Baseball police

I will finish off my musings on baseball by writing briefly about baseball cops (the same applies to other major professional and amateur sports). Sports cops are better known as league commissioners or such, and are paid solely to make sure their particular sport is bettable. That is to say they want to make sure the game is played on the up-and-up so that all betting will be “fair”. The boys in Vegas want to know that they will make a profit on all gross wagers in a given day. Cops don’t pay much attention to whom team owners socialize with or partner with in business ventures, or what bets they place and on whom, because the owners sign their paychecks. But let a player, even if he is one of the best and most popular and dedicated players that ever donned spikes get caught betting on his own team and he is verbally castrated and burned on a sacrificial alter to the fairness and wholesomeness of the all-American game. We must remember mom and apple pie! Just ask Charlie Hustle himself, the legend-in-his-own-time Pete Rose. No one that I can remember has ever played the game of baseball harder and with more intensity and passion than did Rose. In all probability, he will never be inducted into the Hall of Fame for baseball, its highest honor, at least not while he is alive. He got caught betting on his own team. Gracious! If he had been wagering against his teammates, he may have solicited at least a tut-tut from me, but not for betting on them! Had the team owner been caught doing the same thing, nothing would have been said, and the team owner is the person most capable of throwing a game. These are greedy folk and how they make their money goes hardly noticed by fans. I don’t say they would or do cheat, but whom is in a better position to do so? You own a team, you own the cops, you own the money and connections and betting is sort of fun …

Even though Rose has had some skirmishes with Federal cops since being forced out of baseball, and even though he may have some in-your-face personality issues, he was still one of the greatest players to pull on a strap! In my opinion, top ball cops should allow demand him entry into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, and it should be done in his lifetime. While they are at it, Shoeless Joe Jackson should be right beside him, although not in his own lifetime!

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This is my Brasstacks for January 26, 2009.

Baseball since Maris

As I said in my previous post, baseball as a sport died with the coming of the big money in the early 1960’s. Not only was television responsible for the cash influx, but so were sponsors with deep pockets wanting to reach as many people as possible to sell their products or services. In that era, Major League Baseball was the sport. Games, especially the World Series, had been broadcast on tv for many years. I remember the principal of my elementary school bringing a television set to work with him and setting it up in a classroom where some of the lucky boys got to watch the greats of the game vie for the world championship. I was fortunate to get to see some of the games, but the girls and non-selected boys had to stay in their usual classes. No equal rights or women’s lib then.

It is my opinion that on the day in 1961 when Roger Maris hit his 61st home run of the season, baseball’s fun died as the ball cleared the outfield fence. It started when Maris was belittled—mainly by the press—for breaking Babe Ruth’s long-held record. It took him a few more games to set the new record than it did for Ruth, but the press forgot to mention Maris was up against more and better players than was Ruth, especially pitchers. The art of pitching has gotten better over the years, and is still improving to this day. With a bat, things are quite different; hitting has never kept pace with pitching, so Maris had to slug against far better throwing than did Ruth. The lead-up, the spectacle of the record being broken, and the contrived and controversial aftermath is what attracted the attention of tv and the corporate sponsors, particularly tobacco companies, auto makers, men’s toiletry makers, and brewers.

There have been some very good players since then, with many of them better than anyone that ever played the sport. Their biggest problem is their money and egos overshadow their abilities. But a few like Hank Aaron, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Cal Ripken Jr., Roberto Clemente, and some others were very good players and very popular with the fans because the fans were very popular with them.

I don’t consider any home runs per year hitting record since that of Maris as being legitimate, and everyone knows why. Strength enhancing drugs and Major League Baseball’s refusal to test players for them was the final nail in the coffin for the credibility of the sport.

I said that hitting has not kept up with pitching. The biggest reason pitchers do not see as much improvement from steroids is the bio-mechanics of the human body can take only so much stress, and pitching a baseball at 90+ mph is extremely stressful on muscles, bones, and joint tissue. Building more muscle becomes anti-conducive to pitchers after a certain limit, as increased muscle strength causes that much more stress on bones and joints, even to the point of breaking and ripping them apart. Not so bad with hitters though. The pure power that a strong muscle delivers through a bat to a ball is enormous, but there is not that over-and-over repetitive motion that a pitcher has to go through. Pitching improvement has come mostly through the refinement of the technique of ball delivery.
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I will finish this later with a few words about Pete Rose and baseball cops.

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This is my Brasstacks for Juanuary 24, 2009

Yankee Stadium

Is there a more recognizable icon in the colorful eras of American sports than Yankee Stadium? “The House that Ruth Built” will soon be demolished after hosting 85 years of some of the most exciting moments and players in baseball history. Baseball will never be the same without its presence on the Bronx skyline, and the sense of of history it imparted to everyone whom visited the stands for an afternoon of relaxation. Can you imagine a young boy’s eyes getting large as saucers when one of the great sluggers whom played there popped a homer over his head? Can you imagine going into the spanking new home of the Yankees and buying pieces of the venerable old stadium as souvenirs?

Baseball, like some other popular sports, has been in decline for many years, mostly due to its own successes of the 1950’s which brought tv into the picture. When CBS bought the Yankees in the 60’s, the youthful glory years of the sport still being a game were over. Big money took over from big fun, and it has been nothing more than a meat market ever since. The players are overpaid, especially the super-stars, and the owners are going to do whatever it takes to get the most people in the stands at the highest ticket prices the market will endure, and concessions are priced so high that “buy me some peanuts and cracker jack” are only song lyrics nowadays because a poor person cannot afford the seventh-inning-stretch treats.

Baseball is not a good sport to watch on television; it is just too big for all of it to be seen. The worst seat in the stands is far better for viewing the game than is the best seat in front of a television. The tv shows a closeup of the pitcher on his mound and in his windup and delivery, then another camera takes over and shows the batter at the plate as the ball is either hit or zooms by at incredible speed. There are at least nine other players on the field while this is happening, plus base coaches, umpires and various personnel in the bullpens and around the dugouts. If the camera zooms out to try to take it all in, very little can be seen of anything even on today’s big screen television sets. There is always something going on with the players on the field and elsewhere, coaches, bat boys (or girls), field maintenance crews, and the fans in the stands, but because of its limitations, tv shows only immediate action wherever the ball happens to be. My biggest gripe with television sports coverage is the constant and inane chatter that goes on between the game announcer and the “color commentator” whom is there to tell us every single thing he knows about his particular sport in very few words and phrases that are repeated over and over and over to give us idiots at home who are watching and listening some insight into how the game “really” should be played. Shaddup!

This spring when the new season begins and if you are like me and do not live near a major league team, go out and buy a ticket to a minor league professional game, then go home and watch a big league game on tv  for comparison. I believe you will see that the entertainment and a bit of the glory years exist in a small stadium where you can afford to buy your kid a pack of peanuts and some Cracker Jacks, and maybe even see a future super-star.
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This is my Brasstacks for January 21, 2009.

I intend to continue this subject matter at a later date.

Welcome

Welcome to Brasstacks44.

• This is my first blog on WordPress.com
• I have been in a mid-life crisis since puberty
• I am 64 years old and male
• I am retired from heavy construction
• I dislike politicians in or running for office
• I distrust preachers
• I dislike organized religion
• I like to bitch … a lot
• I have other blogs on blogger.com and post photos on Flickr

Blog entries will more than likely be sporadic at first. I don’t know how WordPress works, so everything is subject screw-ups.

Having stated that I am 64 years of age, this blog will either be the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end. Contrary to popular opinion in a poll I took of myself when I turned 50, I probably will not live forever.