Baseballhead:
Walking Out

Michael Cox

Nanu-nanu, reader, and welcome to Baseballhead, where the '70s never left and everybody wears Nolan Ryan-era pullover Astros tops.

Before we begin, let me tell you what I won't be talking about this week. I'll avoid adding another voice to the media cacophony calling for a quick end to MLB's homermania. Besides talking plenty about it back when it actually began to be a problem, I know as little about the reasons for it as anyone else (save one: money). The only reasoning I don't buy is the supposed sudden hail of homers in the past decade's new ballparks.

However, there's a notable side effect that I noticed a while back, yet nobody else has brought up: when grooving a pitch is more likely to result in a homer, pitchers avoid grooving a pitch, with little regard to any other negative results. In other words, better a walk than a homer. Yeah, that's the ticket.

This problem reached its nadir last weekend in Milwaukee, where the Brewers' staff reacted to facing a slammin' Astros lineup by issuing more walks than any team in the history of all sports which honor the concept of a walk. Milwaukee starter Everett Stull gave up seven earned runs on Saturday -- but only one hit.

Mind you, a couple more free passes resulted from armor-assisted balls off the elbow of Craig Biggio, which is a whole other can of worms I won't get into here. And as for the eternal debate concerning whether walks are good hitting or poor pitching, I don't think anyone who watched these games is asking that question in this particular instance.

The Point is that walks in a game such as this are not only crappy pitching, they're crappy entertainment. A walk-o-rama takes much longer than a game resolved by flies and ground balls, assures frequent pitching changes, and is just plain depressing even when it's your team being walked.

In fact, on the baseball enjoyment scale, walks fit somewhere between buying a warm, flat $6 beer and hearing your team's announcer intone, "Now pitching, Norm Charlton."

And because baseball is entertainment, an intelligent commissioner would look into this problem. However, there isn't an intelligent commissioner, so look for more of the same. You did notice that there was no mention of enlarging the strike zone this season, despite the new "relationship" between MLB and its umps.

It makes you wonder -- perhaps the only reason Selig pushed a strike zone change in years past is that he knew then that he had a better chance of getting umps to wear spandex uniforms. Also, this past week saw the game's Cuban-born players joining with Miami-area activists in staging a one-day strike to protest the return of Elian Gonzalez to his father. Except that unlike the common ex-Cubans in South Florida, all the players were paid for their day. And some were asked by their teams to take the day off.

Come to think of it, this seems more like an action mandated by MLB than a strike, doesn't it? I'm not about to take either side in the Elian case (that "not knowing the facts" thing again -- I know it hasn't stopped anyone else, but tough nuts). What I will take a side against is the precedent -- that you can sit out a game as a political protest, with pay, and that's just ducky with your team.

Does this apply to anti-WTO protests too? What about issues where both sides feel strongly, like abortion or HOV lanes? Or was this simply another chance for Bud Selig to prove MLB's righteous stance in issues of race and culture? If you ask me, the first guy to try and protest seal hunting will find himself on the business end of a suspension.

Finally, congratulations are in order for Jeff "The Freshmaker" Manto, who's once again riding the pine in Cleveland after GM John Hart found his beeper number. You just can't keep a crafty veteran down, as long as modern medical science doesn't find a vaccine for groin pulls.

about the author

Yadda yadda yadda Michael Cox, yadda yadda yadda email, yadda yadda yadda mc@strikethree.com. At least that's what the little green man told us.

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