Why can’t we just let things go in sports?
We (as in the media, more of a national deal though) love to beat things into the ground. For some reason, the national honks feel the need to bombard us with stats and reasons why a certain player is struggling or why a team did this or that in a situation.
I’m an obsessive sports fan. I call it research for the job. But sometimes even I just shake my head and laugh.
By know, most of you have seen or heard about the Matt Holiday slide into second base during game two of the National League Championship Series. If you haven’t, here is the cliffs notes:
- Holliday was on first and headed to second to break up a double play.
- The Giants’ Marco Scutaro was there trying to make the relay throw to first to finish the twin killing.
- Holliday slide way too late, took out Scutaro. It was a pretty nasty and cheap play.
- Scutaro had to leave the game due to a hip injury.
Now, here we are days after the fact, and they are still forcing it down our throats. We saw it. We know it was a dirty play.
Guess what? The Giants already said they’re over it. Why can’t you?
I’ve had several lengthy conversations (including a brief twitter one last night) with a fellow media man about the “unwritten rules” of baseball. My stance has always been that these rules are bad for the game. He vehemently disagrees.
The problem is, though, most of the national baseball analysts are old school baseball guys. Tim McCarver, who is the national color analyst for Fox Sports, is the epitome of this. He is always quick to bring up how it used to be done or what they used to do.
It’s time to move on from this and play the game. If a guy slides hard into you, it’s part of the game. There is no need for you to force feed us the old school tom foolery that happened in your time.
If you recall back to this summer. Cole Hamels hit Nationals’ rookie Brice Harper in the back with a pitch. Hamels said after the game it was a welcome to the big leagues kind of thing.
Baseball is slowly dying in this country as it is. Fans, or potential fans, don’t need to see things like that or hear analysts spewing this stuff their direction. Let the game speak for itself. Not the ghosts of baseball past.
