Mr. Selig — Give the baseball back to the kids

A local sports columnist and radio personality frequently poses the question:

“Why are kids not playing baseball anymore?”

Virtually every ballpark in the game has been replaced or scheduled for demolition over the last 15 years.
The commisioner reasoning; to build smaller, more intimate parks in order to cater to the high-end client. Mr. Selig has selectivly chosen to remove the family “moment” from a baseball game replaced with a lobby of sorts where businessmen can entertain those whose business they want. While there isn’t anything wrong with the practice per se, it is wrong that Mr. Selig has taken the opportunity to make all the stadiums his own personal country club for “The Good Ole Boy” network.

So it’s not so much the fault of the percieved move in of the video game, I would say it’s more to the point that Mr. Selig doesn’t much care for the kids climbing over his backyard fense to get their baseball bat. Yes, I went there. I just called Mr. Selig out as the grumpy ole neighbor who keeps all the baseballs that fly over his fense.

And that is why America’s Past Time, Passed it’s Time

Sport Not a Sport

Sports bar discussions regularly include debates comparing one activity to another and which event is better. Somewhere in the conversation, someone tries to through in a curve ball and include an activity that changes the debate to whether or not the event is a “true” sport vs an entertainment event.

I’ve began what will be considered the

Bill of Sports Rights

. Your comments can be used to submit amendments to the Bill of Sports Right pending review of the committee. If your amendment is approved, I’ll include reference to your blog site.

Keep in mind as you read the rules below, ones percieved athleticism is not valid criteria as we’re not talking about the person or team, we’re talking about the activity/event. While athleticism, training and fitness are admirable; those traits define the person not the event.

There are a couple traits that a sport must posses in order to qualify as a sport.

1. The event must include a physical element that challenges the person to be at a certain level of fitness in order to realistically compete.

- sub.1 Bicycling requires extreme endurance abilities to complete all the stages of The Tour de France
- sub.2 Football includes mixes of strength and speed in order to be competitive.

2. A certain amount of technique/skill level must be apparent in order to separate a novice from an expert.

– sub.1 A valid pitch is required to pass through a predefined area of space
– sub.2 Ping pong includes spin on the ball to exaggerate the path of the ball

3. There should be a component to the event which enables an opponent to challenge the other from completing a desired goal.

– sub.1 A field goal can be blocked
– sub.2 The path of a pitch can be altered to give misdirection

4. The winner/scoring mechanism must be objective.

– sub.1 True the requirements of a double flip in gymnastics are defined, but the range of variation in voting results lend that scoring is not absolute. With a scoring range between 7 & 9 among 5 judges, who’s right, who’s wrong?
– sub.2 A place kicker scores a point when the ball moves between and above the polls of a goal post

5. The winner must be decided as a result of human powered activities.
6. Things that detract/disqualify from the possibilites of being a sport:

- sub.1 Enibriation “adds” to the experience or even enables higher scoring
- sub.2 Any performance which scores points for appearance or style
- sub.3 If anyone has ever successfully competed at the highest level while wearing a custome
- sub.4 Adendum 1/23/2007 – Anytime the activity/event can also be described as “art”… automatically disqualified as a sport.

Races (some) are considered sports. Swimmers can draft or prevent some from drafting. Distance runners struggle with break away tactics. Skiing is all challenged by the clock as if the contestants are on the course at the same time.

Field of Dreams 2050

Whether or not you liked the casting of Kevin Costner in the film Field of Dreams, if you like baseball you loved the movie. Purists, rookies and amateurs all can agree they would watch the movie again. Some may have even cried.

When Shoeless Joe asks, Is this Heaven?, everyone knows what he’s asking about. He loved the game. The only thing he wanted to be part of was playing baseball.

It inspires thoughts of America’s greatest past time and takes everyone back to their child hood when all you needed on a hot summer day was a stick and a ball. Everything else just seemed to work itself out.

When the sequel comes out in 50 years… and there WILL be a sequel… who do you think appears out of left field where Shoeless Joe Jackson did?

I support the writters who are placing the induction of Mark McGwire into the Hall of Fame as a non-priority. I think his appearance in the Senate Committe Hearings was poor and his reasoning shaddy. Everyone behind that table is suspect and turned the whole agenda into a circus (Palmiero’s finger pointing – Sosa’s translation chirade).

It will be appropriate that 50 years from now, the past decade will be referred to as “The Steroid” era. And that Bud Selig will be recognized as the worst commissioner of baseball for letting this decade happen.

It would be nice to see if the likes of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmeiro are kept out of the baseball Hall of Fame. I doubt it as the voters will soon forget and cave in on maybe the last vote for each.

Granted Shoeless Joe was given the opportunity despite a scandal he was involved in. But I can’t imagine, and I hope it doesn’t happen, that any players from between the years of 1995 and 2005 are allowed to be resurrected to play in a cornfield baseball diamond in the middle of “heaven”.

In the movie is an exchange between Shoeless Joe and Ray where Shoeless talks about all the guys that wanted to play and that they had to beat ‘em off with a stick.
Hopefully Shoeless Joe will have beat The Clear out of Barry and The Andro out of McGwire when mentioning who wanted to play in 2050.

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Dan Patrick at ESPN covers all bases pretty well in his article Baseball, steroids and the truth.