That’s a Strike (Maybe)
On the morning of MLB’s Opening Day—just one game, the Yankees vs. the Giants on Netflix—I read Matthew Hennessey’s Wall Street Journal article, stupidly headlined “Put Me In Coach” (as if I wanted another reminder of that awful 1985 John Fogerty song “Centerfield”) and it mildly got my dander up. Hennessey’s a baseball purist who hates “launch angles,” analytics and players who look like “lab-grown superman.” I don’t entirely disagree, but have adapted to the game’s evolution and still watch the Red Sox faithfully, ignoring the silliness of how hard a ball is hit—if it’s an out, it’s an out—and the distance a home run traveled.
It was bad enough that he pulled a quote from Bull Durham, a so-so 1988 baseball movie whose main selling point is that it’s not nearly as treacly as the following year’s Field of Dreams (my favorite baseball film is John Sayles’ Eight Men Out, with The Natural a distant second). But here’s the worst paragraph: “Baseball was once played by damaged men with interesting habits. They drank and smoked. You watched your favorite team and thought to yourself, ‘Those guys aren’t so different from me.’ It was the professional sport that discouraged athleticism… Some had beer bellies.”
That’s fantasy. Baseball players were “damaged men”? Says who? They did drink, smoke and cat around after hours, but in the post-free agent era most figured their paydays could be hurt by overindulgence. That makes sense. Baseball didn’t “discourage athleticism.” The MLB players, from any decade, were pure athletes, the best of thousands upon thousands in the country who wanted to reach “The Show.” I was a decent baseball and football player, a bust at basketball and didn’t play hockey. I never thought “those guys aren’t so different from me.” Even as a 10-year-old I knew what self-delusion meant.
However, my bad attitude about Hennessey’s fuddy-duddy essay was lessened upon watching the Netflix presentation that night. I watched because it was the opener and love to see the Yankees lose (they didn’t), but it was rough sledding. The “score bug,” a visual that says who’s at bat, the inning, the pitch count, etc. was so tiny I had to press my nose against the screen to see how many pitches Giants’ ace Logan Webb had thrown. The picture was muddy, the commercials—and Netflix promos—more aggravating than usual (the ads on local broadcasts are often interesting, with low-budget spots for barbecue joints in Kansas City, scummy lawyers, regional furniture chains or insect-removal services that I’ll never visit) but what almost made me switch the channel was the loud and obnoxious Netflix comedian Bert Kreischer screaming “This is baseball!” in the endless pre-game theatrics, and later in a dingy in McCovey’s Cove, ogling attractive women and calling for a beer, because “it doesn’t get better than this!”
It got better for me the next afternoon watching the Red Sox on their station NESN in a tight 3-0 game (they won) with Garrett Crochet whiffing two men with the bases loaded in the bottom of the sixth, and then relievers Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman nailing down the win. (At least the pop-gun Sox took the opener; just frustration since.) I’m neutral on the new Automated Ball-Strike Challenge (ABS); your team wins some, loses some—and it’s preferable to the extra-innings “ghost runner” placed on second base—and don’t mind crummy umpires getting nervous about their “score” after each game. The average salary for an umpire is $300,000—as opposed to the players’ minimum of $780,000—which isn’t inconsiderable, but factoring in taxes, six months away from families and fan abuse, it’s not crazy to think these guys dabble in masochism.
On Monday there was an okay New York Times “Guest Essay” by author Devin Gordon (So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets) about fans enraged by the social media political opinions of athletes. I never pay attention to that nonsense—same with actors, although it bugged me that Edward Norton’s a bleeding heart, not that it’ll stop me from seeing his movies—since I just want, say, Roman Anthony to have an MVP-type year, and don’t care what he thinks about Cuba or Iran. I do wonder, recreationally, if the Baltimore Orioles will take heat for fielding a predominantly white team in a majority-black city. Doubt it, if they win.
Gordon gives one choice example: “An old friend of mine is a multigenerational Yankees fan, Long Island born and bred… Yet he told me the team’s entire 2025 season was soured for him after the franchise decided to hold a pregame moment of silence at Yankee Stadium after Charlie Kirk’s death… My friend barely shrugged when the team later lost in the playoffs, he told me, because he’d already emotionally checked out of the season and couldn’t recommit.”
It’s said, “Everybody’s angry today,” which is an overstatement, but Gordon’s friend isn’t a real Yankees fan.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023