There comes a time when you’re a child when you’re introduced to most of the readily accessible sports like basketball, football, soccer and hockey which all have one thing in common. They are what I used to call the “up and down games” where the objective is to have someone defending a goal on one end of the playing surface and someone protecting a goal on the other end.
The objective in each is to defeat that defense and score goals, baskets or points in greater quantity than your opposition. There are time limits of four quarters in most (three periods for ice hockey). It is essentially the same games played on different playing fields with different sized balls, pucks or whatever is used to pass from team to team as they exchange possession.
The objective in each is to defeat that defense and score goals, baskets or points in greater quantity than your opposition. There are time limits of four quarters in most (three periods for ice hockey). It is essentially the same games played on different playing fields with different sized balls, pucks or whatever is used to pass from team to team as they exchange possession.
Then you get introduced to this curious game of baseball where you’re told there are no time limits, the game is measured in 9 units called innings, the scoring can take place dozens of different ways, and it seems that ballplayers can have much longer careers in this game than in the ones previously described. There is a gentle language to baseball about “going home” or “switching sides” or “walks” and “runs”.
The first time you pick up a bat to play the game you realize just how difficult it is to make a solid piece of wood (or even plastic) come into contact with a thrown ball traveling at pretty slow speed from a short-distanced mound to home plate. Nowadays, of course, the game has changed significantly for children with dedicated adult pitchers, protective nets to keep them from having to field batted balls, and even dedicated runners after the ball is hit.
On the defensive side of the field things are even more ponderous. You often have games with four outfielders, catchers who can’t catch the ball, pitchers who can’t throw the ball, and people running around after batted balls resembling random collisions in a modern video game.
As children mature the game more fully resembles what we pay to see on a nearly daily basis when there’s no pandemic uprooting the season. Yes, there are some differences such as aluminum bats, designated hitters and increasingly stringent pitch counts. However, the basic structure is essentially the same.
What makes it interesting is how professional scouts evaluate what it is a player on his way up can do and what they think he’ll be able to produce in the future. Obviously there’s a great interest in the big hitters and power pitchers, but any number of Hall of Famers have come into existence who did not reach the 30+ home run mark or the 200+ strikeout plateaus.
Think of guys like Tim Raines and Greg Maddux who achieved the game’s highest honor without ever reaching those performance levels. They did many other things that greatly stood out in the game, including a .294 AVG with 808 stolen bases for Raines and four Cy Young Awards with innumerable All Star appearances for Maddux.
Think of guys like Tim Raines and Greg Maddux who achieved the game’s highest honor without ever reaching those performance levels. They did many other things that greatly stood out in the game, including a .294 AVG with 808 stolen bases for Raines and four Cy Young Awards with innumerable All Star appearances for Maddux.
It’s the time of the year when everyone is itching without baseball, no guarantee it’s going to start at all this season, and the abbreviated draft being about all fans can discuss these days.
Maddux was amazing especially those 2 back to back seasons where he was something like 35-8, 1.70. He was drafted 31st overall in the second round, and thus must have shown some superior skills besides a FB.
ReplyDeleteThe Mets drafted Shawn Abner # 1 overall, and 2 slots before Maddux picked memorable catcher Lorenzo Sisney. Yeah I never heard of him either. He had a short, lousy minor league career.
Maddux came up real young and looked bad (8-18, 5.60 in 185 innings) in his first two years before becoming GREG MADDUX THE GREAT. What he did to fix his game, I am not sure.
The Mets drafted two small speedsters in rounds 1 and 2 in 1977...Wally B and Mookie.
I have a feeling that drafting Mookie was why they passed on Raines in their 3rd and 4th rounds, when the Mets picked a couple of no-names. How Raines, who excelled in the minors then in the majors, got to slip to the 5th round is beyond me.
In the realm of "power bats", my mantra, I do not exclude (and in fact loosely include) guys with an absolutely superior skill set (in his case his awesome speed) if he can also hit - which he certainly could.
If it came down to drafting a questionable hitter who could hit balls 600 feet, or a speedster who could steal 60-80 bases, hit well, and have some power, the choice is obvious...the latter.
Gavin Cecchini was an example of a draft mistake - a first round guy who could not steal 60-80 bases, hit with any power, and was not a superior fielder.
Don't draft a Lorenzo Sisney 29th overall, and don't draft a Gavin Cecchini in the top 13.
Baseball was the first team game I knew about or played. OK, probably BB surrogates (punchball, kickball) at the earliest ages. but sandlot baseball even before street touch-football (and there weren't many playgrounds with hoops, you needed gym access for basketball), Maybe street football was contemporary with the sandlot, but it followed seasonally and was certainly further removed from the real (football) thing than our "two swings" version of The Pastime.
ReplyDeleteI could name all 16 MLB teams before I knew there was an NFL or NBA. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced the demise of peer-organized, administrated & executed sandlot baseball was the harbinger of America's social dysfunction.
Hobie, that last sentence speaks volumes.
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