Re: Did you hear about Jorge Posada??!

Black & Yellow Beard the Pirate says:

I think I see what you're saying, but I disagree. In an idealized world, there wouldn't be any place for egos in baseball, but if that world ever existed (I don't know the history enough to know if it did or not) it's been gone for a long time. There's a million examples:

The reason that Yankees/Sox games take so long (there were a bunch of articles on this a couple of years ago) is not that the pitchers are being slow; it's that the batters, after every at-bat, step out of the box, look around, flex their muscles, take a couple of practice swings: basically they grandstand for so long that the games take 10 or 15 percent longer than other baseball games. This is entirely ego driven.

The home-run races of ten years ago, as another example, were completely ego driven, and the sport of baseball not only let it happen, it encouraged it. All of the executives, all of the players, and all of the sportswriters who knew anything at all, knew that the players were doping. But it produced a generation of ego driven heroes - Bonds, Clemens, McGuire, Sosa, etc. and the sport loved it.

In basketball, you have the Heat assembling a super-team, which seems to come entirely out of ego; but the Yankees have been doing that for years, along with the Red Sox, and in terms of ego, the dynamic is virtually identical. Look at the hype over the Phillies' big four. There's nothing in that which is about "sacrificing for the good of the team" or playing ball for the "old home town" - it's about guys wanting to prove that they're the best ever, and wanting everyone to acknowledge that.

Which is not to say that it's somehow evil. Competitive sports are, in my mind, basically entirely about ego. You have to have an ego to win. But the idea that it's not a part of baseball doesn't make sense to me. Hitting a home run off of a guy and taking a slow trot around the bases while you stare down the pitcher is exactly like dunking on a guy. Ditto the pitcher hitting someone with the ball (which doesn't happen anymore) because they hit a home run the last time up. All that Posada is doing is playing the game the way everyone else plays it (or not everyone, but a lot of people): demanding that the external world conform to his own idea of his value. Jeter, Manny, Pujols, the Steinbrenners, the Marlins, every team that's demanded and received a taxpayer funded stadium, etc. etc.

The only thing that sucks is that the Yankees made stupid decisions with Jeter and Posada and they aren't going to pay for it. They'll get some bad press, but they have a couple of great catchers coming through their system, and they'll sign some people at the trade deadline and make a run in August and September. Ugh.

ps - hope I don't sound too cynical and grumpy, it's just that I think there are good guys and bad guys in all sports, and even then they're often not "bad," so much as they're simply responding to the situation in which they find themselves...