An MMO Fan Shot by Gregory Shaw
Baseball has a problem. For over one hundred years, baseball has been played with four bases, nine fielders and zero emotion. So, when you look at the current crop of miscreants like Yasiel Puig, David Ortiz, Jose Reyes and our very own Jenrry Mejia, things get confusing. What the hell are they doing?
I’m no art major and I don’t think I’ll ever appreciate or understand interpretive dance, so bare with me here. It seems to me that when Ortiz flips his bat after hitting a monstrous home run, or that when Reyes shines an imaginary spotlight on himself after stealing a base, these players may be desperately seeking attention. It could be that they’ve come from troubled homes or unfortunate circumstances in their childhoods. Maybe their mothers hugged them too tightly or not enough. Don’t they realize that baseball is a traditional team game that’s played a certain way and will never change for all eternity?
Maybe these players, young and old, have skipped their required reading of baseball’s unwritten rule book. There’s no doubt that Puig has zero respect for the game’s records anyway, as he looked to break DiMaggio’s feat of twenty-seven hits in his first fifteen games – good for a .434 average. Mejia certainly doesn’t care about the Mets’ annals, being that he set the team’s rookie saves record this season. So why then should we expect them to care if they’re shattering the hopes and dreams of true-blooded-put-your-head-down-and-run-the-bases fans everywhere?
I have a proposal. All of the three hundred seventeen new fans that baseball draws every year should not have to be subjected to these raw shows of emotion. I believe that if we remove players that violate the generally agreed-upon moral code of baseball, MLB will attract double – maybe even triple the current figure. We may see a rise to one thousand new fans a year. What other sport can boast a three hundred percent increase in its fanbase by making one simple change?
These moves will also help teams’ rosters. By removing these trouble-making players, there will be free roster spots for younger, cost-effective players. Those removed will have their contracts voided and stricken from all forms of their respective teams’ documents and history. It will be as though they never existed. Teams will offer promotions whereby any merchandise or memorabilia of said players will be thrown into enormous bonfires – correctly controlled and regulated to make sure that the flames do not get too high or too hot, so that nobody will be made uncomfortable by their flashiness.
Baseball’s problem of league-wide player antics needs to be addressed and solved. The spirit of the game has been deteriorating for quite a while. Every time a player claps his hands or points to his teammates in his dugout, another piece of our national pastime crumbles.
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This Fan Shot was contributed by MMO reader and die-hard Met fan Gregory Shaw. Have something you want to say about the Mets? Share your opinions with over 30,000 Mets fans who read this site daily. Send your Fan Shot to [email protected]. Or ask us about becoming a regular contributor.
