Ten Baseball Annoyances

I love baseball. It is part of the fabric of the nation I was born and live in.  It has a pastoral vibe within (mostly) cities. The flow of it isn’t heart attack inducing- your team can lose 10 in a row and still find a way to be in contention… not so in football. You know the list…

But there are things that can be annoying about it.  From time-to-time I am going to post ten things related to the game that annoy me.  Please share yours, and I will incorporate them into the next installment.

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1) Referring to the pitcher’s mound as “The Bump”

I have no idea how long the pitcher’s mound has been referred to as “the bump”, but I’ve been watching baseball since 1977, and it has only been the last few years that I’ve heard it. Part of my distaste for it is the also seemingly recent lexicon adoption of referring to a pregnant woman’s stomach as a “baby bump”- which is used almost exclusively now.  “Bump” is just a really annoying term/word to me.  I can’t explain it.  I can’t be alone on this though. When I shared this complaint with my friend Howard, who is in his early 50s, he said that he didn’t mind the term “bump” because it reminded him of cocaine.

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2) Ken “Hawk” Harrelson

Former player and longtime White Sox announcer is the worst. He refers to the White Sox as “we”.  He refers to the White Sox as “the good guys” and the opponents as “the bad guys”.  He hates sabermetrics. He infamously maligned an umpire during a three-minute rant live on the air a few series ago. He’s arrogant, stubborn, opinionated even when not informed. He’s really tough to listen to.  An interesting story: Last September 4th- which happens to be Hawk Harrelson’s birthday- I flew from SF to Minneapolis to visit my family. When my Dad picked me up, he had the Twins/White Sox game on the radio, and the Twins- who were terrible- had put up seven runs in the second inning.  As we drove back to my parents house, the Twins added another 10 runs in the fifth inning.  I said to my Dad, “Oh, I bet Hawk Harrelson is hating this.”  When we got into the house and turned on the game, Bert Blyleven/Dick Bremer wished Hawk a “happy birthday” during the broadcast.  The camera cut to the White Sox booth– and Harrleson was gone.  He was so disgusted, he left.  Ha!  That was great. I look forward to his retirement.

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3) Ryan Braun

The Lance Armstrong of baseball. I realize players that I probably love have used or are using PEDs. Hell, I still love Matt Lawton, and he got busted for using a horse steroid at the end of his career.  What I hate so much about Braun is not that he got off on a technicality after he tested positive, but his smug declaration of his innocence afterward.  What a douche.  Now he’s showing up again linked to a known PED distributor and a lot of baseball waif writers are saying not to go after him.  Fuck that, I’m fully behind MLB nailing this jackass.  He deserves a comeuppance like Lance Armstrong.

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4) The sacrifice bunt

Look, I love National League ball.  I grew up a Twins fan, but when I moved to San Francisco at age 20, I loved being able to watch baseball without the designated hitter.  I like the strategy, the “small” ball approach, etc.  So, while I’m not a purist, I want to be clear that I’m not a bonehead that only likes dingers.  But the sacrifice bunt is really annoying.  Giving up an out to advance a runner to second is, while I admit, not an awful strategy, still a frustrating one.  Too many things can go wrong.  There is nothing more frustrating than watching an attempted sacrifice go wrong- which happens more and more… players can’t bunt like they used to (I don’t know that for sure- but you get what I’m saying).  Second, there is always the stolen base option. The average success rate, according to studies done by Total Baseball, is 67%.  That is a far higher rate than what the next batter has of knocking him in… and you already wasted an out getting him there.  Steal or hit, don’t sacrifice.

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5. A’s ownership (namely the bastard named Lew Wolff)

A real estate developer who got rich in revitalizing San Jose, he has co-owned the A’s since 2005 with the sole intention of relocating them to San Jose. This weasel has done just about everything he can to disenfranchise the A’s from their home in Oakland, threatening to move them, treating the A’s fans like shit, really, just a total scumbag.  He has no business owning the team, and he hasn’t attempted with any sincerity to get a new stadium built in Oakland, consistently citing how broke the city is, when any half-drunk idiot can tell you that there is money to be made in Oakland as San Francisco prices out more and more people to the East Bay.  Fuck Lew Wolff. He did lose a shitload of money when the market crashed in the late aughts, which is nice.

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6. “God Bless America”

While baseball is part of the fabric of the United States both in its history and now (even though the NFL could own like four MLBs), the powers that be within one of the few businesses that is exempt from anti-trust laws like to go a little overboard.  There is nothing wrong with “Sweet Caroline” playing at every stadium a few days after the tragedies in Boston, but if it continues anywhere else than Boston, you’ll see what I mean.  After 9/11, baseball started adding “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch.  After a national tragedy, it was fine… except that they kept doing it for years. It is voluntary now, but many teams still do it every Sunday.  The Yankees, Dodgers and Braves still play it every game.  The Yankees get a pass.  But every other team that does it lost sight of what it was supposed to mean in the first place.  The victims of 9/11 have been dead for a dozen years now, and the marketing departments of a lot of MLB teams are still busy patting themselves on the back… for what?  Play the national anthem, fine– and then play “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. Baseball is important, but it isn’t everything… MLB needs to remember that.

