Even if you accept the lame argument about running out of pitchers, there were several options more attractive than calling the game: Have field players pitch. Or if you're open to messing with the rules (calling the game a tie, for example), why not allow the managers to reinsert pitchers who have already been pulled? Geez, why not have the managers lob some pitches themselves--coach-pitch style? At least that would have been entertaining and fans would have appreciated the effort.
Perhaps most dispiriting was the reaction of the players. Watching them, one after another, say that they agreed with the decision was positively infuriating. There was only one exception. Kansas City's Mike Sweeney said he felt like the Bad News Bears player who, faced with a similar situation, threw down his glove and said, "Just let us play!" Maybe Sweeney should get the MVP for at least giving lip service to the spirit of competition.
It's fitting, for me, that this travesty happened in Milwaukee, my hometown, where my love affair with baseball, courtesy of the Milwaukee Brewers, flourished for years. Even before Harvey's Wallbangers won the AL pennant in 1982 (only to lose in the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals and a-hole pitcher Joaquin Andujar), I could, on any given summer day, recite the entire roster--including player positions, numbers, batting averages and, in many cases, hometowns
But I'm done with baseball now. I've been leaving the game for years. Part of the reason, I suppose, is that
the Brewers suck and have sucked for years. (I believe they've gone as many years without making the playoffs as any other team in the bigs.) But the seemingly annual "labor" disputes, and more recently, the formal opposition to drug testing have pushed me even further away. The tie finished the job.
Think about sports over the past year. The New England Patriots, huge underdogs, upset the St. Louis Rams to win the Super Bowl. Lance Armstrong beat cancer and then the world to win the Tour de France. Saku Koivu, too, faced down cancer, and after being forced to sit out the regular season, returned to captain the Montreal Canadiens far into the playoffs. The U.S. World Cup team improbably made the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Four athletes rallied passengers to fight September 11 hijackers for control of Flight 93, saving countless lives.
But at the "All-Star" game we get a tie because players need their rest. And whoever heard of a tie in baseball, anyway? My softball team (Harvey's Wallbangers) struggled to an 11-11 tie just last Monday night. The team we were playing in the Arlington County league, Henderson Hall, was a team full of Marines who had defeated us twice earlier in the season. Despite the fact that everyone on my team had just completed a long workday, and everyone on their team had doubtless put in a more rigorous 9-to-5 effort (or, more likely 5-to-5 effort), we were eager to keep playing. The Wallbangers lost, 12-11, thanks in no small part to my worst game of the season (0-4 . . . in freakin' softball). But I guarantee that I felt better with that loss than anyone involved in last night's tie game.
Professional baseball players, who make millions sitting on their duffs for half of each game, can't play another couple innings to give the fans--remember, it's all for the fans--a decision?
If baseball is still America's game, America should be embarrassed.
Stephen F. Hayes is staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
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