There are various ways to react to the idea that Madison Bumgarner has raised. The San Francisco Giants pitcher said earlier this month that pitchers should be allowed to compete in Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby, which is staged the day before the All-Star Game.
My immediate reaction was absolutely not…dumbest idea I’ve heard…why make a joke of events surrounding the All-Star Game, the oldest and most popular all-star game of the four major sports? The other leagues have already made a joke of their all-star games; why join them?
But I thought about it for another second and said why not? MLB has already made a joke of its once glamorous All-Star Game; what’s one more joke in July?
In saying he wanted to compete in the Home Run Derby, Bumgarner was feeling his oats. He has hit 2 home runs this season, giving him 13 for his career, 5 of which he hit last season.
Noah Syndergaard of the New York Mets is the only other pitcher who has homered more than once. He hit two against the Dodges in a game in May.
Seven other pitchers have hit one home run: Jake Arrieta (Cubs), Gerrit Cole (Pirates), Bartolo Colon (Mets), Kenta Maeda (Dodgers), Wily Peralta (Brewers), Robbie Ray (Diamondbacks), Adam Wainwright (Cardinals).
An output of 2 home runs, even Bumgarner’s 5 last season, doesn‘t exactly qualify a pitcher, nor do 11 for 9 pitchers collectively qualify pitchers for a home run contest. This is all about ego and Bumgarner’s $35 million contract should satisfy his ego. He should also remember he gets that money and will get a whole lot more after this contract expires after next season for pitching wins, not for hitting phony home runs.
A pitcher’s ego, of course, would never allow him to think he could get hurt swinging an unnatural swing trying to lift the ball and drive it over the fence, not just once but 20 or 30 or 40 times.
It’s difficult to believe that any team official would allow his pitcher to participate in the Home Run Derby. Executives and managers are obsessed with the number of pitches and innings a pitcher throws, and they’re going to let one of them swing for the fences? But an executive told me that major league officials are discussing the possibility of inviting pitchers to the home run party.
“It’s under discussion,” the official said, “as part of the event or in a separate format. They could be creative. If everybody agrees, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was done. All of the ideas are on the board.”
Why, then, not add another idea? Borrow a gimmick from the carnival world and have a sideshow, if pitchers in a home run derby don’t already constitute a side show. How about a hitting contest among a team of little people, formerly known as descendants of Eddie Gaedel?
MLB desperately wants to rescue the All-Star Game from the course it is traveling to oblivion, and will do anything to achieve its goal. It finds nothing funny about the developments.
The joke I referred to is the one Bud Selig perpetrated in 2003 when he was the baseball commissioner. He linked the All-Star Game to the World Series, acting under the guise of making the game more exciting and more meaningful for the fans. In reality he did it for the sake of Fox Sports’ television ratings.
The ratings had fallen steadily and Fox felt it wasn’t getting value for what it was paying. Trying to mollify the network, Selig adopted an idea that Bill Giles, chairman of the Philadelphia Phillies, had raised years earlier of giving home field advantage in the World Series to the league that prevailed in the All-Star Game.
To digress for a paragraph, this was the same Bill Giles who had been criticized by the owners for not destroying his notes on their collusive plans against free agents in the mid-1980s. The notes were critical evidence that led to player victories in three collusions cases and $280 million in payments to the players.
Selig, on the other hand, liked Giles’ All-Star plan and initiated it starting with the 2003 game. Results of the link’s impact on the ratings have been mixed but for the most part a failure.
The first year the rating was the same, 9.5, as the year before. For 12 games since, ratings were down for eight games and up for four. Viewership was split, up for six games, down for six. Last year’s rating was 6.6, the lowest ever, and viewership was 10.9 million, matching the lowest ever.
So much for the fantasy that the all-important All-Star link would inspire a more exciting game, and that, in turn, would lead to higher ratings.
Meanwhile, pennant-winning teams that had nothing to do with their leagues’ All-Star triumphs get a critical extra home game in the World Series.
Even though the link has done absolutely nothing for baseball or Fox (a friend suggests that maybe the ratings would be lower without the World Series link), it remains the rule.
The All-Star Game, of course, is an exhibition game, and to have the outcome of an exhibition game determine which team gets the extra game, and sometimes the deciding, ultimate games, in the World Series is ridiculous.
But if MLB can treat its most important games of the year that way, why not make a farce of an event that means absolutely nothing?
ICHIRO OR PETE?
Now that Ichiro Suzuki has eclipsed Pete Rose’s career number of hits, the debate has begun. Rose had 4,256 hits, the most in MLB history. At the start of play Sunday, Ichiro had 4,258, including 1,278 in Japan.
The debate is whether his hits in Japan should count and allow him to snatch the “Hit King” crown from Rose’s head.
Rose, who is offended when anyone says Suzuki has more hits than he had, said last week that if Suzuki’s Japanese hits are counted, his minor league hits (427) should count because he accumulated them as a professional player.
