Robservations: Leave it to baseball, yet again
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For about five minutes Tuesday night, I was OK with the idea of this year’s game ending in a tie.
“Well,” I thought, “they’re out of pitchers, they’re out of position players. What can you do?”
Then, reality set in. That reality has since boiled over in the back of my mind — as well as the minds of baseball fans around the country — for a couple of days.
The mood was summed up perfectly Thursday by WCHS coach Jimmy Walker during a chance meeting at lunch, when I asked him what he thought about the 7-7 tie.
“There’s no tying in baseball,” he said.
Exactly.
Because of the 1994 strike, steroid rumors, over-inflated salaries and the threat of yet another work stoppage, the love affair between this nation and its pastime has been on shaky ground for years.
This latest debacle may have pushed it over the edge.
They had an all-star game, but nobody won. Nobody explained why to the thousands of fans screaming “let them play.” Nobody was named MVP in what I’m sure would have been a touching tribute to that award’s new namesake, Ted Williams.
And the worst part; while people who paid as much as $175 a pop for tickets were shouting their displeasure about Tuesday night’s decision, nobody seemed to care.
“I don’t think it’s going to have a long-term impact on the integrity of the sport,” Houston Astros outfielder Lance Berkman told the Associated Press. Man, am I glad I traded him.
You know the worst part? This year’s game seemed, for the first time in a long time, like a meeting of the sports’ absolute best instead of a company picnic softball outing.
Remember when John Kruk turned around to “bat” lefty, then eventually bailed out of the box against Randy Johnson back in the day? That was pretty funny, and since the Krukker was on my fantasy league team at the time, and didn’t get hit by one of Johnson’s 100-mph missiles, it was even a bit of a relief. But it wasn’t all-star competition.
Torii Hunter leaping to take away Barry Bonds’ home run, that was all-star competition.
Tuesday’s game — while it lasted — was a nail-biter. From the seventh inning on, it was anybody’s guess which league’s representatives would finally wind up with the upper hand. And extra innings just seemed to be the icing on the cake.
In short, it was fun to watch, because you could tell it mattered who won. There was a sense of competitiveness Tuesday that we haven’t seen in all-star competition — in any sport — in quite some time.
“Just when the sport had a chance to redeem itself, to give people something positive to grab onto, baseball showed again that it seems to be out of touch with its fans,” AP sports writer Nancy Armour wrote.
She couldn’t be more correct.
Am I going to boycott the big leagues because of Tuesday’s game? No. Will I stage my own walkout, thumping my chest proudly and saying “never again” if the league goes on strike? No, probably not.
But something’s got to change, because there are plenty of other fans that will do exactly that. They’ll turn their back on the game, all because of greed, stubbornness, and stupid decisions like the one Bud Selig made on Tuesday.
“The decision was made because there were no players left, no pitchers left,” Selig said when it was all over. “This is not the ending I had hoped for. I was in a no-win situation.”
Well, there’s one call he got right. Because nobody won Tuesday night — not the A.L., not the N.L., not the game, and most certainly, not its fans.