I Already Miss Baseball Season

This time of year always makes me sad. Sure, we’re only midway through the summer, which for most of you is like living in an oven, but I’m in San Diego and the temperature is always ideal. In summer, we get longer ideal days. What’s so sad about that, right?

I’ll tell you why I’m sad: football season is here.

Now, perhaps a larger portion of the readers of The Dugout Doctors understand my plight better than the rest of the country because this is a baseball site. But I’m the type of guy who spends most of the winter longing for baseball season to begin. I get excited when the first tab on ESPN.com is “MLB”.

But if you look now, “MLB” has been bumped by the link to the NFL portion of the site, and the headlines are predominantly football-related. This guy is signing here, that guy signed there. Sign up for fantasy football today!

And oh-by-the-way-we’re-almost-at-the-baseball-trade-deadline.

I play fantasy football just like every other living, breathing organism on Earth, but a small part of me secretly hoped for an NFL lockout. I wanted people to care about all 162 games of the MLB season. Heck, even people in Pittsburgh are in on the action this year, but when (if?) the Pirates inevitably start to slip in the standings it will go virtually unnoticed, thanks to the NFL. And it’s not just Pittsburgh that’ll toss baseball on to the backburner like it was never around to begin with. The San Diego Padres, right here in my own back yard, may as well pack up now. Nobody cares once Phillip Rivers and friends don the Charger blue and gold.

I’ll be clicking all the fantasy football links around the internet soon enough as I scramble to come up with yet another hair-brained draft strategy that won’t work. I’ll be active on the waiver wire and with trades. I’ll lead my team to the playoffs only to choke in the post season, like always.

But right now I miss baseball season, and it’s not even over yet.

Joe Swaykos is the author of The Priceless Pursuit, a blog about baseball card collecting.

Like It or Not, The MLB All-Star Game is Fun

Joe Swaykos is the author of The Priceless Pursuit, a blog about baseball card collecting.

Major League Baseball’s All-Star game, unlike those in the other major sports, actually counts. Well, sort of. It can end in a tie and there are enough pitching changes and offensive and defensive substitutions to make your head spin, but something is affected by the outcome of the game.

The winning team gets home field advantage in the World Series! Woo! Because I’m sure that if there’s one saving grace for Matt Wieters (the lone Baltimore Oriole at the game), should his Orioles not overcome their 18 game deficit in the American League East, it’s that someone from his own league gets to open the World Series at home.

So, in short, the game really can affect a World Series, though conventional baseball rules, customs, and strategy is totally thrown out the window. The best players don’t necessarily start, pitchers will be inserted just because they’re supposed to be, and the game, arguably, is a farce.

But I love it, and you should, too.

Forget about the winner-gets-home field-advantage spin. Nobody cares. And although I’m admittedly a significantly bigger baseball fan than any other sport, MLB’s All-Star game is the only one I care about. Here’s why.

1) Derek Jeter is starting over Asdrubal Cabrera. The reason anyone at all cares about this game is that the starting lineups are chosen by the fans. Is Jeter the best choice? No. Cabrera is clearly putting together a better season and, based on performance alone, is a better choice to start. But other than the baseball purists who oppose any sort of fun in professional sports, nobody cares about Cabrera. Most casual fans outside of Cleveland probably don’t even know who he is. Everyone knows Jeter. Just like how everyone knew Cal Ripken Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr., who both started more All-Star games than they deserved. If the casual fan is supposed to tune in to the game, they’ve at least got to recognize the players they’re watching.

2) Every team is represented. Maybe this is just the sappy father side of me talking, but isn’t this nice? “Look, kids, even if you work your entire life to play pro baseball but you end up getting stuck on the Royals, you still might make an All-Star game!” Similar to my argument about the fan’s choices starting over more deserving candidates, the only hope of drawing the coveted casual audience in Kansas City is the chance to see Aaron Crow throw an inning against the National League’s best.

3) What other sporting events are you going to watch? None! Ha! Baseball wins, here, because you have no alternatives. Enjoy Wednesday, too, when not one single major professional sporting event is taking place. The All-Star game beats nothing, right?

So no, the All-Star game isn’t perfect. Everyone is represented, but getting everyone in to the game is a bit tedious. If you’re one of “those” who hate baseball because it’s slow, the All-Star game is far from a shining example of why you should care about the sport.