Rose has also been quoted as saying ”the next thing you know, they’ll be counting his high school hits.” However, speaking to an Associated Press reporter last Friday, Rose denied having said that. Based on my experience with Rose, I’m not too quick to believe his denial.
But I am also not quick to disagree with him when he says Suzuki’s Japanese hits shouldn’t count.
I would like them to count because I would rather see Ichiro as the Hit King than Rose, just as I would rather see Henry Aaron be the Home Run King rather than Barry Bonds. Unlike Bonds, though, Rose didn’t cheat. He is said to have played his career on amphetamines, but they were not illegal when he played and everyone used them.
However, I don’t see how Ichiro’s Japanese hits could be considered equal to his or Rose’s major league hits. For one thing, there have been very few Japanese pitchers viewed as equal to even the average MLB pitcher.
Character is another matter.
As distasteful a person as Rose is, Ichiro is a terrific person. While Rose has always let people know how good he was, Ichiro is modest to a fault. While Rose enjoyed humiliating people and acting and speaking derogatorily of them, Ichiro is courteous and kind.
Comments the 42-year-old Miami Marlins outfielder made last week after he surpassed Rose were typical.
“This wasn’t like a goal of mine to get to this point,” he told reporters through a translator in San Diego last Friday. “To be honest, this wasn’t something that I was a making out as a goal. It was just kind of a weird situation to be in because of the combined total.”
“For me,” he added, “it’s not about the record. It’s about my teammates and the fans.”
TIMES INVITES ANOTHER TROUNCING
Feeling betrayed and disturbed by the disappearance of baseball coverage in The New York Times, readers of this site continue to express their feelings in e-mail messages. The most recent comments have come as the Times’ baseball coverage plunged to its nadir last week. For someone who covered baseball for the Times for 39 years, it was a sickening sight.
Readers thought so, too.
“You hit the nail on the head,” Rick Assad wrote. “The New York Times’ baseball coverage isn’t what it used to be. The same holds true for the LA Times. I remember when they’d have at least three covering a World Series. Now it’s Bill Shaikin and that’s it.”
I’m not familiar with what’s happening in Los Angeles, but The New York Times is headed in a direction that is not helpful to Major League Baseball. The newspaper is providing less coverage than ever.
The last three days of last week shockingly lacked what used to be baseball coverage.
The Thursday edition had sufficient coverage of two news developments – the Colorado Rockies’ release of Jose Reyes over his domestic violence issue and Ichiro Suzuki’s passing Pete Rose’s career hit total.
The rest of the previous day’s baseball, though, was stuffed into a brief description of some of the games played, including the Yankees and the Mets. The baseball briefs were placed at the bottom of the fifth of six sports pages, under an article headlined “TNT’s Sager Will Join ABC for Game 6 Broadcast.”
The next day’s paper had an article on David Wright’s neck operation, but the Mets’ game and the few other games that finished in time to make that edition again were squeezed into a small space at the bottom of the fifth page of the six-page section.
Meanwhile, an entire page was devoted to soccer and another whole page was consumed by six photos and a short article headlined “Russians Are Making An Impact In M.M.A.”
In Saturday’s paper baseball was represented by an article about Matt Harvey’s loss for the Mets and that same tiny space, tucked into the bottom corner of the fourth page of the six-page section. It included an Associated Press report on the Yankees’ win over Minnesota.
With the Times so desperate to acquire and preserve its revenue, shedding its best reporters, curtailing its coverage in previously dominating areas, I see the day coming when the Times won’t send reporters to games on the road or at home but simply use the AP, leaving the coverage vague and absent any insight.
“The Times sports section editors have their own agendas, it doesn’t matter what the readers care about or want,” Peter Wagner wrote. “Evidently, their market research combined with their serious financial constraints prevent them from sending reporters all over the country, so we get a diminished product. The writing is still great, we can give them that, but what they chose to write about is perplexing. Using the AP to cover the NHL playoffs, including the local teams, is a joke. We do deserve better.
“The good news is that it forces those of us who are passionate about sports, all sports, to go online to read great writers: You, Tom Boswell, Bill Simmons, to name three. We have to work a little harder to get the insights we want and need, but thankfully we can. It’s just an unfortunate sign of the times that the Times is so out of touch.”
In a follow-up e-mail Wagner said, “Yesterday and again today the paper I was trying to make financial excuses for in my previous Email to you, ran AP stories about both NY baseball teams. That was it. Just a few paragraphs. This is sad, embarrassing and forces their long term, loyal readers elsewhere. Don’t they realize the long term consequences of their short term decisions?”
And then he wrote: “How can we knock some sense into them?? Their insultingly awful coverage forces us to go elsewhere-thus spending less time with their product, wouldn’t that resonate with them?”
They apparently don’t get it, they have their own agenda that is unfathomable to us and they don’t care about their readers who supported them for decades.