Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Old school baseball chastised

Yankees pitching ace Chien-Ming Wang is on the shelf for up to 10 weeks, prompting team co-chair Hank Steinbrenner to lambaste the entire National League.

“My only message is simple. The National League needs to join the 21st century. They need to grow up and join the 21st century,” Steinbrenner said.

What caused this angry tirade?

Well, it certainly wasn’t caused by the fact that Wang couldn’t complete the seemingly simple athletic task of the running the bases. No, the cause for yet another Steinbrenner tirade is that the N.L. is playing with a cryptic “rule from the 1800s,” that makes pitchers bat.

“This is always a concern of American League teams when their pitchers have to run the bases and they’re not used to doing it,” Steinbrenner added.

Wait a second? Not used to running? Come on Hank, please.

Not delving into details, making pitchers bear bats in the N.L. adds richness to the strategy of the game. Strategy is lost when overweight defensive liabilities get three to four whacks from the plate per game.

Sorry Hank, the N.L. doesn’t need to adopt the designated hitter rule. You should make sure your pitchers can run.

1 comment:

Nich said...

AMEN, sir!

Let's step back for a second and understand the good Yankee's manager's concerns: clearly it's a problem that his pitcher has been knocked out of the game for an indefinite period of time. However, let's not mope and compain about a player hurting himselves because, God forbid, they had to run around 90 ft.bases!!! I mean wow, this is frickin BASEball...a game where players run around BASES to score runs. This is apparently a tough concept for a billionaire moron to understand...