Baseball Bites! Let’s Spit It Out!
Written by: Russell Davidson, CC2K Sports Editor
Russell Davidson originally wrote this article for CC2K’s Sports Week in 2009. Yet right now, in the fall of 2010, baseball is a major nuisance again to all those who miss their shows put on hiatus by Giants and Rangers (like House and Bones). So, we shall let Russell reiterate why baseball sucks.
It’s time y’all accepted the truth, the plain truth, the simple truth. Don’t be scared. See, once embraced, there can be progress. It’s called evolution. Moving past the old, the tired, the played out. Improvement of our species, you get me?
So here I stand, proclaiming the obvious, saying what needs to be said. BASEBALL BITES. What say we dis(mickey)mantle it?
You want it spelled out, so you can join me guilt-free? Ok. But remember, you need to let go of your ancient, decrepit thinking. Be one of us, the proud, the discriminating, the not-silent-much-longer majority, the baseball haters. Our numbers are strong.
First problem, the game itself. And you see I call it a game, not a sport. It’s like pool or bowling or tiddlywinks. To be a sport you have to consistently break a sweat and actually do something. A baseball player can literally play the whole game and never do ANYTHING. It’s slower than molasses going uphill at the North Pole in winter, and harder to watch. Games are way too long, forcing commentators to babble incessantly about statistics and the old days and anything they can come up with, as there’s very little actual activity on the field to comment on. A ball is thrown. It may be hit. Who gives a %$#@? Real sports are a battle, a grind, of being physically and mentally tougher than your opponent. Maybe shortening the game to say, five innings would help. But I’d still hate it.
Now, need I mention steroids and what a disgrace that whole scene is? Just look at what Barry Bonds did to himself! In football, in basketball, in soccer, in hockey, these guys work to be in peak condition, to get to the top of their sports. In baseball? Why do it the hard way? Pop some pills and everyone’s happy. So not only are many baseball players lazy, they’re cheaters, too.And speaking of players, just who in the hell are these guys? Sure, I’ve heard of Derek Jeter and Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, but Joe Crede? Justin Morneau? Ian Kinsler? Who? And they’re All-Stars, for goodness sake! Baseball is full of guys with no personality, bland, like the game itself, and the few that have name-status are aloof prima-donnas being TOLD they have to sign autographs, like it’s beneath them, like they can’t be bothered. There’s also something inherently un-American about baseball. Failure is rewarded, you see. A good hitter misses 66% of the time. That’s considered successful, acceptable. How ’bout hitting the ball, fellas? America isn’t about NOT doing something, now is it? And we can’t even win the World Baseball Classic, losing to Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, indeed any island that can throw together a squad. So not only is it not America’s game, we also suck at it.
I’ll go on. Baseball card collecting is dorky. There is no competitive balance in baseball, no salary cap, so the same teams are in it every year, the Yankees, the Red Sox, yawn yawn yawn. A 162-game season is WAY too long, so long that particular games mean nothing. Teams are named after socks instead of wild animals, I mean, what does that tell ya? And the seventh-inning stretch? What the hell? A game so devoid of movement and exercise that actually TELLS it’s watchers to STAND UP NOW. Soccer fans stand for the whole match, kids. And what about all those idiotic superstitions baseball players have, like there’s nothing they could do to improve their play, so they’ll just eat chicken every meal or wear the same underwear every game and so on. How ’bout just do better, guys? Like, practice?
But when you boil it all down, my main problem with baseball is the utter tediocity of the game, and the complete lack of athleticism evidenced, the tubs of goo that get millions to do very little, the way guys get injured merely running the bases. Football players get leveled every play, yet manage to get up and continue. Baseball players take a month off for a fall that wouldn’t hurt a three-year-old. Professional athletes? They’re kidding, right?
I dream of a future with no baseball. People need to stand up and be counted. They need to shout “The game is boring!” They need to want more for their hard-earned money than watching out-of-shape guys lumber and fall. I want a sport where I can say “Wow! Did you see that? There’s no way I could have done that!” We need heroes on the field, stellar physicality, perfect bodies pushed to their limits, dramatic plays poetic in their beauty.
We sure as shit don’t need baseball.
There’s more. Think of all the real estate that would be freed up if we abolished the game. We could use that space to build homeless shelters, art galleries, alternative fuel centers, cancer research labs, orphanages. All that money wasted on tickets and salaries and lousy stadium food could be diverted to the public good, to help our infrastructure and so on. Less baseball bats means more trees. Less caps, more cloth. Less balls, more leather and thread.
But the most important reason to get rid of it? Our youths. Indeed, who, if anyone, will think of our youths? We need our kids raised on a true sport, not some “pastime.” I don’t want a pastime, man, life’s too short. I want action, I want spectacle, I want achievement. Kids should have something to aspire to, something to propel them to reach for higher ground, to strive, to conquer. What does baseball teach them? That you can do very little and still be a hero. That you can become a professional athlete and not even be athletic. That you can miss hitting a ball 7 out of 10 times and be lauded for it. It’s a joke, baseball is. It’s damaging to the American psyche. And oh yeah. It’s as dull as a bread sandwich.
It’s time to move forward as a nation. Look, I LOVE sports, but baseball ain’t charming in its intricacies, it ain’t sublime in it’s nature, it ain’t this, it ain’t that. It’s beyond redemption. Let’s dump baseball and get with the 21st century.
Believe me, you won’t miss it.