How do you define ugly baseball? Committing lots of errors, losing by a ton of runs as your pitchers get shellacked? That’s not a bad definition.
I have a different one.
Ugly baseball is when players and managers act like 5 year olds, instead of the well paid adults they’re supposed to be. We had a bit of that versus the Cubs in our recent series, highlighted by Joe Maddon’s vigilante rant.
(I don’t know if anybody threw at anybody on purpose, all I know is people got hit, and Maddon went nuts.)
What’s more, people seem to *like* this, saying ups the drama for the pennant race.
Hogwash.
I’ve said this in the past: The Cardinals are professionals, and I don’t think they’d do such things on purpose. My question is, why aren’t all baseball players (and managers) professionals? They’re being paid a ton of money to play a game, and in doing so, set examples for the fans that follow them, whether they want to or not.
As I said, people, particularly columnists, played this up as a good thing, highlighting playoff level intensity or some-such stupid theory.
The average fan, of course, probably buys into this, and wants retaliation, even if the player getting hit by the pitch was accidental, which is stupid.
Maybe it’s me. I’m not your conventional fan, I approach things from a GM point of view. I admire team building, and hate it when star players get hurt (though I also admire when GM’s have good contingency plans in place.) I’m not the emotional type, and don’t understand players acquired for edges, as I’ve discussed in the past. when it comes to players getting hit truth is this:
A player getting hit by a pitch is never a good thing, pure and simple.
Which is why I think last weekends series was truly ugly baseball, and I hope we don’t see much more of it.
As always, thanks for reading.