Great Baseball Article About Bad Baseball in Today's Game
 

Thanks New York Post!

https://nypost.com/2020/09/03/mlb-tr...e-as-baseball/

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Ehhh.....these young whipper-snappers only play for the money. Why, back in my day, we'd pay the owners just to play stickball on the asphalt. And we loved it!! We had gloves made out of wooden planks and bats made out of horsehide. The balls were so soft, they'd wrap around the bat like a limp dishrag. We didn't have aeroplanes to take us to other cities; we had to walk from New York to St. Louis, and it was all uphill.

If we hit a foul ball in the stands, we had to pay the owner for it. Got hit in the noggin'? Rub it off and get back in the batter's box - no free base for you.

Just look at the "More from: Phil Mushnick" headlines, no sun shining on that patch of grass.

So I take it you like strikeouts... a lot. Or the occasional home run...

I liked Dave Kingman, but having an entire league of players like that is dull.

I actually like a lot about baseball in today's game. But I do miss bunting, ala Atlanta Braves of the 1990s. They could run, bunt, pitch, hit. That was good baseball. And while I like the shift defensively, batters must be prideful because very few of them even attempt laying down the bunt or hitting the opposite way. And I know they can hit the opposite way - these guys are professionals and have an array of skills to do it.

Professional baseball has basically become slo-pitch softball with strikeouts. The players today are physically superior to their ball playing predecessors. It's a shame they aren't allowed to learn and implement all aspects of the game.
Regarding pitching and its nauseating specialization; in bygone days, a pitcher was allowed to overcome his fatigue and "reach back" to help his team win by making his start his game, all nine innings of it. This is what sports and life, for that matter, is all about. Rarely do we get to see any pitcher "reach back" today. To steal the "Wide World of Sports" theme, where is the "thrill of victory or the agony of defeat"?

BaseBall of yesteryear
 

I will never forget the first World Series I saw....the 1947 World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers. Exciting 7-game Series which included a near No-Hitter.

A tremendously exciting Series.....Jackie Robinson's rookie year World Series.....Joe DiMaggio belting HR's, etc.

This is BaseBall at it's best.

Check-it-out, here are the highlights of this Series and the 1947 All-Star game......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLCaPLOhhM


TED Z

T206 Reference
.

LOL, Mushnick could take the fun out of fried dough and a ferris wheel at the carnival.

In his day, everybody just shut up and took it............and they were happy about it.....or they got beat by their parents and the nuns at school....and they were happy about that too, because at least they had a roof over their heads and people around them that cared enough about them to beat some sense into them, when they weren't eating their carrots, or catching the baseball with one hand instead of two.

:D

Phil Mushnick is every crabby old man unmasked at the end of a Scooby Doo cartoon. An old fart dedicated to chasing kids off his lawn.

I'm laughing at these comments. That scooby doo one is funny.

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When the players were negotiating the covid protocols I saw a 1000 articles where completely uninformed people went off about how "in the old days players were just happy to play for free . . . ." "Players in the past realized how lucky they were....." Yeah, sure. Babe Ruth would have played for free. Sure. How many times did he hold out for more money?

Nostalgia is a wonderful tool. You can just summon up an imaginary time that solves all of of our current ailments.

Apparently Ruth held out pretty often.

The first time he said he was going to play for an industrial league team, which was probably almost the same as playing for free compared to the 27,000 for three years he eventually got.

Fifty years ago -- fifty! (Mushnick's still alive?) -- we hated Mushnick, then a Pittsburgh sports columnist, for his lazy, cliched,
cheap-shot knock-pieces on opposing cities and their fans. We've ignored him ever since... but, dammit, he was right --

"With The Game in horrible, fundamental decay due to home-run-or-strikeout “strategies” and managers who pull
effective pitchers in search of arsonists, the simplistic cry has been renewed: Ban the shift!
"In other words, MLB should continue to legislate changes to artificially treat badly eroded skills while sustaining
or worsening the abandonment of smart, winning baseball. "

... "Also in the seventh, when Aaron Hicks, batting .200, hit a home run that just cleared the right-field wall,
he had the modern, no-upside audacity not to run, choosing to stand and marvel at his achievement — even if
he risked blasting a self-impressed single.
"If Hicks thought he looked cool, he was wrong. He looked like a fool.
"But again, this is how The Game is played. In the series, mild infield grounders were cause for defensive confusion
and panic while two games were decided by wild pitches. The replay rule was applied to make second guesses at
very close calls that were never intended for replay review."

... "Then there was more YES drivel about how hard Gary Sanchez is hitting the ball, even if as of Thursday morning
he had raised his batting average to .130 with 42 strikeouts in 91 at-bats.
"Of course he hits it hard! It stands to reason that anyone who indiscriminately swings at everything as hard as he can
will occasionally hit the ball hard."

So call us crotchety geezers. We despise every single one of the "new rules."

Some of the new rules are ok. Some don't make much sense.

Some of the new attitude is fun, and maybe good to see the game being more fun for the players and fans.
I still prefer a grittier more old fashioned sport, where a bat flip would earn a guy a new bruise his next time up.

But considering how much they make, something that has a chance (Although maybe not with a pitcher with excellent control) of taking a year or two off a players career costing them easily a few million can't realistically be part of the game.

I agree, great article. I hadn't read him in years until I saw this article. I used to read him in The Post. I always liked his unrelenting truth-telling, not only about sports, but also about the media. I see he hasn't lost a step.

How come people who complain about how the “fundamentals” are so weak in todays game don’t make the equally obvious point that players in today’s game are way more athletic — way more athletic — than past decades. Infielders and outfielders make plays today routinely that no one made in the 70s. Hard to believe balls short stops get to today and throw guys out. Catches that were iconic in the 50s and 60s might barely make the sports center highlights real today. Fact that pitchers have gotten so good has really altered today’s game.

I think this is a reason why weak fundamentals is so bothersome offensively. They are taught to bunt and hit opposite way in high school and college. It gets the attention of scouts, and then modern coaches and GMs tell them to abandon these skills. 5 star prospects don't always look 5 star in the majors due to statcast and sabermetrics.

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