LOL, I love how that word is thrown around. I'm pretty sure they said the same thing about his teammate, Stephen Strasburg. How's that working out?

Mike:

I remember when I met you back in 2004, the baseball program was really suffering because of the "elite travel" teams. I'm glad to hear that baseball is coming back in Arkansas.

Soccer is also a great sport for kids, but doing headers is proving to be another cause of CTE. As baseball is proven, for the most part, to be the safest of the major sports, then you will continue to see a resurgence.

And letting the kids be more modern will help as well

Rich

All this talk about Harper...what's he won? NL mvp last year (granted he was raking most of the year) and some other ancillary awards but before that, what else?

IMO trout is overall a better player, plays hard and coincidentally you don't hear much about him do you?

A shame that a drama queen gets to be the face of the young generation.

Maybe that sentiment is due to him being hyped since he was in high school...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G925A using Tapatalk

Good point as harper and trout are 2 of the best in the game in my opinion...with trout being so far the best by a stretch. 2 young guys with different approaches and opinions on how the game should be played.

nothing new here...I just thing as life and time goes by...evolution is inevitable...and baseball should not be excluded.

Agreed. It will evolve but that doesn't mean it has to lose its integrity. I have no problem with celebrations when warranted and the occasional scuffles or brush backs.

But pompous attitudes and subsequent actions, especially by the supposed "face" of baseball...

Meh, I can do without.

All that being said it doesn't affect my outlook on baseball. I will still watch the playoffs and follow my Braves and I think most loyalists are the same.

totally agree...except re the braves...yankees all the way!!!!!:)

It's a good debate and needed for the sport. The idea that baseball was freeze dried decades ago and can never change is absurd. Baseball's history and tradition is exactly what sets it apart from all other sports, but they need to market the game better to young people. And getting all over players every time they fling a bat, pump their fist, or act joyful is idiocy.

All this unwritten rule stuff is beyond tired. Makes me chuckle to think that this time last year Bobby Parnell was schooling Noah Syndergaard about how to be a real major league ballplayer. Guy grabbed a bite during a meaningless spring training game and Parnell went nuts and embarrassed him in front of reporters. Yep, and now Bobby is probably behind the counter cooking the burgers. It's always the loud self-appointed Upholders of the Dignity of Baseball (Pappelbon, Schilling, Chad Curtis, Goose Gossage, etc.) who are the biggest jerks of all. More people have bought tickets to see Y. Puig than any of those guys.

Don't turn baseball into a 2016 Bryce Harper Bowman Chrome SuperFractor
 

I find it ironic that so many on this baseball card forum do not want baseball cards to evolve but yet the game is old and stagnant. The cards of today are now considered garbage or overpriced junk. Guess what folks, the game many of you are wishing for here depicted on today's cards with flash and flair, no one wants to buy these cards. Don't turn baseball into a 2016 Bryce Harper Bowman Chrome SuperFractor! How about instead we leave the game a 1953 Bowman Color Pee Wee Reese?

We know......BUT they look so HIDEOUS! :D:eek::rolleyes:

+1

Again, I think the clash between the two styles (old school vs new) is better than it being all one or the other. I can't wait to see each Puig vs Bumgarner match this year, after the two had nasty words for each other last year.

Re- earlier comment about Joe Horn, again, I'm all for more "Fun" in the No Fun League. I just think certain personalities pull it off better than others. Again, this will always be personal preference, but I think the guys who come across as genuinely light hearted and fun (Icky, Ochocinco, others) will always get away with more in their celebrations than the guys who come across as sort of serious, or forced in their celebrations.

For whatever reason, Horn, TO, always rubbed me wrong... maybe it's crap like TO allowing his teammate Derek Deese to fight his fight for him, against two Cowboys, while he just picked up the ball and ran back to the star... or the fact that just beforehand he ran right past Jeff Garcia who was trying to celebrate with him. He just always bugged me... maybe part of it are guys who think come across as above their own team.

Anyway, I digress from the baseball argument... conflict between old and new is good and entertaining.

Goose Gossage sounded pretty tone deaf to me. He said Jose Bautista, someone who battled back from obscurity to become a star and led his team to the brink of the World Series, embarrassed Latino players because he celebrated sending his team to the Championship series.

That comment alone should be enough to make anyone tune out Goose. He has no place to say something like that and his comments should have been thrown out of the window as soon as he did. No one thinks like that anymore and it's time to get out of the way if you do.

I could not agree more. And furthermore... I wish every pitcher in the league reacted like he was Bob Gibson when a batter pulled that bat flip crap. Drill him.

I love when athletes show emotion. Baseball has to loosen up, its not showing you up if the hitter celebrates because he did what he is supposed to do. You can celebrate when you strike him out.

As to nerds and the new stats, I like the new stats, but I do think they are over-used at times.

