![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Game No One Can Play.
May. 7th, 2009 02:50 pmBaseball is the most complicated sport, ever. I've previously stated that the baseball rule book is one of the largest tomes for any game, and then, each individual stadium where it is played has its own ground rules, based on how that particular ball park is configured and those rules need to be added onto the above.
Baseball is a unique game. As Pete Rose, the banned MLB hit leader famously stated: "It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square." You have to pitch upwards of 90 miles an hour to get it past those sluggers. You have to field some of the hardest hit horsehide in history.
In order to become a baseball superstar, a lot of things have to go right. You have to have the right physique, train, eat well, grow through your teen years. You have to get good coaching, good training, and play with others that can help raise your game. You have to get recruited, nurtured and fine tuned during your minor league career, and then when you get to the Big Show, you have to perform at an even higher level, earn the contract you have been given, typically something in the multimillion dollar range, and please the fans who are shelling out their hard earned cash to watch you play.
And that brings me to our Top Story: Manny Ramirez suspended for fifty games for using. Ha, ha. Manny Roidmirez. Ugh. Now we know how the Red Sox won in 2004 and 2007.
I have already laid the blame for how the game has played out since the Strike season of 1994 at the doorstep of Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. He let this happen. In fact, he silently encouraged this to happen. He had to know what was going on, and if he didn't know, he is a bigger fool than I first believed. But in his eagerness to bring fans back to the game, with that home run chase of Roger Maris by two juiced up players: Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, he got what he wanted. Baseball was back in business and the stadiums were packed.
But how do you stuff the genie back into the bottle? Once players begin using drugs to enhance their natural abilities, how can you get them to stop? Where is the program to ween these superstars off of their steroids? When other, younger players start turning up, the veterans might feel they need to beef up more, hit bigger flies, show the kids how to do it. And when you've been playing for a while, maybe there's a sense that you need a little help.
Baseball is an unforgiving game with a marathon schedule. 162 games, traveling from Coast to Coast: Seattle to Miami, Boston to San Diego, with games typically 6 days a week, every week from April through September, and longer if you're lucky.
The Selig plan for "cleaning up the game" has clearly failed. I'm not even certain the game CAN be completely cleaned up. With no test for HGH, with players attempting to justify the millions they are being paid - with pressure to perform at an even higher level, and with the lure of even more money and accolades given to the best of the best, where's the incentive NOT to try and get away with it? If you are a player with borderline abilities, you feel you need to do it. And if you're a marquee name, and you see these other players starting to do as well as you do, you feel you need to improve. It's an inescapable situation that almost forces players into a place where they make that choice.
My thoughts: Selig should resign, immediately. In my mind, he is the reason baseball is where it is now. Don't wait for your contract to end. Get out now and don't come back.
The Schedule should be reduced. Clearly, 162 games is an extremely long season. Add in a month of Spring Training, and that's seven months of baseball these athletes are subjected to every year. Let's make April the Spring training month, Have the season start May 1 (the weather is better by then anyhow), and end the Regular season by September 15th, so the playoffs can start earlier and the World Series won't get played in November (like it's going to be, this year).
No doctors visits unless properly sanctioned. We hear that athletes ingest stuff that they didn't know what it was, prescribed by some doctor they went to see for some "personal health issues." That cannot happen ever again. Athletes need to be cared for and monitored every day from the day they sign with a club til they day they walk off the field for the final time. Make that a part of every MLB contract, or really every pro sports contract.
Years ago, "Saturday Night Live" did a sketch called "The All Drug Olympics," where the concept was an olympic games where every athlete was permitted to take any drug they wanted. In the sketch, a weightlifter trying to clean and jerk 1500 pounds pulled his arms off. In a real way, we have gotten to that point. We expect our hometown heroes to do the impossible. We expect them to win, to perform to the highest ability, to always come through in the clutch. If they don't, why are they getting millions of dollars? The problem is, nearly everyone in the sport is getting millions of dollars! But this is a function of the TV and ad revenue deals that MLB has in place. Could television have been the ultimate undoing of baseball?
