If the past few weeks have proven anything, it’s that ballplayers are not like us. Oh, sure, they breath our same air, they put their pants on the same way, and may even like the same food and TV shows as we do, but they are not like us when it comes to watching baseball. At least, most of them aren’t.
Take Saturday night’s Chase Utley slide, which left Ruben Tejada with a broken leg and the Dodgers with new life. Nearly every person on Twitter and elsewhere who has not played Major League Baseball agreed that, even if the slide wasn’t illegal (and plenty of people thought it was illegal), it was still dirty as hell in this day and age.
Many players and former players, however, disagreed. Shane Victorino applauded Utley’s slide on Twitter, although he later expressed regret when it became clear how bad the injury to Tejada was. Cal Ripken, normally the most teflon and uncontroversial of people as far as his public opinions go, focused mainly on how it was a solid and hard-nosed baseball play, basically oblivious to the fact that his biggest claim to fame was made possible by the fact that such a thing never happened to him, at least to that extent. Mark Mulder said that it was plays like that that made Utley a player that Mulder wished would be on his team. While some such as Justin Upton and basically all of the Mets had problems with the play, even then, few of of them were saying that the play was completely illegal… probably because, well, it is legal. Utley did make a half-hearted attempt at touching the bag as he slid, after all, so by the rules it was a legal play. Now, there were plenty of other issues with what happened (especially after the slide and the replay and all of that), but the slide itself was legal. It shouldn’t be, and several current players agreed.
But the legality of Utley’s slide is not what’s important to this article. What’s important is how players view things in the lens of playing the game. They are, in some ways, only able to see baseball things in the context of playing baseball and the clubhouse cultures they played in. Where we see Papelbon attacking his team’s best player, they see a “boys will be boys” enforcement of the unwritten rules. Where we see a dirty play that leaves a man with a broken fibula, they merely see a player doing whatever it takes to win. And then there are internal differences, between rookies and veterans, pitchers and position players, etc. etc.
It’s like a whole different world.
–
LINKS!
The lawyer that keeps Steve Bartman’s privacy
Christian Red on Cespedes and Cuba
Rich Sandomir on Jessica Mendoza
..And, finally, there is no SELF-PROMOTION OF THE WEEK this week, but keep an eye open in the coming week for another “Breaking OOTP”, in which Mario characters will face the cast of the classic Backyard Baseball games.
–
A reminder to go to www.baseballcontinuum.com, follow me @DanJGlickman, and continue to read The Hall of Very Good!
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