I suspect that a lot of the hate being directed at the event is that it’s a slap in the face to the purists out there who watch all 162 games as if they’re lives depended on it. The statistics obsessed nerds, who know more about a player’s season than the player himself, are harshly reminded that the game is supposed to be fun. It’s entertainment. The players are laughing and smiling, with zero regard for their batting average on balls in play in All-Star games held in cities west of the Mississippi in odd years. For one glorious night in July, stats don’t matter and the game of baseball is what it was created to be: a game.

Charlie Sheen Did Steroids, But Who Cares?

Joe Swaykos is the author of The Priceless Pursuit, a blog about baseball card collecting.

Charlie Sheen – no doubt in large part to stay relevant – admitted to steroid usage to prepare for his role in the infamous baseball movie, “Major League.” My overwhelming desire for this guy to go away needs not be discussed in further detail, but it brings up something I’ve always struggled with.

Do I care about steroid usage in baseball? Do you?

I’ve never bought in to the argument that they weren’t explicitly banned from the sport in the ‘90s, when they became truly popular, so there was “nothing wrong.” They’re illegal, for cryin’ out loud, do they actually need to be banned? Is heroine explicitly banned from baseball? Prostitution? Murder?

There’s no denying that steroids – and the countless variations of performance enhancing drugs that have come and gone in the past 15 years – make the game more exciting to watch. Sure, the purists will debate that good pitching, defense, and mumbo jumbo ratio stats are what truly drives the game, but chicks – and casual fans, where the real money is made – love the long ball and 100 mph fastballs.

While there are certainly ethical implications of using an illegal substance, I remember the good times and Mark McGwire was launching hanging curve balls in to the upper decks in St. Louis, when Sammy Sosa was hitting balls over Waveland Avenue in Chicago, and when Barry Bonds was hitting home runs that landed in China.

It was fun. It was dramatic. It was exciting.

So why have we become so quick to scorn athletes now? We basically built up the Mark McGwires of the world for the sole purpose of tearing them down. They only gave us what we wanted. And why isn’t it a concern in other sports? Football players get a mid-season vacation if they’re busted and then return to the field before the effects of PED usage have even worn off. A baseball player’s name becomes cancerous.

Whether PEDs are right or wrong is not up for debate. But I’m not the one putting my body at risk by taking them, professional athletes are, and that’s fine with me. They’re the ones who’ve made a deal with the devil: fame and fortune now, negative side effects and a potentially shortened life later.

Would you rather see a 10-7 slug fest with six combined home runs in New York or a 2-1 snoozer of a “pitcher’s duel” in Houston? I’ll take the fireworks.

Bryce Harper Blows Kiss at Pitcher After Hitting Home Run

By now you’ve seen the video by now of 18 year old uber-prospect Bryce Harper watching a deep home run, rounding the bases, and blowing a kiss towards the pitcher as he rounds third base. If you haven’t the video, here you go.

You say he’s arrogant and that he doesn’t “get it.” You argue that he’s immature and needs to embrace his status as the future of the Washington Nationals and therefore learn to lead by example.

Harper is displaying an arrogance unseen since the days of Rickey Henderson, and perhaps it’s exactly what baseball needs to be exciting again. You can rip a guy like Barry Bonds all you’d like, but don’t pretend for a second that you’ve never mimicked him (or Ken Griffey Jr., or David Ortiz or whoever is your favorite slugger) by admiring a home run in your back yard.

The cockiness is certainly more exciting that than the alternative: the play-it-safe, “my-performance-only-matters-if-the-team-wins” façade put on by most superstar athletes these days.

Screw that. Flip the bat, watch your home run, and walk halfway to first base.

Forgive me for not understanding the general outrage over the incident. When did baseball become a game for stuffy old men and statistical geeks? It’s no wonder nobody cares about baseball anymore. It’s boring. It’s slow. You’re apparently not allowed to have fun. Know when people did care? When Barry Bonds was mashing 500 foot home runs in to the San Francisco Bay remaining in the batter’s box until he saw the ball splash.

