Tags
baseball, Family, Loyalty, Nationals, Red Sox, Tyler Clippard, Values, Winning, Yunel Escobar
My post yesterday, Nats: Terrible, Terrible Decision, reminded me of what most bothers me about baseball, a game I’ve loved for as long as I can remember (at least six and a half decades).
There were a number of articles and posts (and I assume there was similar coverage on TV and radio) about how the Nats’ fans reacted to the loss of one of their favorites, Tyler Clippard (hint: not well). Particularly striking was the reaction from young people, kids whose first baseball experience has been with the Nats and who have come to love Tyler Clippard.
Lots of tears. Lots of disbelief. Lots of not understanding (How could you trade a player who was so important to your team?).
Parents had difficulty explaining to their kids that baseball is a business, and in business the ‘rules’ are different than what we teach our kids. Or at least the values are different.
Fortunately, or maybe not, I grew up in a time when players largely stayed with one team. (Happily, I wasn’t around for the sale of Babe Ruth to the Evil Empire. That would have been unacceptable.). Mostly, the players who were my heroes, whom I ‘worshipped,’ stayed with the Sox throughout my early years. (It wasn’t until much later that the likes of Boggs, Clemens, Damon, Ellsbury and Lester, to name just a few, left or were traded from the Boston family.)
And that word family is part of all of this.
Teams make a big deal out of projecting an image that they are a family. The Sox do this. The Nats do this. Most teams do it also. Much time, energy and money are spent creating an image of how a team is a family and of the importance of being a part of that family.
But families don’t sell or trade or get rid of their family members, at least most families don’t.
So why does baseball seem so willing to jettison their family meme and say “baseball is a business?”
I know there have been significant changes in how baseball is financed and how players are paid since I was a kid (some of which benefit players significantly).
And yes, baseball is a business.
But in my humble opinion, and I suspect for many others, not just kids, the frequency with which ‘business’ trumphs the ‘family aspect’ of baseball, is a big deal.
I know. I know. It’s not only in baseball or in sports in general that staying with “thems that brought you” is no longer as important as it once way. Working for one company all your life, staying with the person you married and putting loyalty ahead of profit are all seen as outdated.
And I think we’re worse off as a result.
So call me old-fashioned (my kids have for years), outdated, not ‘with it’, but I think baseball would do better to keep in mind their business success depends upon their fans, who are every bit as much a part of the fabric of a team as are the players and management.
Yes. Winning is also key. Maybe the most important key as far as some are concerned.
But all those years (60+), I stayed obsessed with the Sox, they didn’t win one World Series (oh, the suffering), but they were my team, and I loved them.
Trading, selling, losing members of the family, my family, has taken something very important away from baseball.
Sometimes, I think those who control baseball don’t understand that.
unknown said:
to this, im very old fashion…free agency, a necessary evil, but what is baseball, without its local, or home grown heroes? you know whats the difference between Ripken and Pujols? baseball needs to learn to factor this in.. the Yankees kept their stars well past their prime because they were legends and necessary for its legacy
Tim Malieckal said:
Good teams are families. Bad teams are clubs.
I for one would not want Fred Wilpons to be my dad. I feel like Oliver Twist.
“May I have some more, please ?”
This is about ownership. Time was, an owner had a team as a hobby, making money elsewhere and caring for his players more than short term wins.They would win one day.
Now the owner is often a principal identity. There are some who spend with outsize
bombast like Steinbrenner and Snyder, those who nickel and dime like Woody Johnson and the Wilponzis, and all manner in between. Across the spectrum, the fans are consumers and players machinery.
But hey, why lament? You got to come of age when it was still a game. Not a day goes by when I don’t curse my luck that my two owners will be a cross to bear until my dying breath.
Richard said:
Tim,
1. I have grand kids.
2. I’m still a kid too.
3. I believe many, not only kids, feel this way about baseball, and perhaps some other sports too.
Richard Miller
EllnMllr said:
Yeah for ‘old fashioned thinking.’ But you gotta admit that winning is nice too.
Let’s limit this idea to baseball. Wouldn’t want to put anyone out of a job for whom sports is a business. Not naming names here.
Elliott Trommald said:
No, you are not old fashioned or outdated and in this case your children have you wrong. You are wonderfully human. Life is about choice and how we choose to live our too brief moment on earth. We seek family in many places. Some, I for one, will seek it in a baseball team whether or not the players making up that family do. And every now and then (more then than now but it still happens), I find the example of a player or owner who chooses to make a decision based not solely on money but on an emotional investment in the family, team, an investment in feelings beyond “show me the money.” I understand breakups for the good of family but every now and then I get a glimpse of family at work and then for a moment all seems right with the world. And sometimes I may even imagine what is not really there, but family sometimes demands that.
Janet Brown/ sister said:
So nicely expressed!
This in spite of the fact that our mom was ready to kill off Ted Williams when you were under 10,
for not signing your baseball as you took it up to him?!
Carrie said:
I agree with you, so I must be old fashioned too. The world has changed.
Land Wayland said:
Players only become a member of a baseball family when they repeatedly demonstrate that they are worthy of that role. The rookie who doesn’t produce is soon gone, unlamented, and quickly forgotten and is never thought of as ever being part of the family.
It takes time for a family to become a family with its required memories, celebrations, grievings, trials, and intimate moments. It takes time to test relationships, to allow insight, and to teach generous acceptance of frailties and joyous rejoicing of success.
Baseball teams are not a human family. They are something else that really is more properly described as a “team”. They are independent professionals who have agreed to associate in pursuit of various goals: demonstrating exceptional skills, winning hard fought competitions, making money by providing opportunities for spectators to watch what is clearly a game with no long-term ramifications. A profound yet trivial pursuit
During the season there may be a moments when a team performs so well, when every member does so well, when everything goes so well, that all the team members are so flooded with feelings of great affection and appreciation that, in an effort to explain how they feel, they analogize the situation to the way they felt when they were in a happy family. And that is the way baseball writers tell the story and that is the way it is read and understood by fans. But is still an analogy.
Baseball has always been a business and just as business has changed in the last 100 years from being a small home-town shop or store or factory whose owners were known to everyone and longtime employees were sometimes kept on when their services were no longer needed, that has all changed. Henry Ford popularized the idea of interchangeable parts and doomed the idea that the skills of the individual worker were necessary to the success of the factory. What is important now is not who people are but what they can do. We praise and reward our children not because they are polite to other members of the family but because they are sooooo smaaaart.
Baseball doesn’t care what the players’s name is, or his color, or his background or training. The only question baseball asks is “who should we start today in each position to give us the best chance of winning?” and that is judged solely by recent performance and not by long-term contribution. Everyone is interchangeable…..Not like a traditional family at all.
My fear is that families are becoming too much like factories and sports teams where only the winners are cheered and kept on the roster and no one is retained unless he/she has the ability and personality to add value to the product
Land Wayland +
romana campos said:
I’m still mourning the loss of Michael Morse years later. To lose Clippard too! It’s like having your favorite soft flannel pajamas thrown out in favor of a new, starchy and blingy pajamas. Yuk! I also know baseball is a business, but can’t it have a small family business ethic instead of a car dealership one? I agree with you Richard and not only am I old fashioned, but I’m a little too emotional and irrational, still foolish enough to get attached to players and think that teams have character and loyalty to each other. I think that maybe the players sometimes think that too.