Kids Today: Baseball Edition
Today's players are better athletes, but are they better ballplayers?
As many of you already know, once an American reaches the age of 65 he or she becomes eligible to complain about “Kids Today” and must do so at least once a month as dictated by 32nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is interesting because 10 seconds of internet research indicates there are only 27 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution so I can’t help but feel this would be a good time to move on before you realize I have the habit of making shit up whenever it suits me…which is every American’s right and protected by the little-known 28th Amendment.
Anyway…
Our generation gets to say things were much better in Our Day and Kids Today just don’t get it. For instance:
We had the Beatles.
Kids Today have BTS (a South Korean pop group made up of seven young men who appear to be struggling with gender identity which – according to Forbes magazine – hasn’t stopped them from becoming the Top Recording Artists of 2020.)
We had muscle cars like the 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT 2+2 driven by Steve McQueen in Bullitt.
Kids Today have the Toyota Prius driven by Will Ferrell in The Other Guys, (which is actually a really funny movie assuming you’ve watched enough action movies to get the jokes they’re making about action movie clichés and if you haven’t watched this movie and decide to, pay attention to Michael Keaton because he’s goddamned hilarious.)
We had Muhammad Ali.
Kids Today have WBA Heavyweight Champion Anthony Joshua, whoever the hell he is.
Which brings us to…
Today’s athletes
At some point in every Old Fart or Old Fartresse’s life he and/or she will complain about Kids Today and if they’re a baseball fan they might tell you the players they admired as a youth were much better than players today.
So is that true?
If you ever get to talk to a longtime baseball coach and he likes and trusts you enough to tell the truth and not just issue a stream of clichés that will sound good on TV and won’t get him in trouble, he might admit players today are much better athletes than the players we admired as kids.
There’s a reason World Records in track and field keep getting broken.
Watch a ballgame today and kids you never heard of will come out of the bullpen throwing 100 MPH which used to be a big deal and is now an everyday occurrence. Like it or not, generally speaking today’s players are much more physically gifted than the players of yesterday. For instance:
Mickey Mantle was 5’11” tall and weighed 195 pounds.
Mike Trout is 6’2”tall and weighs 235 pounds.
Today’s players are blessed with nutritionists, advanced analytics, weight & strength coaches, video analysis, cryotherapy, psychologists, astrologers, the occasional hypnotist and/or shaman, personal shoppers and Fung Shui advisors and whatever else a team can throw at a player to help him reach his full potential (and we haven’t even grazed the topic of PEDs) so it’s no surprise player’s today are better physical specimens than yesterday’s players who performed on a steady diet of Johnny Walker Black, Chesterfield cigarettes and the occasional fistfight at the Copacabana.
But let’s face it:
Yesterday’s players had way more fun than the current batch of players who have to do a colonic cleanse and receive counseling if they look at a candy bar. Somebody – and as usual I can’t remember who – was asked who he would like to be if he could be absolutely anybody in the world and he gave the greatest answer ever:
“Mickey Mantle on a Saturday night in New York in the 1950s.”
OK, so today’s players are better athletes, but does that also make them better ballplayers?
Teaching at the big league level
Ask that non-lying coach about today’s players and he might tell you big league coaches have to do way more teaching at the major league level because teams are rushing kids through the minors so they can get some return on those signing bonuses.
“Jesus, we gave this kid $7.5 million to sign, when will we see him play in the big leagues?’
Scouts will tell you (at least the ones I’ve talked with) that baseball is getting screwed up because kids know the way to get to the big leagues is to light up a radar gun or hit a ball 400 feet and nobody gives a rat’s ass if they don’t know how to bunt or hit the ball to the right side or produce a fly ball when needed or which base to throw to on what play.
Front office guys (at least the ones I’ve talked to) will tell you defense is undervalued because analytics have a hard time measuring it, so there’s a bunch of kids running around the big leagues who can’t play defense for shit and that means smart teams need to avoid the strikeout and get the ball in play and make those lousy defenders play defense.