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7. Umpire Jim Joyce

Some umpire’s have egos.  That’s okay.  You’ve got to have a strong personality to officiate a game played by young, testosterone (and often PED) filled, rich men who have been catered to since they could hit a curve.  But you know that there are some egos in the umpiring world that like to be part of the game, like that control just a little too much.  Jim Joyce is notorious for ruining Tigers SP Armando Galarraga’s perfect game in 2010 when on the 27th out, Joyce blew the call at first.  Oh, Joyce got a lot of sympathy the next day when he tearfully met with Galarraga on-field (Galarraga was/is super cool about the whole thing- he knows as do we that he got a perfect game– shit, look up perfect game 50 years from now if you’re alive, and his name will be mentioned), but I never really felt for Joyce.  If you’re an umpire, your job is tough, but when there have been 26 up and 26 down and the play is at first, your natural self comes out during a close play.. and he blew it and I assert that he’s sort of a mean guy at heart.  Now, that could be complete bullshit, and I’ll own it, but that also isn’t the reason he’s on this list.  If you blow the moment of a lifetime for a player- a perfect game had only happened 20 times in the history of MLB at that time- you’d think that you’d curb your ego-maniacal “STRIIIIIIIIIIIIKE” call behind the plate- or whatever that thing is he grunts, that makes my girlfriend annoyed every time she hears it.  She isn’t alone. Joyce continues to want to be the center of attention.

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8. MLB’s lack of capitalizing on its past

Yes, we have Jackie Robinson Day, which is commendable.  Still, it seems like it took the new movie 42 to privy a lot of people to Jackie Robinson. One of the reason baseball is so loved is that it is so documented.  It is a numbers game, but why doesn’t baseball capitalize on those numbers?  MLB.tv’s archive of games available online is miniscule. This isn’t a start-up, this is MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL… get those games online– not just the past ten years- as much as you can. Invest in a preservation movement the way film did in the late 1980s.  A few years ago, the MLB Network treated us to the last game of the 1960 World Series that came from the private collection of the estate of, who, Bing Crosby? The entirety of the 1970s should be available, hell, the 1960s should too.  And if MLB is worried there isn’t a market for it, get in the fantasy game. The reason the NFL has more fans is that it is easy to be a casual fan… 16 games and then the playoffs.  But baseball fans are dedicated, informed, and they love its past.  On top of that, there is an increasingly growing number of them that spend 7 months playing fantasy baseball.  Find a way to incorporate Baseball’s past into an offseason market.  Some small companies have tried this, but they don’t have the power of MLB.  Charge a couple of bucks, add a free game from the past each day- it is a money maker. Baseball is constantly trying to expand out now– but they are growing stagnant on the past.  Instead of just resting on the laurels of Jackie Robinson breaking a color barrier, invest big money into educating the public on the Negro Leagues.  There are films out there- we saw it in Ken Burns Baseball documentary from 1994.  Get on it slackers.

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9. Joe Buck

The advent of internet baseball blogs pissed off traditional baseball writers to no end.  Fine, they have a job to lose, but a fair number of them seem to like to go against the tide of the “Fire Joe Buck” movement and come to this ass clown’s defense.  Buck likes to spout off about how he doesn’t hate our teams and that we should get over it.  No, Joe, you don’t hate our teams… you don’t KNOW our teams, and yet we have to tolerate your half-informed smug call of the World Series every year.  Joe Buck has been prone to over-dramatizing, pontificating, and showing a lack of baseball knowledge, at least compared to, well, just about any other baseball announcer out there.  Tim McCarver is retiring after this year, which means that Buck is without a partner.  Hopefully Fox does the same they did with Jon Miller (whom I love) when Joe Morgan finally needed to be let go, and they bring in an entirely new crew.  I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t mind Vin Scully calling the World Series until he passes.  Fire Joe Buck— go pontificate during football games.

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10. Bud Selig

He’s getting old and frail now, and he’s been around so long, that combined with the relative success of inter-league play and expanded playoffs, there seems to be the kind of warm acceptance of him- the same kind of warm acceptance that freezing to death is described as… I won’t forgive him.  This used-car salesman took the Pilots from Seattle and moved them to Milwaukee.  Okay, fine.  But then in 2002 he tried like hell to contract my Twins.  No, not give them a contract, but eliminate them.  He and the late Carl Pohlad (think Mr. Burns), conspired to pay Pohlad a shitload of money to his miserable ass (look up Pohlad- I think he was inspired by the Lionel Barrymore character in It’s a Wonderful Life) to fold the Twins (the Expos were the other team, and Selig has blood on his hands for that as well).  The Twins weren’t going to be moved.  Nope.  Not sold. Nope.  Just disenfranchised…. killed.  What made the whole thing stink to high heaven is that Selig stood to gain personally— he was the owner of the Brewers, well, not technically, as he “sold” the team to his daughter, but the Brewers stood to gain the Twins five-state market.  Well, the Twins managed to come up from the cellar, and in 2002 WON the Central Division, thereby disproving Selig’s assertion that the Twins couldn’t compete.

Plus, let’s not forget, he’s not a commissioner.  He is an owner promoted when the colluding fucks didn’t like what Fay Vincent did.

MLB is exempt from anti-trust laws.  They should have a real commissioner, one that is not an owner.  Bob Costas is 61 years old, and probably has another good 35 years in him.  Selig is done soon.  Congress needs to get involved and make sure baseball hires a commissioner that isn’t just in service to the owners.

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