Hattigan's up to his old tricks again. The Yankees are in 4th place, so we have to hear about how there aren't any interesting players in baseball.
Baseball is missing must-see players
Pujols, Ortiz are good but not memorable like Bonds, Clemens, McGwire
Oh man, you didn't even make it past the tagline this time without saying something outrageously stupid. Do you know WHY Pujols and others are not consider-....
Hold on....Alfonso Soriano just hit a solo homer to lead off the game, much like other selfish assholes would. I just wanted to absorb that and spend a couple moments hoping Jay Mariotti was watching and thinking about the fact that Jay thinks Soriano should have done something better to help the team....-
ed as memorable as these players??? Albert Pujols is fucking 28 years old. We're not "remembering" him, we're watching him make memories. The dude's averaging over 10 WARP per season for crissake. And what about A-Rod? A-Rod might turn out to be the greatest player ever. Is that not worth watching?
Maybe baseball has spoiled us over the past 10 years. It’s given us too many moments, too many heroes — even if they were flawed heroes — doing too many once-in-a-lifetime things.
Mark McGwire broke the home run record in 1998. Sammy Sosa broke it in the same season. Three years later, Barry Bonds broke that record. Once-in-a-lifetime things.
Remember when ESPN used to interrupt whatever it was broadcasting to show Barry Bonds’ latest at-bat? Remember when we logged into MLB.com to track each pitch that Roger Clemens threw? Remember the home run chase?
Yes, because Barry Bonds was chasing one of the most sacred records in sports. Forgive 25-year-old David Wright if he's not doing that right now.
That stuff about Roger Clemens is absolutely bogus. You just needed more examples. I do the same thing with Carlos Quentin (man, talk about someone playing amazing that no one has said anything about...seriously, I looked at every major sports site's "suprise players" list and never saw his name because they're gushing over Cliff Lee and his megafluke season thus far).
OK, I know that there’s a likelihood that some, if not all, of these guys were getting illicit help. Just the same, from 1998, when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire where chasing down Roger Maris, until last year, when the BALCO Bomber was adding to his all-time home-run total, we’ve had people whose moments on the diamond and in the batter’s box we didn’t want to miss.
Are you saying that there are no superexciting individual players just because there aren't any home run records in danger of falling anytime soon? I shouldn't be excited about A-Rod and Pujols? Quentin? Edinson Volquez (guy has been freakin' awesome!)? The Hammerin' Hebrew Ryan Braun?
When we found out what was going on, we got all over them like green on grass. We were glad when McGwire slunk off into a retirement in which he doesn’t want to talk about the past. We delighted when Sammy disappeared, then came back and couldn’t hit the ball nearly as far or nearly as often.
You wrote an entire column celebrating how impressive his comeback was. Remember?
It’s not as if it’s a bad baseball season. There are plenty of stories to follow, few as remarkable as Chipper Jones’ sustained run of .400-plus hitting and Cliff Lee’s — Cliff Lee? — 6-0 start to the season for Cleveland with an ERA you need an electron scanning microscope to find, and Brandon Webb’s 8-0 start with Arizona.
Okay, take Webb. Why isn't he a "can't miss" pitcher? He's won 8 fucking games in 8 tries. Don't you think that if this continues that Brandon Webb will be a "can't miss" player come August and September? If Chipper Jones is hitting .400 in August, he'll be the type of player that people will schedule bathroom breaks around. This is May. May 14th. Suprisingly few single-season records are in jeopardy on May 14th.
Chase Utley with the Phillies is having an MVP season. The Cubs are in first place and some guy named Fukudome is one of the reasons why. St. Louis is right there with them, thanks to the incomparable Albert Pujols and the surprising Ryan Ludwick.
Incomparable? You just said that those other guys from the past 10 years were way more awesome and memorable than he was!
Greg Maddux has 250 wins and with four more will pass Clemens.
Because this is Celizic, I'm only 85% sure that was a typo.
