ABOUT AT BAT

MSNBC.com baseball analyst Ted Robinson gives his take on the hits and misses by players, managers, umpires and owners in Major League Baseball.

Robinson has an extensive background in covering the sport. He called the play-by-play on NBC's Major League Baseball Game of the Week telecasts from 1986-89. Additionally, he has been the lead play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Twins, the television and radio play-by-play voice of the San Francisco Giants, and a member of the New York Mets broadcast team.



MLB judged by a higher standard than the NFL

Posted: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 1:49 PM

A scattering of recent tidbits:

 

Just wondering: Major League Baseball plays World Series games at night in late October with the temperature is occasionally in the 30s, and it is vilified as if a federal offense has been committed. Last Sunday football decided the participants for America’s biggest stand-alone event, the Super Bowl, in sub-zero temperatures that the National Weather Service in Green Bay warned could cause frostbite in 20 minutes.

 

Just wondering, Part II: Suppose Brett Favre had thrown a touchdown pass rather than an interception on the first possession of overtime? Suppose the Packers had won without the Giants touching the ball in OT? Then suppose that Game 6 of the 1986 World Series ended on Dave Henderson’s home run in the top of the 10th inning. No Mookie Wilson, no Bill Buckner, but a Red Sox title. Laughable, I know, yet football was on the brink of settling a conference championship in that manner. And you don’t think baseball is judged by a MUCH higher standard than any American sport?

 

The Cubs spent and spent last winter, knowing that most of the financial obligations they undertook would fall to a new owner. Except we now hear that a new owner probably won’t be in place before the end of the 2008 season. Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company -- which includes the Cubs -- but he has no interest in holding on to the baseball team. First priority is to sell Wrigley Field to the city of Chicago, ensuring long-term improvements that would keep the park viable.

 

Free-agent signings in the baseball offseason are moving at a trickle, and focused mostly on bottom-end pitchers like Brett Tomko. I was wrong about Kyle Lohse in predicting in the fall that he would be the winner of the A-Rod sweepstakes, packaged by agent Scott Boras with A-Rod like Boras is thought to have done last offseason with J.D. Drew and Daisuke Matsuzaka to the Red Sox -- despite Boston denials of such an arrangement.

 

Instead, Lohse, he of the 63-74, 4.82 ERA career record, can’t get a five-year deal. (The absurdity of typing that sentence never ceases.) Livan Hernandez is still on the market and strikes me as a sounder investment -- after all the man has actually won 17 games in a season and has had postseason success. Can’t believe he won’t end up with the Mets if they don’t land Johan Santana.

 

Did I really see that Luis Gonzalez is in serious talks with the Marlins? And the Dodgers are saying they will give Andy LaRoche a full shot at the third-base job, pitting him in a spring competition with Nomar Garciaparra. And you don’t think times are changing in the game?

 

Meanwhile, the NL West, a division loaded with young talent, is weighed down by the Giants. Arizona and Colorado have their youngsters established while the Dodgers appear committed to playing more of their prospects like LaRoche. At the same time, the Giants are so bereft of position players that they are negotiating with Pedro Feliz on a multi-year deal to continue as their third baseman. For the second straight winter, Feliz is a free agent who can’t get an offer anywhere else, yet the Giants are talking about a two-year deal.

 

More on the strange and somewhat sad state of baseball in the Bay Area on Wednesday.

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Comments

There's a certain machismo about playing in miserable weather, and as long as we're on the subject of machismo, I think there's probably just as much in baseball as football. It just comes out differently. Instead of crunching bodies or playing with icicles hanging from your ears, you have to stand in against Randy Johnson (remember John Kruk in that All Star game some years ago?). That takes some cojones. I mean, which would you rather do ... try to block Lawrence Taylor, even knowing you're going to get knocked on your can, or deal with a 100 mph heater under your chin? Personally, I'll take that first thing every time, even though I know L.T. is going to bang the crap out of me.

The issue of a potentially snow-bound World Series, though, is one that MLB will have to face sooner or later. Late October in Denver or Milwaukee or Cleveland is a crapshoot, weather-wise, and it's just a matter of time before an early blizzard howls down from the north and buries those ballparks under a foot of snow right in the middle of the Series.

The basic problem, of course, is that the season is too long, and there's a simple solution to it ... play day-night doubleheaders on Sunday during the season. That shortens the season by a good three or four weeks. Yes, I know the players hate day-nighters, but do they hate them worse than playing in the snow?

Of course, there's another alternative, too ... forget Denver or Milwaukee and bring the World Series to my home city ...

John Provine, Tucson, AZ (Sent Wednesday, January 23, 2008 6:17 AM)

Think for a moment about the difference in the average NFL players physique from the last time the Packers and Giants played in a championship game in the early 1960's to today.  Also recall that Jimmy Brown was in his day the biggest back in thed be league, but today would be barely average, if that.  Yes, people are bigger, nutrition is better, but you can't escape the conclusion that most NFL players, if they want to compete, need to have sculpted bodies that to me can only come from using steriods or other substances the players of the 1960's never dreamed of.

It's so obvious, that it must seem foolhardy for a player in today's NFL to go up against his peers without doing everything he can, including steroids, to armor himself against being torn in half by the "typical" NFL player.

One more test:  compare Max McGee, Lance Alworth, and Paul Warfield's physiques to Terrel Owen's, Braylon Edward's, or Randy Moss's.  

I rest my case.


Mark Mendes, Cleveland Heights, Ohio (Sent Thursday, January 24, 2008 6:49 AM)

1.  In the NFL, the only players flagged for suspicion are those that have a testosterone level that is SIX times the normal level.  
2.  Rodney Harrison says he uses HGH to recover from an injury and there is no media outcry; Andy Pettitte says he uses HGH to recover from an injury and is villified and declared "EVIL!".

Whoever says that all sports are treated equal should have to line up against Todd Steussie.  Oh, wait, him too.  Just ask 60 Minutes.

Bob McMullen, Montague, NJ (Sent Thursday, January 31, 2008 12:51 PM)



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