With Manny Ramirez, one of the biggest names ever to play the game, now disgraced, every player has been touched by this issue, even the ones that have not used. Maybe the point is that nobody can really play this game. There is no other Hank Aaron. No other Willie Mays. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
(x-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spaceagers)
Baseball is a unique game. As Pete Rose, the banned MLB hit leader famously stated: "It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square." You have to pitch upwards of 90 miles an hour to get it past those sluggers. You have to field some of the hardest hit horsehide in history.
In order to become a baseball superstar, a lot of things have to go right. You have to have the right physique, train, eat well, grow through your teen years. You have to get good coaching, good training, and play with others that can help raise your game. You have to get recruited, nurtured and fine tuned during your minor league career, and then when you get to the Big Show, you have to perform at an even higher level, earn the contract you have been given, typically something in the multimillion dollar range, and please the fans who are shelling out their hard earned cash to watch you play.
And that brings me to our Top Story: Manny Ramirez suspended for fifty games for using. Ha, ha. Manny Roidmirez. Ugh. Now we know how the Red Sox won in 2004 and 2007.
I have already laid the blame for how the game has played out since the Strike season of 1994 at the doorstep of Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. He let this happen. In fact, he silently encouraged this to happen. He had to know what was going on, and if he didn't know, he is a bigger fool than I first believed. But in his eagerness to bring fans back to the game, with that home run chase of Roger Maris by two juiced up players: Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, he got what he wanted. Baseball was back in business and the stadiums were packed.
But how do you stuff the genie back into the bottle? Once players begin using drugs to enhance their natural abilities, how can you get them to stop? Where is the program to ween these superstars off of their steroids? When other, younger players start turning up, the veterans might feel they need to beef up more, hit bigger flies, show the kids how to do it. And when you've been playing for a while, maybe there's a sense that you need a little help.
Baseball is an unforgiving game with a marathon schedule. 162 games, traveling from Coast to Coast: Seattle to Miami, Boston to San Diego, with games typically 6 days a week, every week from April through September, and longer if you're lucky.
The Selig plan for "cleaning up the game" has clearly failed. I'm not even certain the game CAN be completely cleaned up. With no test for HGH, with players attempting to justify the millions they are being paid - with pressure to perform at an even higher level, and with the lure of even more money and accolades given to the best of the best, where's the incentive NOT to try and get away with it? If you are a player with borderline abilities, you feel you need to do it. And if you're a marquee name, and you see these other players starting to do as well as you do, you feel you need to improve. It's an inescapable situation that almost forces players into a place where they make that choice.
My thoughts: Selig should resign, immediately. In my mind, he is the reason baseball is where it is now. Don't wait for your contract to end. Get out now and don't come back.
The Schedule should be reduced. Clearly, 162 games is an extremely long season. Add in a month of Spring Training, and that's seven months of baseball these athletes are subjected to every year. Let's make April the Spring training month, Have the season start May 1 (the weather is better by then anyhow), and end the Regular season by September 15th, so the playoffs can start earlier and the World Series won't get played in November (like it's going to be, this year).
No doctors visits unless properly sanctioned. We hear that athletes ingest stuff that they didn't know what it was, prescribed by some doctor they went to see for some "personal health issues." That cannot happen ever again. Athletes need to be cared for and monitored every day from the day they sign with a club til they day they walk off the field for the final time. Make that a part of every MLB contract, or really every pro sports contract.
Years ago, "Saturday Night Live" did a sketch called "The All Drug Olympics," where the concept was an olympic games where every athlete was permitted to take any drug they wanted. In the sketch, a weightlifter trying to clean and jerk 1500 pounds pulled his arms off. In a real way, we have gotten to that point. We expect our hometown heroes to do the impossible. We expect them to win, to perform to the highest ability, to always come through in the clutch. If they don't, why are they getting millions of dollars? The problem is, nearly everyone in the sport is getting millions of dollars! But this is a function of the TV and ad revenue deals that MLB has in place. Could television have been the ultimate undoing of baseball?
With Manny Ramirez, one of the biggest names ever to play the game, now disgraced, every player has been touched by this issue, even the ones that have not used. Maybe the point is that nobody can really play this game. There is no other Hank Aaron. No other Willie Mays. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
(x-posted to
spaceagers)
