If you found the All-Star Game Tuesday boring maybe baseball just isn’t quite your game — or at least baseball the way it is meant to be played.
Sure, you’re not alone in finding a 3-0 score less than enthralling. On your side you’ve got retired MLB pitcher John Rocker, who recently said baseball was better the old-fashioned way … juiced up.
That’s less controversial than some of the opinions voiced by Rocker when he was playing. Let’s just say he was a serial offender of all kinds of people’s sensibilities, some much more important than whether you prefer gorilla or small ball.
Disdain for a lack of scoring is nothing new, especially for fans that cut their teeth on McGwire, Sosa, Bonds and others obliterating home run records, but in utter disregard of the rules.
The worst thing about the steroid era? It spawned a generation of fans of whom many don’t understand or care that baseball as a game is rich in texture with many levels … levels that don’t exist in a 12-5 mess but abound in a 3-0 game, even if it is just an exhibition.
You say the chemically enhanced bombing run saved baseball? Nah, the game wasn’t going to die after the strike. Baseball might never regain its place as the country’s favorite sport, but it’s not going to wither away, either — regardless of poor ratings or lack of attendance at some stadiums.
Baseball has survived gambling scandals and a world war that crippled the quality of play. And it will survive the ongoing PED situation, as long as it remains firm against offenders.
The hammer is coming down on 20 players soon and there is already hand-wringing galore. Oh, you thought I was referring to the baseball Biogenesis investigation? No, I’m talking about the Italian soccer players fixing games.
The point is baseball will survive this, as soccer in Europe will overcome its problems. I’d be more worried about the crime wave that is the NFL offseason.
Those who want to just throw away all the rules regarding PEDs in baseball are misguided. I’m convinced most major-leaguers are now clean, and the game is better this way.
When home runs are up, base-stealing is down. Defense is down. Moving runners over is down. And, of course, pitching is down.
Might as well make it slow-pitch softball.
I would have enjoyed a home run or two in the All-Star Game. But I wouldn’t have traded Prince Fielder’s triple for three over the fence.
The power orgy was Monday, and people even complained about that. Want to jazz up the home run derby? Put a bunch of NBA big men with gloves at the fence. Or kids on trampolines. It’s already a circus anyway.
The midsummer Classic isn’t really about the score. (Yes, please get rid of the World Series home-field advantage gimmick that just muddles things up.)
It’s a celebration, especially of new stars, and old ones making their final tour.
It was missing youthful flavor of the month Yasiel Puig, but the nation got to see Manny Machado turn in a gem that the standard-bearer of defensive play at third base, fellow Oriole Brooks Robinson, might have had trouble making.
Feel a need to spice up the game? Make it old guys vs. young guys. How much fun would it have been to see Mariano Rivera taking on Bryce Harper, Mike Trout and Machado — in any inning?
There’s a lot of piling on the AL manager for not saving the greatest reliever of all time for the final three outs, but Jim Leyland was playing it safe to make sure Rivera got in the game at all.
The Tigers skipper’s decision to bring him in in the eighth actually helped parents of young kids on the East Coast; it was closing in on 11 p.m. and sandman would have entered for many of the next generation of fans before Rivera if he’d been tasked with putting the NL to sleep in the ninth.
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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783.