You should have never pissed off Jeffrey Conway and made him leave to edit Mariotti's garbage.
Manny is closing in on 500 home runs and Junior Griffey is about to hit 600. Florida is the best team in baseball and the team formerly known as the Devil Rays have the AL's third-best record.
Totally uninteresting stuff, right?
So it’s not as if there aren’t a superfluity of reason to watch baseball. But it’s teams we’re watching more than individuals.
Huh? You just mentioned Webb, Lee, Maddux, Jones, Ramirez, Griffey, Pujols, Ludwick, and Utley.......
The individuals are either not compelling personalities or overpowering at what they do. It’s not their fault. I love watching guys like Justin Mourneau and Pujols and Manny and Big Papi hit, but I don’t think most fans plan their evenings around those at-bats.
You are the first person in history to say that David Ortiz is neither a compelling personality nor overpowering at hitting.
Does anyone want to watch Maddux pitch six cagey innings for the pathetic Padres? Maybe Pujols is great, but we don't watch his every at-bat. Same goes for Manny.
This is valid, because at this specific time, these players are not shattering records. But you can't fucking tell me that Pujols isn't exciting because he hasn't done anything like that yet.
After all, 500 homers, like the dollar, aren’t what they used to be. The same goes for Griffey. He’s worth watching, but he’s playing for Cincinnati, and nobody’s showing their games.
ZOMG! ESPN isn't putting the Cincinnati Reds on TV! Griffey isn't interesting!
Besides, 600 homers is also a devalued currency. He may have done it the right way — that’s the perception, at least — but there are five guys with that many ahead of him. When Aaron got to 600, just two had been there before him.
Fuck you Griffey! You should have played baseball in an earlier time!
In another four years, we’ll be watching A-Rod start to chase down Bonds.
But the home runs he's hitting today don't count as much towards that.
We’ll watch Jeter beat him to 3,000 hits
Jeter is at 2398. A-Rod is at 2276. I'm thinking A-Rod gets more hits over the next 4-5 years than Jeter, so this could actually get pretty interesting.
and eventually Pujols will start to reach historic numbers. Maybe someone will one day make a run at the triple crown, and grab out interest that way.
You know, most triple crown frontrunners are typically determined on May 14th. I wonder why one hasn't emerged yet this year.
Bu there aren’t any superhumans out there — at least not yet. The great pitchers don’t strike out 20 a game, or even 15.
Who the fuck in the last 10 years struck out this many guys per game?
And even if someone hits 50 home runs, it’s no longer special. If Ryan Howard or Prince Fielder wants to try a run at 61, we’ll watch the chase, but that’s months — or years — away.
WHO SIMPLY NEEDED TO SEE MARK MCGWIRE OR SAMMY SOSA'S EVERY AT-BAT ON MAY 14TH IN 2008???
For the moment, it’s the teams, not the players. The biggest draw in baseball is not Bonds or Clemens; it’s the Boston Red Sox. After them are the Yankees. The Cubs cause a stir wherever they go.
Or, for people who give a shit about things besides how big of a city a team plays in, the Diamondbacks and Rays are pretty damn exciting too.
The game is still great, but it’s games we watch now, not moments. That’s not necessarily bad, but it sure is different.
This is a totally false and stupid generalization that assumes the way you think is the way the world thinks about baseball.
There’s still time to sign Barry.
Yeah. Have the Tampa Bay Rays sign Barry Bonds. Then I bet that baseball fans everywhere will need to see Barry's every at-bat and ESPN will start showing tons of Rays games, because Bonds has this superhuman presence that no players today have that makes people give a shit about his every move when he's NOT chasing a record. False, sir. Fucking FALSE. When Bonds isn't on the verge of breaking records, people care about how he's hitting just as much as they do any other of the game's great hitters.
I'm getting tired of your stupid "here's what people care about right now in sports" columns. Stop it. Just stop.