(As some of you might recall, the 2015 Royals won a World Series when they forced the New York Mets to play defense and the Mets couldn’t do it. You’d think there’s a lesson there, but if you’ve gone way too far down the Analytics Highway, maybe it’s too late to make a philosophical U-turn.)
Inability to perform baseball fundamentals
So you got a bunch of great athletes who don’t know the finer points of the game because knowing how to do the little stuff isn’t valued. For instance:
Over the course of his career Mickey Mantle had 14 sacrifice bunts and so far Mike Trout has zero. (Maybe Mickey never should have bunted and maybe Mike can bunt his ass off if somebody asks him to, but so far only Mickey has shown he could do it.)
So you get young studs who can throw a baseball 100 miles an hour, but have no idea where it’s going or what pitch should be thrown next, which is why you see all those young studs staring into their hats where they keep the cards that tell them what to do next because they have no clue without getting help from the coaches who make out the cards.
So what brought all this on?
Dodgers v. Giants, Friday, September 3, 2021
So I’m in LA watching the Dodgers play the Giants and they’re tied for first place with a month left to go, so it doesn’t get much better than this unless you can set up a Mixed Martial Arts tournament between the Hatfields and McCoys and if you manage to pull that off let me know because I’d buy tickets in a heartbeat.
Plus, I watched the game with my son and he actually pays attention so he knows what’s going on and what each pitch means and that’s a joy because usually I’m watching baseball with someone who has the attention span of gerbil who’s just snorted amyl nitrate. (I’m not naming any names, but you know who you are…Brad.)
Knowing the goddamn rules
So the Dodgers have runners on second and third and one out in the ninth and the Giants have the infield in to cut down a runner at the plate and despite that, Justin Turner tries to score on a ball hit to a Giants infielder.
A story about the play called Justin trying to score “ill-advised” which is actually “poorly informed” because there’s a play called the contact play in which the runner on third is told to go home “on contact” and it’s basically a gamble that the ball won’t be hit right at somebody and when it works it looks like good aggressive base running, but when the ball is hit right at somebody and the runner is out by a lot the runner looks like a moron even though he’s just doing what he was told to do.
Anyway…
The ball is put in play and Justin Turner tries to score, but Giants catcher Buster Posey has the ball way before Turner arrives so Turner decides to retreat to third base, but the runner on second (Corey Seager) has already advanced and is standing on third base so the Dodgers wound up with two runners on the same base which is one more than they generally let you get away with.
Now here’s the rule governing that situation:
The lead runner has the right to the base and the trail runner doesn’t.
I’m a political cartoonist who played a little amateur ball (and played it poorly) and even I know that rule.
So Posey tags both runners and the umpire clearly points at the trail runner and calls him out, but Justin Turner (the lead runner) also leaves the base and when a Giant teammate freaks the fuck out because nobody is on third base, Posey tries to tag the trail runner who was already out, which gives Turner time to get back to the bag and me time to go batshit.
Here’s why:
Buster Posey is a 7-time All-Star, league MVP, won a Gold Glove and a Batting Title, won four Silver Sluggers, was Rookie of the Year and played in three World Series.
Justin Turner is a 2-time All Star, was the NLCS MVP and has also played in a World Series.
And neither one of these All-Star players know the rules of the game they’re making millions to play.
If Posey had tagged the right runner that game would have been over and the Giants would have won right then, but the Giants won two innings later so Posey’s fuck up became a minor story, but for me it indicates a generation of players who are definitely better athletes, but might not be better ballplayers.
Like I said at the beginning:
Kids Today.
For some reason...and I don't know why...in the original version I kept writing "Kid's Today" with an unnecessary apostrophe, so I guess Kids Today can complain about the Kids of Yesterday who forget the rules of grammar.
Sixty-five? Shit, I'm only 56 and I've been complaining about kids today since I was 35. 😜