Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Discounting Dingers
Now that Barry Bonds has tied his Godfather, Wilie Mays, for 3rd all time in home runs, the critics will surely come from all sides to discount the slugger's accomplishments. Frankly, I'm tired of every home run achievement getting dogged by "experts" and fans alike.
Steroids, bandbox parks, watered-down pitching... the haters will lob any and every excuse possible to place asterisks next to modern records, as if baseball today can't equal the stars of yesteryear.
It's crap -- all of it.
Barry Bonds uses juice? So did Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco, and neither of them are on a Major League roster. They're no older than Bonds, so why aren't they launching rockets into McCovey's Cove?
Wrigley Field is a notorius hitters' park? Babe Ruth hit an insane amount of round-trippers into the short "home run porch" in right field at Yankee Stadium. Sure, some of the new parks have smaller dimensions. How is that a bad thing?
Expansion has diluted the talent pool? The US population has increased by almost 120 million people in the past 40 years. Baseball also now imports much of its talent from Latin America, and Japanese stars continue to make the jump to the Majors. So how can anyone, with a straight face, complain that there isn't enough talent to fill 750 roster spots?
Today's power hitters feast on weak pitching? Ruth's 1927 Yankees feasted on a lot of bad pitching, too. The Bambino didn't get 60 HRs by facing guys, night in and night out, with 2.00 ERAs.
Today's players are stronger, faster and better-conditioned than ever before. They play ball all year, and they use training techniques unheard of a half-century ago. Baseball has simply changed. The excuses are what's ruining the game, not the game itself.
And if you want to place blame, then how about placing it with the league? Shoebox-sized strike zones and lowered pitching mounds have had much more of an adverse effect on ERAs than steroids. So if anyone should be whining, then I could accept it from pitchers.
As far as the rest of you are concerned... shut up and let's play ball!
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Steroids, bandbox parks, watered-down pitching... the haters will lob any and every excuse possible to place asterisks next to modern records, as if baseball today can't equal the stars of yesteryear.
It's crap -- all of it.
Barry Bonds uses juice? So did Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco, and neither of them are on a Major League roster. They're no older than Bonds, so why aren't they launching rockets into McCovey's Cove?
Wrigley Field is a notorius hitters' park? Babe Ruth hit an insane amount of round-trippers into the short "home run porch" in right field at Yankee Stadium. Sure, some of the new parks have smaller dimensions. How is that a bad thing?
Expansion has diluted the talent pool? The US population has increased by almost 120 million people in the past 40 years. Baseball also now imports much of its talent from Latin America, and Japanese stars continue to make the jump to the Majors. So how can anyone, with a straight face, complain that there isn't enough talent to fill 750 roster spots?
Today's power hitters feast on weak pitching? Ruth's 1927 Yankees feasted on a lot of bad pitching, too. The Bambino didn't get 60 HRs by facing guys, night in and night out, with 2.00 ERAs.
Today's players are stronger, faster and better-conditioned than ever before. They play ball all year, and they use training techniques unheard of a half-century ago. Baseball has simply changed. The excuses are what's ruining the game, not the game itself.
And if you want to place blame, then how about placing it with the league? Shoebox-sized strike zones and lowered pitching mounds have had much more of an adverse effect on ERAs than steroids. So if anyone should be whining, then I could accept it from pitchers.
As far as the rest of you are concerned... shut up and let's play ball!
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