The Red Sox opened second half play Friday night at Fenway. It was the first game in five days and the first in a second half that had been presumably doomed to end badly by the cataclysmic collapse in the first portion of the 2014 summer. Devoid of stars like Shane Victorino and pitching great Clay Buchholz, the team was wallowing in a hole they dug for themselves and as fans watched their team they were treated to less than stellar showings by many of the Red Sox veterans.
When you look at the differences between this season and the remarkable summer than was last, what made the 2013 Sox World Series winners was the fact that they were youthful in their drive to win and never gave up on themselves. That belief, that never quit attitude made it possible for the 2013 Sox to erase a 5 run 9th inning deficit on August 1st, 2013 against the Mariners. That belief made it possible for the Sox to walk off in 11 games and for Johnny Gomes to log a whopping 4 pinch hit home runs. The youthful attitude also let Koji Uehara turn from a fringe bull pen body to the greatest closer in baseball once going 33 innings without allowing a run to be scored as well as bowing down 29 straight batters in August.
The 2013 Red Sox were a thrilling revival of old school baseball where every game and every pitch mattered. They made summer nights baseball nights for 6 whole months and possibly gave the struggling MLB its greatest selling point in years. Worst to first was perhaps the greatest thing that ever happened to the Red Sox and in turn the league as a whole.
And yet since that day, the Sox have given up and lost that youthful drive that made them great. 2014 has been a season for one reason or another lacking the kind of fireworks displays by power threats up and down the line up. It has seen the Sox defense crumble at times and refuse to make key plays at key times and yet there is still one more aspect of the current Boston baseball team that makes them inferior to last season's version. The 2014 Red Sox are at times harshly unlikable.
The man who last season warned of becoming the MLB's greatest ambassador, David Ortiz, has punctuated his 2014 season not with home runs but instead childish remarks complaining about various trivial aspects of the game (complaints about scheduling and official scoring seem to stand out). Johnny Gomes' teenage bravado and comedic cockyness that last year won him praise has manifested this year as simply obnoxious. His faux defense of the team was fun last year but when he fails to perform at all it is annoying.
All and all, when you watch a Red Sox game and you see Gomes attacking Yneual Escobar for pointing at his dugout you do not cheer. You turn the game off. Because once there is no thrill of being a great team and once there is nothing to play for, these players seem to tone down their effort substantially and players not playing as hard as they can almost always translates to boring, fake baseball.
This fact coupled with that that even a good game is brutally hard to watch due to its length is starting to take a huge toll on the MLB's longevity in the tight battle for ratings that rages between the nation’s top sports leagues.
Nonetheless, baseball remains something fun and irresistible when played right. And while baseball and frankly, every other one of the big four sports has since been chewed up by commercial obligations, minor league baseball has managed to retain the attention of millions across the United States.
No matter the age, players in triple-A baseball are fighting brutally with each other and their own statistics to climb even higher on the ladder of professional baseball excellence and will play hard even past the point when their club is eliminated from postseason play simply because they are still trying to impress scouts. These minor league games are often higher scoring than the MLB. Furthermore the strikeout pandemic is less prevalent in this level as highlighted by the fact that it has been over 15 years since a perfect game has been thrown.
All and all, minor league baseball goes beyond just that fabled team from Durham and though it still holds a harsh reputation for calming the dreams of many prospects, it also attracts millions of people per year to its ballparks.
But beyond that, in the opinion of this particular writer, it is now churning out a better product than its parent league (the MLB).
No comments:
Post a Comment