Dumb Era

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Baseball has traveled through many different eras.

There was the Dead Ball Era (1901-1919), then the Live Ball Era, also known as the Golden Age of the game (1920-1941) followed by the Integration Era (1942-1960) ushered in by Jackie Robinson, the Expansion Era (1961-1976), the Free Agency Era (1977-1993), then came the Chicks Dig the Long Ball Era – others may call it the Steroid Era – (1994-2005) and now the Moneyball/Analytics Era (2006-present).

You could call it the Nerd Era, but really, it goes much deeper than that. I maintain the present era should be called The Dumb Era.

In so many ways, baseball has never been dumber.

Dumb things just seem to happen every day in games and in front offices, and really dumb incidents take center stage instead of baseball taking center stage. Like this week and the Tilted Cap Controversy. Dumbness.

Umpire Doug Eddings got the ball rolling with that one Friday night at Coors Field with Cardinals rookie pitcher Hancel Rincon making his major league debut. Rincon had his hat tilted and Eddings told him to fix his hat and flashed the thumbs up sign when the kid fixed his hat.

Then came the firestorm with Cardinals manager Oli Marmol getting ejected and pundits weighing in like it was the biggest story in the history of baseball — or at least umpiring. The whole thing was dumb, in my opinion. Hey, I’m old school, I prefer players and pitchers to wear their caps in a traditional manner, but Eddings should have realized this was much ado about nothing. Let the Tilted Cap Kid have his major league debut and move on.

As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Anyway, I believe the whole tilted cap thing was taken care of by reliever Fernando Rodney years ago, plus Rodney shot make believe arrows into the sky for his 327 lifetime saves. Rodney said he wore his cap that way to honor his father who was a fisherman and wore his fishing cap that way to block the sun, The Old Man and the Sea homage.

As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.’’

Poor young Rincon was just sent back to AAA Memphis with a 47.25 ERA after two major league games with the tilted cap.

I’m old enough to remember Mark Fidrych wearing his cap, not tilted but in a way where his curly locks were everywhere and the cap appeared to be sitting on The Bird’s nest. It is good to have characters in baseball.

I don’t want to waste too much time on the tilted cap incident, but the next day Eddings apologized after MLB officials said he went too far.

Baseball has much bigger problems than tilted caps and power-hungry umpires. Like strikeouts, for one. Going into Sunday’s play there have been 35,760 strikeouts and 35,077 hits this season. I don’t care if everyone tilts their cap as long as the hitters put the ball in play more than they are doing now. You can add nine more strikeouts to the list after the Yankees lost to the Padres 4-3 Sunday at Petco Park. Friday on WFAN I said the Yankees would lose two of three to the Padres, which happened, and turned out to be a bold prediction since the Yankees last lost a series to the Padres in 2016.

Major league hitters are batting .244 this season with only eight batters hitting .300. That’s dumb.

And just think about all the fake hits batters are getting when the Nerds insist a position player go to the mound and lob the ball over the plate like slow pitch softball, so even these pitiful numbers are skewed.

Having those position players take the mound and lobbing the ball, something I addressed a month ago here at BallNine, now that is really dumb.

Baseball finally figured out it is getting out of hand (what took so long) as my friend Bob Nightengale noted in his column on Sunday, writing MLB is proposing that teams be permitted to carry 14 pitchers on the 26-man rosters instead of 13.

Well, they have already been adding pitchers so let’s add one more until the Nerds find a way around this rule too. How about just making pitchers pitch to contact a bit more so they can go deeper into games and having mop-up men like there used to be for decades. The MLB solution is not to fix the pitching woes, just add another warm body.

It was also noted in Nightengale’s column that several club executives and managers agree that games are turning “into a farce in blowouts.’’

Really! Club executives and managers, you caused the problem in the first place. You turned those games into a farce. You created the problem and you took a blowtorch to the record books by having the slow pitch softball approach to the game.

