Ballplayers Just Want To Have Fun

Steve Harmon, who as a professional journalist for Bay Area News Group/Contra Costa Times, covers the comings and goings of California's trusted public servants in Sacramento, shares his not unsubstantial critical thinking process in his baseball blog Giant Watch.  Which you can surf to by hitting the link on the right side of this page. He concludes this morning's column (July 24) with the following opinion.

"This game should have room for colorful, offbeat characters, who, yes, can incite outrage but also back it up with exciting baseball."

There is one more thing that I want to add, and that is that guys like Morgan, have an uncanny ability to "laugh at themselves", and smile a lot. Even if it's grating sometimes. But Nyjer Morgan's style is just that. Its just about style and individualism. Something as American as apple pie. Morgan is a ballplayer first, foremost and always. He might even tell you that himself, I suspect.

Baseball is a craft that is apprenticed starting at around age ten I am sad to say.  And despite the spin from Little League, Inc. there is almost zero-tolerance for individual expression, and sometimes not much fun. If you don't believe me, go by the typical practice where one kid at a time stands at the plate, while a poorly dressed grown-up throws unhittable pitches to a scared or frustrated kid while 10 other kids stand around the field like so many tumble weeds, bored out of their skulls waiting their turn. This is followed by a day of highly controlled games or "Game Day". Game days generally include unhealthy snacks, overpriced poisonous energy drinks, a 50/50 raffle,  topped off by plaintive and sometimes combative parents blathering or texting on their i-phones when not yelling at some kid, whether their own or another's. The outcome of said game is too-often determined by 6 innings  comprised of 384,003 walks and 36 strike-outs, umpired by frustrated Joe West wannabees. And then its all supposed to be made good by declaring  "We don't keep score, we just want the kids to have fun." Right.

So guys like Nyjer Morgan are rare indeed. It is no accident that most of the so-called "fun guys" are from Latin America, where they learn how to throw and run and swing a bat in the streets and empty lots supervised by each other, and the older kids, not in manicured miniature stadiums, with MLB Properties-sanctioned replica uniforms, designer batting gloves, $500.00 titanium bats, customized wrist bands, and all the other fashion accouterments more in keeping with a costume party than honing skills, developing baseball instincts, and learning the fine line between  ragging and clever, good-natured heckling and personal attacks, and other forms of inciteful behavior. But thats what happens when you have too many grown ups taking the fun out of the game when their own personal agendas borne of some sort of frustration, become enmeshed with teaching kids and spoiling the party for everyone for no reason at all.

Occasionally, its as if a bunch of disillusioned little leaguers and their Klingon-like mentors appear in the bleachers when a guy like Morgan, or Shane Victorino plays in AT&T. They just don't know where that line that shall not be crossed lies. Because a guy like Morgan plays with flair and elan, it doesn't mean he is being disrespectful in the slightest. He's not spiking the ball like a Chad Qualls, or mocking Brian Wilson's cross like Casey Blake. He's enthusiastic like Rickey was, and Pete Rose was and doesn't deserve to be subjected to the kinds of personal attacks that spewed from the mouths of the few on Saturday night. Its at rare times like that, that the Giants' bleachers sound more like Philadelphia or New York than San Francisco.

Baseball is as much about razzing and ragging, as it is about cheering and high-fiving, while having a good time in the process. Fans can help themselves if they realize the old saw of "what-goes-around, comes around" is particularly true in MLB. The stakes are too high, the caliber of opposition too great for any one player to defy the laws of cosmic equilibrium.

If a player insists on drawing attention to himself, like all guys with individual styles do, eventually the baseball deities will have their way, as they did with Morgan last night. That's why most guys won't let loose. They know the game levels things out. Its a hard and difficult game pitting strong and skilled men against other strong and skilled men. Most do not want the additional burden of being a showman.

As for me, I'll take a Nyjer Morgan, and Rickey Henderson, and Reggie Jackson and Jeff Leonard and Gary Sheffield and Barry Bonds all who liked to play to the crowd andl defy the baseball gods in the process. The same way Al Hrabosky and Turk Wendell and Rob Dibble did.They are risk-takers, and showmen. And when fans behave within the construct of common decency,  the game is better off because of them.  All of those guys including Morgan had a great respect for the game, for their opponents and for their talents. And when the game bit them back, they had a great way of accepting the consequences.

We ought not forget that