And what’s with the double standard among sports? We laugh at touchdown celebrations and criticize the NFL for often being too strict about them. We cheer the NASCAR driver as he spins doughnuts on a track’s infield after winning a race. Yet we scream “unprofessional” when Jonathan Papelbon screams after closing a game or when Giants closer Brian Wilson does his whatever-you-call-it with his arms at the end of each game.

But when Bryce Harper, an 18 year old kid, has a little fun of his own, the world stops spinning. Lighten up.

Sabermetrics Is Ruining Baseball

The “Information Age” is a wonderful thing. We have access to virtually unlimited amounts of information, trends, and statistics for almost every category you can possibly think of, all literally at our fingertips.

Sometimes, this information is a good thing. If you’re buying a house, you can look up neighborhood crime rates and local elementary school ratings. You can view comparable sales on nearby homes and adjust your bid accordingly, ensuring you make the best possible decision.

Sometimes, though, it’s a bad thing and ruins what was a once a blissful, innocent sport: baseball.

Remember when a 20-win season almost guaranteed a pitcher the Cy Young Award? Remember counting down to 300 wins as a Hall of Fame career neared its end?

Do you remember checking box scores to see who drove in the winning run? Remember arguing about who was clutch and who choked under pressure?

Remember when the game of baseball was… a game?

How I long for those days to return.

I don’t know if we became bored with the “old” stats and thus became excited about the wealth of information concerning “On Base plus Slugging Percentage”, “Wins Above Replacement” players and “Batting Averages on Balls In Play,” or if Fantasy sports are truly to blame, but wins no longer seem to matter. Because who really cares if Felix Hernandez got the win? Was it at least a quality start?! Does it count less if he picked up a win but it wasn’t a quality start?

If the Mariners win a game in the woods, but it wasn’t due to a quality start, did they really win the game?

Now, saying this might imply that I’m arguing Wins, Losses, Saves, and other similar stats are idiot-proof and can never be misleading. I do not intend for that to be the argument. What I am arguing, however, is that we’ve gotten to the point in baseball where it’s no longer a “pastime” and instead has turned into an obsession with the obscure. I am well aware that RBIs don’t paint a complete picture of a batter’s offensive performance, but rather they’re entire affected by circumstance. Theoretically, a batter could hit 40 solo home runs and have only 40 RBIs on the season, and a quick glance at just the RBI column would lead one to believe that the player had a poor season at the plate.

Truthfully, when sabermetrics became en vogue, I was 100 percent on board. “Saves are misleading! Wins mean nothing! There’s no such thing as clutch!” And to an extent, those statements are all true. I’m not sure what happened in my life to change my mind (a kid, most likely!), but I’ve come to appreciate the game in the same way I always used to. I like when my favorite team wins, regardless of who did what. I want A.J. Burnett (aaaaand it’s out of the closet, I’m a Yankees fan) to win 20 games, his 4.60 ERA be damned. I want Derek Jeter at the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth because he’s clutch (err, used to be, anyway). And I know for a fact that he’s clutch because I vaguely remember him doing clutch things.

Baseball (and the rest of the professional and collegiate sports) have become big business, and within them smaller businesses and occupations have been created. We have scouts, analysts and draft specialists who look at things like tools, character, level swings and repeatable deliveries. To me, it’s gotten to the point of being silly.

Ask Mark Prior about repeatable deliveries. How’d that work out for him?

Give me the out-of-control maniac who throws heat and strikes out 12 batters a game. Oh, the 12 walks a game he also allows? Pay no attention to those. As for batters, they say that chicks dig the long ball, and so do I. Give me Adam Dunn and his 40 home runs a year over a slap-hitting speedster any day. I want to see fireworks!

A roster full of those types of players might never work, and the scouts out there can poke a million holes in my arguments, but in the end, sports are entertainment. We break performances down to such a small level that we overlook the big picture far too often. Does a player’s team win when he pitches, or doesn’t it? If not, why pay him big money to secure those wins?

When you’re young, you’re told that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose but it’s how you “played the game” that mattered. Today, at the highest levels of the game, it doesn’t matter if you win or lose so long as you pitch in to the sixth inning and allow no more than six runs.

The irony of it all is that at the end of the season, when the World Series trophy is passed around the clubhouse, the only thing that matters is whether the series was won or lost, and it hardly matters how it was decided.