twinsfan
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The Gardy Complex
A funny thing has happened over the past several years: many of the very same people who claim that baseball is uncool and that it doesn’t appeal to minorities or kids have gone out of their way to criticize any player — almost always a Latino player — who dares enjoy himself on a baseball field, claiming that his antics are the harbinger of the game’s very doom.
This usually plays out in the same way. A talented young player bursts onto the scene. He’s a bit of a showboat. He ruffles some feathers and, occasionally, shows some immaturity. The chorus of critics then chimes in, claiming that he’s arrogant and entitled and doesn’t know how to Play The Game The Right Way. The brash young player is talked about as though he needs to be tamed and taught and called on the carpet. He needs to be reminded that Derek Jeter or Cal Ripken or Hank Aaron would never have acted that way. And that if he doesn’t straighten up and fly right he’s gonna find himself out of baseball.
We’ve seen this play out with Yasiel Puig, Bryce Harper, Carlos Gomez and many others. Players who need to learn to “respect the game.”
But like so many ideas that seem to exist only in the world of cranky old columnists and sports talk shout-fests, the phrase “respect the game” is as ridiculous as it is meaningless. It’s a cliche that allows its user to take any subjective criteria, smatter it with a healthy helping of armchair psychology — and, on occasion, racism — and turn a matter of opinion or aesthetics into some quasi-objective assessment. Repeating that phrase more like a religious incantation than an actual idea. Demanding that some cocky young kid who flips his bat, trots around the bases too fast (or, sometimes, too slow), shows off his powerful throwing arm or, worst of all, acts jubilant when jubilance would seem to be warranted, adhere to the codes and behavior of players past.
The problem with this is, of course, that there were a lot of players who might have been said to have disrespected the game before Yasiel Puig, Carlos Gomez and Bryce Harper came along if today’s strangely puritanical standards had been applied to them.
Why didn’t Ozzie Smith’s backflips make anyone angry? Or Mark Fidrych talking to the baseball or grooming the mound? Satchel Paige would, on occasion, ask the defenders behind him to move of the field and then proceed to strike out the opposing side like a tightrope walker going without a net. Babe Ruth allegedly called a home run shot in the World Series and was almost as big a character off the field as he was on it. Bill Veeck sent up a little person in a game that counted in order to draw a walk. Rickey Henderson referred to himself in the third person and had no qualms about calling himself the greatest of all time, even before he had developed the resume which, actually, made that a pretty darn plausible claim.
Maybe those players did make a few people mad at the time. But it was only for a short time. History has judged them to be some of baseball’s greatest characters, greatest competitors and greatest draws. The people who made baseball fun or exciting and who, almost certainly, brought in fans who might not have otherwise paid attention. The players, managers and owners who, through their flamboyance or cockiness, gave baseball its vibrance even though some now claim that their modern counterparts are hastening its demise.
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“We are an unserious nation that's in serious $hit.”
-Me
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