Bring back the shutout and the beanball!
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on May 15, 2007 12:32 PM PDT
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PrintI am still steaming mad this morning that Haren didn't go out to pitch the 9th last night. I was doing the dishes during the bottom of the 8th, so I don't know if Haren begged off, or if Geren pulled him out, and that's the only reason I'm not posting a diary chewing out Haren for begging off or chewing out Geren for being a slave to pitch counts. However...
I just read Blez's post and thread about last night's game, and I have to admit that I'm a little bit upset with the general readership of AN that there's not a groundswell of righteous indignation that Haren left the game. Most of you folks seem to assume it's the right move to pull him just because he's tired or has a high pitch count. I tell you what, if you tried to pull Bob Gibson or Don Drysdale or Jack Morris pitching a shutout, he'd have shoved the ball so far up your a$$ that you'd be crapping out of your bellybutton for a week! I sure hope to hell that when Haren was pulled he didn't just go sit on the bench with a towel over his head. I hope he kicked the water cooler or threw his glove or something to express his frustration at not being able to fulfill his manly duty to pitch the 9th in a shutout ballgame! Not going out to pitch the 9th in a shutout ballgame is the ultimate "Gee, honey... this hasn't happened to me before... Maybe we'll use the vibrator tonight..."
If it were up to me, I would make it against the rules of baseball to pull a starting pitcher that's throwing a shutout. Even in extra innings. Even if it's 0-0 in the 13th!
The shutout is the ultimate pitching stat of manliness and godliness. That, and HBP's. Teams need to use their 12th bullpen spot as an enforcer. If an opposing hitter is crowding the plate, bring in the enforcer, and have him throw his first pitch behind the head of the hitter. The hitter, thinking the pitch is coming at his head, is inclined to back up, and maybe gets hit in the face and breaks his jaw. Having to eat dinner through a straw for a month will teach those dirty SOB's to back the XXXX off the plate. And if the enforcer gets suspended... no great loss... (yes, I know that you can't fill the roster spot of a suspended player) You've still got an 11 man bullpen and an intimidated opposition, not just the team you're facing, but every other team that sees the highlights on Baseball Tonight. Who cares if the manager gets suspended too? It's not like there are any genius managers out there singlehandedly winning and losing games anymore. The days of Earl Weaver, Billy Martin, Dick Williams, and Gene Mauch are long over, unfortunately.
I am so sick and tired of conservative handling of athletes. Athletes are SURROGATE GLADIATORS! Even in baseball. Just because baseball is more akin to eastern-style single combat martial arts than western-style total warfare does not mean that it is not a WAR. There are casualties in war. Any BS whitewashing of that fact does not serve the warriors... in fact, it gives them a false sense of security that makes them more likely to be KILLED (lose the game)...
One of my favorite pitchers, Jim "The Bulldog" Bouton (you may have heard of him, or read his book "Ball Four" forty or fifty times when you were a kid, like I did...) used to psyche himself up by imagining that kidnappers were holding his family hostage and that they all would be killed if he didn't win the game. I admire that mindset. That's the headspace I want my pitchers in on the mound... Losing is supposed to be painful. Winning is merely the byproduct of the quest for perfection... Pitchers should be prepared to sacrifice in the line of duty...
And that's where Rich Harden comes to mind. I know that the trainers and management downplay the extent of his injuries, but I'm going to say it right here... I DON'T THINK HE'S HURT THAT BADLY... I loathe the mindset of mollycoddling him, hoping that he's going to find some period of health... He's not. The dude's just not built to have a long career throwing 97MPH fastballs. If he can still get people out, even in pain, the team should send him out there. It's his duty to pitch until his arm falls off. He can take two years off for surgery and rehab and come back as a Jamie Moyer type later if he can, but not on our time and not on our dime!
To sum it all up... Starters pitching a shutout shouldn't be pulled. The beanball is an effective weapon against plate crowders. Hockey fights should be encouraged. American Football needs less padding and more casualties... Title bouts in Ultimate Fighting should be TO THE DEATH! Kids who fight in the schoolyard shouldn't be suspended, but taken into the gym, given boxing gloves, and allowed to take care of business, and Dan Haren should have gone nine last night.
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I don't chase kids off my lawn...
I invite them to play wiffleball on my lawn. And if a hitter is crowding the plate, I make a mound visit and instruct the pitcher to throw at the hitter's face. The beautiful thing is that it's a wiffleball, and what usually happens is that the hitter says "ouch," and learns the valuable lesson that the inside part of the plate belongs to the pitcher, and the pitcher is only down one or two balls for the effort.