Here's a suggestion; How about Harper gets a ring before he mouths off. One MVP and he thinks he's Buster Posey. He can't wear Buster's jock. Who's next; Mike Trout talking about modern players changing the game? Brandon Crawford has two more rings than both they guys combined.

Can't tell if serious.

Harper is the face of the game and has been the future face of the game since he was in high school. It's foolish to see him any other way. The guy won the MVP last year at 22 years old. He was the third youngest player ever to do that. Stop acting like he's Stephen Strasburg. He's not. He lives up to the hype. His opinions on the future of the game are more relevant than anyone else's because he IS the future of the game, like or not.

. . .and why the heck does someone have to have championship rings to express an opinion on anything. I am a Met fan and boo the hell out of Harper all year long, but you'd have to be a stone cone dummy not to realize he is an out spoken but charismatic and thoughtful guy. I welcome his opinions.

Interesting subject and some povocative comments
 

Mission-Team-Self

Used to be a 49ers fan, enjoyed Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, etc. I recall them celebrating a team achievement, not individual achievements. Watched all NFL games back then. Anyway, T.O, arrived and caught his first T.D. pass, which was followed by tears. I liked him. He 'progressed' into pulling a sharpie out of his sock and signing a football in the endzone. I turned if off that day and haven't watched a single down since. Stuff like that became out of control and football suffered a significant reduction in class.

If there are unwritten rules, as its been coined, they're made by the players' teammates and retired players (didn't include managers/coaches because they seem to have little say). They have a mission and work together to accomplish it and fans should not have a say. Show boating was something to avoid in the past and any Team that attempts to play as a team will deter it.

But if we're forced to think about the individuals, I'd like more Dale Murphy and Fred McGriff, please. Football and basketball inherently require more aggression, both in quantity and quality, including body contact, and result in more opportunities for emotional celebration as a resut. Emotional celebration for team achievement is genuine and obvious. Other celebration is based on narcissism (sic?).

Respectfully

Something people haven't brought up yet is that baseball itself thinks it's tired. They've changed rules every year in an attempt to liven up the game. So what exactly did Harper say that isn't reflected in baseball's own vision of its current self?

He lived up to the hype for 1 year. ONE YEAR! When he strings together several good years in a row, let me know.

Edited to add: I wish I had $1 for every prospect that was called a "phenom" that ended up a bust.

I don't think you'd have very many dollars if you threw in the caveat that the phenom had to have won the ROY and MVP award before their 23rd birthday.

Edited to add: I think any team would be happy with their 1st overall pick if that player went on to win an MVP and was a 3 time all star. And these accomplishments are part of the first 4 seasons of Harper's career. He's a rare player. I understand why some people don't like him and are resistant to change, but that doesn't make him wrong.

Harper this year seemed to eradicate his only weakness, impatience at the plate. Of course nobody is a sure thing, and he does seem injury prone, but if the Red Sox wanted to sign him, I would not object.:D

Apologies fir the double post...

I totally agree... I remember Kevin Maas!
However, I can't think of one that Won an MVP,
Let Alone at 22.

So... Do You Really Believe that He MiGHT be the next one
That You won't get a buck for?

Just Sayin...

Ohhh, do You Really Think he is Still a Prospect... Interestin!?

Baseball has had some pretty memorable phenoms in my lifetime--- Gooden (ROY and CY Young by I think 20?), Pujols (whether his age is real or not, those first 10 years were unreal), Griffey (his game was so pure), Trout, and to a lesser degree guys like Ryan Braun, Man Ram, etc. All were super young when they broke in, and had incredible immediate impact.

The thing that stands out to me about Harper though, is he's been pegged for greatness since 15 when he was on SI's cover. He was the closest thing to LeBron that I can think of in recent major pro sports. In the face of all that pressure and expectation most guys eventually fizzle. Remember SI's "Super Kid"? who never appeared in a major league game? or Freddy Adu? I think Harper's fully living up to his hype, and is only getting better. It's all the more impressive given the very early national exposure, scrutiny and pressure he's faced throughout.

Like him or not (though, I lean old school, I really like him), he's the most exciting at bat in baseball, and I think he is 100000% good for the game. I think this entire controversy and debate is good for baseball. People are talking about it!!

Get the Lakers girls to dance in the foul territory at Miller Park, and I'll buy season tickets. I don't even live in Milwaukee. :p

I agree with Bryce, to an extent. I think there needs to be a little bit more "fun" to the game, without making it the spectacle that the NBA has become. Part of what makes minor league baseball so fun is the little nuances that are unique to each team and ballpark. I'd love to see more of that in the Majors.

When a home run gets hit in Milwaukee, Bernie slides down into a mug of beer (well, not really). And, we have the sausage races. Let's see more of the excitement that made this game The National Pastime!

