vote totals reverse for Bonds and Clemens (perhaps not in the next two years, however, as the 2015 HOF class will be again be similarly large and then in 2016 George Kenneth Griffey, Junior will appear on the HOF ballot. Even the ignoramuses who populate BBWAA ranks would not have the temerity to place the names of Bonds and Clemens alongside that of Junior). Somewhere down the road - 5 years, maybe 12 years - the hallowed doors to Cooperstown will open for Barry "the San Francisco Cheat" [credit: Lou] Bonds and Roger the Rocket. I doubt that Big Mac and Slamming Sammy will ever be so fortunate.
One facet to this eventual change in sentiment may be observed in comments HOFer Fergie Jenkins recently made on MLB Network's morning program Hot Stove. According to the one-time cocaine smuggler Jenkins, when HOFers get together (such as for the Hall of Fame induction weekend, one might presume) there are whispers that there already is a Hall of Fame player who used P.E.D.s. Among the recent inductees whose careers coincided with the so-called "setriod era" are:
a) Barry Larkin. Considering he is a Cincinnati hometown kid and played his whole career in a Reds uniform, we can confidently rule him out as being capable of any wrong doing. Moving right along.
b) Roberto Alomar. Robbie did once spit in an umpire's face so he might be unstable enough to violate the integrity of baseball... but who can be sure? Spitting and doping are not exactly the same thing.
c) Rickey Henderson. Hmmmm. Let's see; Teammates in Oakland with Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. Played for Tony La Russa, who later managed McGwire in St Louis when Big Mac tore Roger Maris from the record books and was revealed to be a degenerate creatine user. And what was the one thing that was consistently said about Rickey, the lone attribute that made him so unique as a lead-off hitter? Oh yes, I remember now. Rickey was the greatest power-hitting lead-off hitter of all-time. Thanks, Fergie! We now know which P.E.D. derelict has been enshrined in Cooperstown.
We live in an ever-increasingly permissive society and the BBWAA is not immune to that trend. The word is out - we already have one Hall of Famer from the steroid era who used P.E.D.s. How, one might reasonably ask, can the BBWAA justifiably keep out of Cooperstown other players who may have been, or were, guilty of the same crime against the integrity of baseball?
Most telling, however, and that which shines most favorably upon Pete Rose is the rationale I heard - more than any other - proffered by BBWAA voters paving the way for eventual Hall of Fame support for the likes of Bonds & Clemens; They were Hall of Fame players before they engaged in activities detrimental to the integrity of baseball. What was once the lifeline for believers in the righteous faith of Saint Peter Edward is now being adopted as gospel by the heathens of the BBWAA for their own false god Flavors of the Week (Bonds, Clemens, et al). Cast in the stark, brutal light of means justifying the ends, I say Let the BBWAA infidels have their pagan gods of Bonds and Clemens, for in accepting them on the grounds that they were (or would have been) Hall of Famers before committing apostasy against the National Pastime they cannot then deny Saint Peter Edward. The BBWAA is gradually adopting a position which establishes the principle that it matters not what sin against baseball was committed, but rather when it may have been committed.
Sadly for our beloved Hit King, he'll have to wait until Bonds and Clemens are first wreathed in BBWAA laurels before Pete Rose gains acceptance in Cooperstown. I fear that when that joyous day comes, Pete will have long departed this world for The Great Clubhouse in the Sky.
Roll closing credits!
No comments:
Post a Comment