If I happened to have a bigger lawn, and bigger kids happened to be paid a lot of money to walk across it, and they just happened to play with a harder ball, my advice would still be the same.
However, if I happened to be on the mound in a pickup game in the park with friends and neighbors, and somebody crowded the plate on me, I wouldn't throw at his face, because he is a friend and/or neighbor, and we are not highly paid surrogate gladiators, but just friends/neighbors playing a friendly game. I would throw at his bicep or his butt instead, because a bone bruise would teach him the same lesson without requiring hospitalization.
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on May 15, 2007 12:42 PM PDT up reply actions
And dammit
You'd make the tikes pitch the entire 9 innings, too!
by kaweahkaweah on May 15, 2007 1:04 PM PDT up reply actions
gee, why don't you tell us how u really feel....
by littleA on May 15, 2007 12:42 PM PDT reply actions
Hi, Little A
just a little comment about your signature...
Love/light is the irresistible force.
Fear/Loathing/Darkness is the immovable object.
You can't have a pure raindrop without an impure speck of pollution for it to form around.
You can't create anything impurely evil without a speck of pure good intention to wrap it around.
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on May 15, 2007 12:49 PM PDT reply actions
send him out for the ninth?
He'd already thrown 118 pitches, do you want his arm to fall off??
Sports are not war
And to suggest otherwise is to do a gross disservice to the many who've been killed, maimed, and orphaned, losing lives and home and hope. Baseball players aren't warriors...they're men who get to play a game for a living. Your characterization is disgusting.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on May 15, 2007 2:07 PM PDT reply actions
bull!
sports are SURROGATE WARFARE... People need outlets for their darker energies. Why do you think that Ultimate Fighting is making boxing completely irrelevant? The answer is that boxing does not funtionally gratify the need for release of hostility on the part of the combatants, or the voyeurs that are too weak to participate, because the sport is TOO CONTROLLED and TOO SAFE.
What upsets me is that societies all over the world are getting overcrowded... people are finding themselves more and more irrelevant... and the violence caused by these situations/feelings is unpredictably spouting out in random shootings, suicide bombings, and in other unpredictable ways. I would much prefer that this violence spout out in acceptable ritualized methods amongst players/combatants that understand that injury and/or death are part of the ritual, and accept that and are at peace with that, rather than trying to fight against it.
If you dig into the history of the evolution of eastern and western society, you will find that almost every one of mankind's "games" is invented by warriors and nobility to hone their minds/bodies for war, and these games eventually trickled down to the general populace during peaceful times as surrogates for war and preparations for war...
Chess and checkers... you bet'cha. The first soccer ball was the severed head of an enemy. In the ancient Aztec form of basketball, the winning team was sacrfificed to the gods after the contest ended.
Baseball grew up from rounders and one'o'cat (chase and pursuit games based on warfare and hunting) and the ancient roots of cricket come from swordsmanship practice.
Yes, sports are a functional, controlled form of warfare, performing a necessary service keeping the tapestry of society from unraveling, and to characterize them otherwise is to do a great disservice to all those who were maimed and died on the sporting battlefields of Planet Earth... You're pissing on the graves of Ray Chapman, Darryl Stingley, and Dale Earnhardt Sr. You're disrespecting all the dead bareknuckle boxers, fencers, wrestlers, and martial artists who gave their lives to their sport/art/surrogate warfare form. I forgive you, of course, but will they?
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on May 15, 2007 2:49 PM PDT up reply actions
Even "ultimate" fighters
still play a game for a living.
Violence isn't war either; your continued conflation of the two only proves that your life has either been untouched by the horror of war, or that you have your head so far up your ass that you are unable to learn the obvious lesson. If the latter, don't worry too much--you have plenty of company on Pennsylvania Ave, WDC.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on May 15, 2007 3:21 PM PDT up reply actions
look, my friend...
A fight is not a game, even if it happens to be marketed as such. However, as I have spent most of the day typing, games are the outlets that functional societies put into place in order to give a semi-constructive outlet for the energies that otherwise would have created fights.
You obviously have seen the horrors of war firsthand. If you were drafted or dragged into it against your will, I'm sorry that such an awful thing had to happen to you. You did not deserve that.
However, if you went into it willingly, under certain illusions, and then had those illusions horribly shattered, then I hope you are thankful for the opportunity to have had those illusions shattered, and that you were able to come out the other end alive (albeit scarred), for that proves your strength as a warrior, as a human, and as an incarnation of the divine, and that's a strength that doesn't die here with your body... That's a strength you take into not only all your future lives, but all of your past lives also, because time is an illusion that we only experience in 3-D reality.