That makes you dumb and dumber.

It is not that hard to realize fellas, that pitchers should be pitching. Instead, you have turned games and records into a joke to try to save pitchers by bringing your rodeo clowns to the mound, and I believe Rob Manfred and his minions encouraged this behavior for years because they were doing all they could to raise batting averages which as noted are at an all-time low.

Yes, they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar with Joe Blow position player on the mound to save an arm and now they are trying to do something about the blowback. I’m sure they will try to put in a forfeit rule, just like they put in the Fake Runner rule because they don’t want games to go on and on and come to a natural conclusion, so they simply changed the rules. As I have said, the Fake Runner rule is the worst rule in baseball history because it destroys merit and puts a player who made the last out at second base.

And you wonder why every kid wants a trophy.

I do want to make something clear, yes this is The Dumb Era in baseball–  ironic because all the Ivy League geniuses are running the game – but other sports certainly are giving baseball a run for its dumb money; witness Michigan’s Hail Mary II victory over 27-point underdog Western Michigan Saturday when suddenly an extra second was found even though the clock read zero so Michigan could have another shot at victory.

College football really is dumb these days with entire teams filled with transfers and players at their fourth school and with LSU’s Lane Kiffin fighting to get “NFL’’ players back to school. In the middle of all this comes an NCAA commercial during the game about “student athletes.’’

It is all so dumb and that is why I am now Lane Kiffin’s biggest fan. I want to see LSU win simply because the NCAA has created this Frankenstein monster in the form of Kiffin and I want to see him shake the system they created.

Make it all make sense. Speaking of dumb, MLB owners are trying to convince the world there must be a salary cap and a lockout next season; meanwhile I’m rooting for Milwaukee and Tampa Bay – two small market teams – to meet in the World Series.

And they want the salary cap even though the owners are making incredible amounts of money and two teams were just sold, the Padres for $3.9 billion and the Angels for $4 billion.

Yes, you can cover up many mistakes with money, and teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Toronto (they have a whole country as a market) can do that, but it is really about drafting and developing talent and making smart trades and holding your players accountable; having a real manager and all that is the winning combination, not just having the highest payroll, right Steve Cohen?

These presidents of baseball operations today waste money on bad signings like you wouldn’t believe and no one bats an eye.

Just this week the Clown Show Orioles and Mike Elias, who has shown No. 1 picks do not guarantee success, added outfielder Luis Robert Jr. to the roster after he was waived by the Mets. Robert Jr. has been injured pretty much his whole career, yet Mets baseball boss David Stearns saw fit to bring him aboard this season and Robert Jr. was hurt most of the year – but not as much as Jorge Polanco – and then dumped him off on Elias and the gullible Orioles for $5 million.

So, what happens? Robert Jr. is hurt again, this time with a “low-grade’’ hamstring injury and is on the IL.

Just imagine how many scouts and development people you could hire with $5 million. Maybe those new scouts would have told Elias not to waste the owners’ money on Robert Jr., but Yes Men are all around baseball these days, usually wearing a nifty quarter zip.

At the time of the deal, Elias said he really wanted to thank owner David Rubenstein for recognizing the position that the team was in and committing that amount of money toward somebody who is going to come and “help us in the month of September, but hopefully into October.’’

Elias went on to tell Steve Phillips: “This is not just any waiver claim, but we feel this is a really impactful player. He is somebody we talked about acquiring the last couple of years … you talk about tooled out.’’

I am just going to leave that there. The Orioles are 69-75 but are in shouting distance of the third (one too many) wild card. That’s dumb.

Baltimore’s Sunday’s 3-1 loss to the Red Sox was a loss that happened because with two outs in the second inning, shortstop Gunnar Henderson – who is hitting .220 – made an error extending the inning and then light-hitting No. 9 Red Sox hitter Eli White smashed a three-run home run. Another loss for the Orioles, who struck out 17 times, 17!

Yes, The Dumb Era personified.