5. Overly exuberant walk offs. But chest thumping (#6) takes a back seat to modern
day walk offs. OK, if you’re Dusty Rhodes or Bill Mazeroski or Joe Carter, then
yes, let’s get really excited. But a single that drives in the winning run in
June for a team going nowhere deserves at most a pat on the ass, not a wild
celebration during which the offending player is pummeled by his teammates, then
hit with whipped cream pie as he’s being interviewed by the team’s token female
reporter.
4. High-fiving everything. But wait, it gets worse. Moving along a runner from
second to third with a ground out nowadays seems one celebratory step down from
a five-run homer. EVERYTHING a player does today gets a high-five from
teammates; I wouldn’t be surprised if most pro players walk around all day with
sore palms.
3. Noise and/or fireworks. There’s more. Nowadays many, if not most, stadiums
are equipped with what I can only describe as noise machines and fireworks
cannons. Let a home player hit a home run and all hell breaks loose. But
friends, is all this whoop-de-do really needed? Isn’t the sound of the stadium’s
OOOOOOOO as the ball sails majestically into the fifth row of the bleachers, and
the maniacal cheering of the assembled multitudes, what really should be heard
and nothing more? If you need something to pump you up for a home player’s four
bagger, you probably shouldn’t be at the game in the first place.
2. More wild cards. Oh yeah, this is just what we need, another "wild card"
in the mix, if only for one game. The game is already cheapened by wild card
World Series winners, teams that didn’t win their division after 162 games. How
many more games do you need to play to prove who’s top dog, who then can lose a
5- or 7-game series to a team that finished SECOND TO YOU? Where’s the justice
in that? Pretty soon we’ll have the same set up as basketball, where just about
every crappy team makes the playoffs, which then drag on forever in order to
boost television revenues.
1. Ticket prices. Won’t say much about this except: Been to a game lately?
Where’d you sit? In the "party area" 6000 feet from home plate, or right behind
home plate where you could hear the ball thumping the catcher’s mitt? What’d you
pay for the "party," and what for the sound of thumping? Did you feel like you
got your money’s worth? I went to an A’s game at the Oakland Coliseum recently,
and after all the lousy music played at 11 over the PA system, the expensive
seats behind home plate (which because the place is really set up for football
might as well be bleacher seats), the distracting vendors parading by constantly
with their cotton candy and faux lemonaid, the stupid mascot, and all the other
bad-taste intrusions supposed to make the game more "family friendly", I sure
didn’t. I remember Edmonds Field in old Sacramento in the late 50s, you could go
to a game and watch the Solons get crushed without all the fol-de-rol. Ah,
the good old days.
0. Pointing toward the sky. There’s just one more disturbing thing that for
me is off the chart, and that’s pointing at the sky after a hit. The player IS SEEMINGLY THANKING GOD FOR LETTING HIM GET A HIT. If this is not the most ridiculous
thing in the world, then it's very close to it. Does that same player point at the
Earth after striking out and blame the Devil? The absolute worst offender is
Nick Swisher, with his smug, self-satisfied little grin. He’s in his walk year,
and he’s the one guy (after AJ Burnett, who of course has now won 100 games for
Pittsburgh) I really hope the Yankees dump. God doesn’t care if you hit .233 or
.600, Nick, he/she/it might not even like baseball, though of course he/she/it
devised the game in the first place.
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