If you happen to be one of the believers in the great lie that you only have one life, and when you die you're permanently forever dead, and there's a being that will judge you and can venerate or destroy you at his whim, then I most certainly hope you get the opportunity to have that illusion horribly shattered too, and that you come out the other side stronger (albeit scarred), for that will even further prove your strength as a warrior, as a sentient being, and as an incarnation of the divine, and at that point, we can fight/play our wars/games as brothers, reveling in the light of brotherhood and victory, and at the same time, reveling in the darkness of loss, death, torture, and suffering...
If you're a total light being/healer, then I understand where you're coming from and realize that we're just going to have to disagree. If we were here face to face I'd give you a hug and take you out for Thai food.
As for me... I'm not a total light being. I am a being of balance. If I see ten spiders and ten flies, I'm going to let five spiders crawl up my body to the best places to build their webs, and then slowly pull the legs off of the other five for entertainment, and to take the competition away from the spiders I've chosen to nurture. I'll feed five of the flies to the five living spiders and then lead the other five flies to the steamiest most nutritious dung piles I can find, which is an act of light, but also provides the future food stock for the spiders I've chosen to nurture, which is an act of darkness, because breeding animals purely for the sake of consuming them is obviously not an act of sweetness and light.
Afterwards, I will pray to all the infinite energies to be allowed to reincarnate as ALL 20 OF THE INSECTS/ARACHNIDS I just affected.
This is an allegory, of course, but a functional one that explains my attitudes towards life, death, and balance. If you see where I'm coming from, that's great. If not, then I give you permission to think that I'm sick and twisted, and I'm going to think you're not very intelligent, whether you give me permission to think that way or not. Either way I'll still give you a hug, take you for Thai food, and instead of arguing this point, we can argue the merits of who should be the starting catcher for the A's (Kurt Suzuki, of course) or other fun inanities...
Peace and War,
K
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on May 15, 2007 4:31 PM PDT up reply actions
118 pitches ain't nothin'
If a major league starter can't throw at least 130-140 once in a while, when he happens to be throwing a shutout, then yes, I absolutely want his arm to fall off, Dave Dravecky style. Then, the trainers can come out and put him down like a fallen horse and give him a Christian burial in the bullpen after the relief pitcher finishes warming up.
But the point is that I want the pitcher to have the bulldog mentality to go up to the manager after the 8th (even in the NL with the pitcher due up in the inning) and say, "Skip, if you dare even think about pulling me from this game, I'll break your nose right here where we stand..."
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on May 15, 2007 2:13 PM PDT reply actions
I want an ace who does what's best for the team
and that is, keep himself healthy, so he can make 35 starts.
I want a manager who would knock out the teeth of any player who would dare say that to him.
I want an owner who would fine the player for bleeding in his dugout.
I'm almost with you on that one...
I'd prefer this:
A bulldog who hates to come out of the game and broadcasts that attitude at 50,000 watts...
I'd prefer a manager whom, if a player threatened to hit him for taking him out of the game, said, "Fine then... get your ass back in there for the 9th, and if you give up so much as one run, it's your sorry mouth that'll be missing teeth, not mine, buddy..." And if a run scores, it's Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson time...
as for 35 starts, that's just another piece of weak-a$$ mollycoddling BS. Good pitchers with strong bodies can make 40-42 starts, every 4th day, and pitch in the Dominican or Mexico all winter to boot.
If it were up to me, I'd outlaw the 5 man rotation. 4 starters only. If that means that 40% of MLB pitchers wash out with injuries, so be it. There are many strong, able-bodied pitchers in the minors and independent leagues that would salivate over the chance to make the MLB minimum... The obvious counterargument to that is that the hitters then would have an unfair advantage... However, that can easily be negated by allowing the pitchers to throw inside without warnings, so those big dumb brutes will back the XXXX off the plate, like they should have been doing for the last 30 years. If that's not enough, then deaden the ball a little bit. It's not unprecedented to secretly change the makeup of the baseball... I mean, they've only done it 40 or 50 times already.
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on May 15, 2007 4:45 PM PDT up reply actions
SPWC at home
Don't hurt me!
I do think Haren should've pitched the 9th last night.
And that's where we part company. Your blood-n-guts prose is overblown and histrionic, methinks. To say that "games are war" vastly overstates their similarities, and under-values their critical differences.
I can't tell if you're Stephen Colbert or Patton
Either you're being extremely subtle (and if so hilarious) or you're overzealous about the masculinity of sports. I tend to think the former and if so I congratulate you. If not, I think we could argue about the wisdom of these ideas for a good while.
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