There are guys in baseball who you do not want to be on line grabbing a hot dog or a beer for . . you want to be in the seat watching every at bat. And you look ahead to see if he's batting next inning in timing your bathroom break. He is one of them. Ditto Trout. Ditto Cespedes. Ditto a hand full of other guys. That to me is the test that separates a star from an excellent player. Some of the "star" guys, i.e. Darryl Strawberry, Puig, ultimately don't have the career to back it up. I said it for years and stand by it: other than his farewell tour, no one around the country was buying tickets to see Derek Jeter play. Great great team player. Came though in the clutch remarkably in the post season. HOF material. No one ever bought a ticket in Cleveland or Detroit to see him play in June. Sometimes the big stars run their mouth a little much, i.e., Harvey, but these are the guys who put fannies in the seats, as Keith Hernandez would say.

Some guy is selling a Fidyrch autograph picture over on the other board. I read the Fidrych write up on Wikipedia. Damm, what a season that was. And what amazing fun. If he was around today I guess we would need to tell him to shut the hell up. Everything he'd be doing would be to "show up" the other team or somehow mock someone.

When we had Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun batting back to back between 2007 and 2011, a lot of bladders went unrelieved at Miller Park for exactly the reason you mentioned. You didn't want to miss a single one of their at bats, and there was no way you were taking a trip to the can if both guys were guaranteed to make it up to the plate in the home half of the inning. In five years, they combined to hit 361 home runs, and drove in 1,096 runs. The Brewers weren't always good, but every game, even the ones we lost, were fun because there was always a chance one or both of them were going to hit a 440 foot bomb.

Harper is an exciting player and not entirely wrong. It seems like he has been around forever, so sometimes it is hard to remember how young he is. As far as his comments, the answer probably lives somewhere in the middle of the new school vs. old school philosophies. Anyway, I am hoping he has a HOF career, so this contrived short print will help pay for the kid's college education. ;)

Jantz,

You didn't realize that once you hit fifty your ability to discern btw those things that are exciting and boring goes into steep decline? :D

It isn't so much the game, as it is the attention span of people in general. It's become so short that people can't sit at a stop light without checking facebook on their phone. Football only plays 16 regular season games, catering to weekend sports fans who probaly couldn't tell you a thing about the nuances or history of the game. Basketball is about the "show". They haven't called travelling since the 50's. It's gotten to the point that it isn't that you score but how spectacular the basket is. Baseball is on the opposite end of the spectrum, it's chess, a sport to be studied and savoured. It gives you time to think between plays with numerous ways to score. A 1-0 game can be as exciting as a 9-8 game. Both basketball and football over engineer their rules to encourage excessive scoring. Defence in both sports is on the endangered list. In baseball both offence and defense can be appreciated. Baseball for the most part isn't over engineered, it has a certain dignity, the sport is just fine the way it is,it's everybody else that's wrong.

Bryce Harper, at 22, sounds like a Prima donna: a person who thinks she or he is better than everyone else and who does not work well as part of a team or group. He complained about people not being able to express themselves. Is this baseball or theatre? His teammates heard him tell the world that they're boring and, while still mounted upon the stallion with which he travels through life, proceeded to name names of the current great ones (forming a posse) who are withheld the opportunity for emotional outburst, all the while pointing the finger at the annointed one: himself. He should've praised his teammates and verbalized gratitude for the few years he's played. Maybe he should sit down with Tiger for some knowlege.

No prima donna will change baseball. I understand about not missing an at-bat for a hot dog, but that's a FAN perspective. His comment was from a player perspective and was an effort to bring fans into his posse along with other prima donnas. quite frankly, he sounds like he's spoiled and has been for quite a while.
-----------------

the last two posts, #82 and #83, might be the most thoughtful written comments I've seen on this board in a long time. And their back-to-back. Nicely written gents.

Your Prima Donna at work...
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:14864325

I Love Strong opinion's!
You & Bryce have a lot in Common... ;)

Regarding this 'new' world of baseball, there are two specific things that bother the living sh_t of me:

1. The second a pitched ball touches the dirt, it is immediately thrown out of the game by the umpire. This is baseball. It's played in the frickin' dirt, yet they insist that each ball has to be absolutely perfect with nary a blemish on it so the batter isn't at a disadvantage??!! Next thing you know, each player will receive a therapeutic massage, apricot scrub and tea service in the on-deck circle. Come on MLB!!!!!!!!!

2. Pitchers who come into the game with their hat brims perfectly flat and straightened with no curve to them whatsoever. Some of these d-bags even shift the hat a little so it's not properly aligned on their head, having the brim off to the side. I don't care if I'm rooting for their team, the moment one of these guys appears on the mound I hope they get lit up and sent to the showers!!!!!!!!!

