BALTIMORE — Baseball never quite knows how to handle its emotions.
Now, with the 2015 season beginning with a flood of tantrums, outbursts, scrums, whining and an excruciating catfight between David Ortiz and Jim Palmer, the game feels as if it’s flunking its emotional IQ test once again.
Whether it ends in a whimper or a bang, there will be no winners in the Ortiz-Palmer tweet-fest.
The virtual rock-throwing episode had no pregame developments yesterday. Palmer, the Hall of Famer pitcher and Orioles TV analyst who “started” the episode from his couch when he expressed via Twitter his distaste for Ortiz’ tantrum at Fenway over a checked-swing dispute, was on the field before the game but not at the same time as Ortiz.
By now, everybody in New England understands that getting a rise out of Ortiz is so much easier than stealing candy from a baby. The man wears his emotions on his sleeves, cuffs, pant-legs and shoe-tops, so he was predictably ticked off by Palmer’s 140-character utterance and the “#zipit” message.
Palmer reiterated his dislike for Ortiz’ ways on Friday, when he made a remark that underscores the issues baseball has with anybody who does things “differently,” or outside the accepted, if unwritten, code of what is acceptable baseball behavior.
“(Ortiz is) entitled to do it any way he wants, but when he throws his whole team under the bus, all the fans who came out to Fenway Park, it’s kind of like a puppy — unconditional love — but at the end of the day, if the puppy doesn’t do the right things, you need to housebreak him,” Palmer told the Baltimore Sun.
Palmer has every right to express how he feels and what he thinks. Here’s one reaction, though: For starters, his remarks are patronizing and demeaning.
It’s seldom, if ever, a good idea to go down the road of comparing grown men with puppies, but Palmer’s remark and the general tenor of his words, tweets and re-tweets over the last few days gets at the crux of the emotional divide within baseball, the same one that hurts its efforts to connect with the next generation of fans.
There is the genteel, old-school tradition that frowns on displays of any enthusiasm or expressions that detract from the “team” and bring attention to the individual. After all, that line of thinking goes, baseball is a game of failure and when good hitters fail seven out of 10 times or pitchers give up key runs, they need to learn how to strip themselves of the emotions of disappointment and turn their attention to the next plate appearance and to tomorrow’s game.
Deny, swallow and move on — no wonder more and more teams employ mental coaches.
Ortiz is only the latest in a long line of players who dare to offer more than a glimpse of what’s going on inside.
Losing his temper on the field is, of course, nothing to brag about for Ortiz, just as some regrettable decisions by Kansas City’s Yordano Ventura of late have placed him in the unenviable position of being a hot-head.
But there are some people, like Palmer, who recoil with knee-jerk regularity at the theatrics of certain players. Ortiz’ slow home run trots have offended the sensitive sensibilities of a few folks for a few years now, with David Price and Chris Archer being just two recent examples.
In Los Angeles, Yasiel Puig provokes “tsk’s tsk’s” with his bat flips and swagger, and is supposedly being asked by his teammates to tone down his act.
As we all have been told countless times, baseball is rooted in tradition.
A new tradition is that the national pastime is no longer. It’s the former national pastime.
The game deserves credit for trying hard to become hip and younger, but it is an uphill battle every time someone like Palmer complains.
Comedian and satirist Chris Rock captures the zeitgeist of baseball in his occasionally brilliant monologue that popped up on HBO’s “Real Sports” last week. Rock is focused on how baseball has lost the attention of blacks in this country, but there’s much more to it than that.
Rock bemoans how uncool baseball has become, and how it is quickly slipping into irrelevance within his circle and outside it.
Baseball does not need more tantrums or more fighting to be relevant.
The breath of fresh air it needs goes beyond letting its talent play.
Baseball needs more colorful characters and more personalities, still always playing hard but playing with joy, fun and humor, too.