Haha, love it. I cannot stand the flat brimmed hat either. It was lame in the early '90's (wannabe suburban hoods wearing Starter hats with the tags still on), and it's lame today.

Another uniform style that I cannot stand, pants that are too long, showing no sock/stirrup. As a SF man, I feel I should take some responsibility for this because Bonds was one of the early ones to do it, and think he may have been the first who had that stupid little loop at the pant bottom that could flip around the spikes at his heal, and keep his pant bottoms down.

For some reason, that really bugs the heck out of me too. Thought I was the only one. Glad there are others.

The good ole days, Sid Bream and company, teamwork at its finest and no primas: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FgjIVvEQo_o

Irish, that made me giggle, thanks. I'm 40 and have never heard a 22 year old's opinion and found it to be strong in context (intellectual is possible) at least since I was 22. Weak in wisdom, yes. And exceptions are not given to wealthy kids who can swing a wooden club better than most, but its great we can still have an opinion sometimes.

Respectfully

Hats
 

I put my hat on with a curved bill. My son has the flat bill. I try to bend his, he gets mad. And vice verse. It's a generational thing. And yes, it bugs the heck out of me as well especially when the bill is off to the side.

Hank, I agree with you 100%. I have watched 95+% of the Washington Nationals games since the Expos relocated to DC, and I have noticed that Harper consistently half-heartedly jogs toward 1st base whenever he hits a popup or a ground ball that has no chance of being a base hit. Harper is not "Charley Hustle," except when he smells a base hit and/or extra bases.

Yes, Harper is tremendously talented. But, I'll take Trout over Harper every day. The Nats are my beloved home team, but quite frankly, the only time I root for Harper to do well is when the team is in desperate need for his production. It is said that there is no "i" in "team," but I suspect Harper thinks there is!

I'm not opposed to a bit more celebration and emotion being shown by MLB players, so long as it doesn't directly show up the opposition and doesn't begin to approach the level we see with the NBA and NFL.

Mostly, I'd like to see the game speeded up a bit more. I wonder how much total game time is consumed by batters adjusting their batting gloves, seemingly after every pitch - a simple solution to this would be to outlaw batting gloves.
Val

If the Nats are tired of Harper, well my Indians would happily take him off your hands.

Harper is great for the sport, same for Bautista - that bat flip will become legendary. We need more color, not less.

...but at what point does it stop? I see it as catering to the lowest common denominator audience wise. Football is the worst. It isn't good enough to just celebrate touch downs, you have to celebrate every tackle, no matter the score of the game or it's situation. I see once the emotional celebrations are in the game guys will be celebrating everything to make ESPN highlights, Twitter and Facebook and just like football they'll practice celebrations to the point of correography. Walk up songs are bad enough.

I don't think it's fair to equate younger people and our use of technology as some form of narcissistic pandering to the lowest common denominator. It's just different, and it's a reflection of our technology, and our differences to the previous generation....which I believe has been happening since, ya know, the beginning of civilization.

That being said, Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen and Buster Posey are only a few years older than Bryce Harper. They carry themselves completely differently on the field. Yet they are still part of the same generation. My point is that I don't think Bryce is wrong when he says we should modernize the game. But my other point is that Bryce is a douchebag and so it's hard to take his thoughts seriously when he sets such a douchey example for the rest of his generation.

football players are literally killing themselves out there for your entertainment, they get into multiple car wrecks every week...if they want to do a little celebration after a play because they didn't break their neck then more power to them.

color me shock that on a primarily pre-ww1 baseball board people are oppose to the rich, spoiled, out of touch modern superstar who wants to make the game more fun for everyone. let's go to the beckett super refractor board for their thoughts...i'm sure their opinions mirror this board.

There's a becket super refractor board?

Everyone keeps bringing up Bautista. Does no one remember why he flipped his bat? He'd just given his team the go-ahead and eventual lead that would send them into the ALCS and have him playing for the pennant. If you can't celebrate that, what can you celebrate? It wasn't just some routine homer in a mid-June game.

I am a traditionalist but I have no issue with the bat flip, I thought it was pretty cool actually. An exclamation point.

A friendly reminder from the fun police:

OK, team. You've just recorded the final out and won the World Series. Please form an orderly line and proceed to the pitcher's mound for post-game celebratory handshakes. No running, jumping, or yelling, please. Remember, it's just a game and public displays of emotion are strongly discouraged. :eek:

ETA: After a round of stale, scripted press conferences, participation trophies will be awarded to both teams at the league sanctioned ice cream social.

Yeah Buddy...
If You Watched that game, & I did!
You would of been Well Entertained, fur sure!

The Most Screwed up inning I've Ever Laid Eyes On!!!

That Bat Flip was Completed Warranted... In the Moment Aye!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofS09rcM-_Q