Please indulge me a sports moment…
When does a streak stop being about the dedication and start becoming just about the streak? How does one manage to balance the desire to help your team win with being a slave to the numbers. When should a streak end? How should a streak end? Well Bret Favre is showing us the down side of starting consecutive games, when a streak takes on a life of its own and ends up starting to effect his legacy.
This is not about Favre retiring and un-retiring so many times that we lose count. This is not about the controversy related to cell phone pictures or getting back at the Packers or using the NY Jets or any such folly. This isn’t about him or his career jumping the shark. This is about when a player needs to see that he is no longer helping the team he plays for and moves on with the rest of his life.
Unfortunately we are a sports fan nation that is over indulgent of streaks. A baseball player hits in 10 or 15 straight games and DiMaggio’s 56 game streak is brought up. A player hits 10 home runs in the first month of the season and we are inundated with “on a pace to break Maris/Bonds” claims for weeks on end. We honor streaks that can “never” be broken like Gehrig’s until Ripken comes along and does break it. Then his becomes a “never be broken” too.
I can’t help but think that SOME of Ripken’s legacy was affected by being enslaved by the streak. Yes, it is honorable to want to be in their every single game but what to do when your performance is no longer up to the accepted standards and yet you are enslaved to the streak. This is what the Yankees and Derek Jeter are going to go through this winter as he looks at a new contract. Although there is not a “streak” per se to be enslaved to, the fact that he has been with one club for so many years, going against the grain of free agency and the norm in baseball now a days and that this contract is said to represent not only expected performance but a reward for what he has done for the team, bring about the same sort of feelings.
Bret Favre is on the down side of his career and has been for a while. Because his week to week appearance is so tied to the streak, it has lost the meaning of what he can mean to the team’s chance of winning. We just spent the past week wondering if Bret was going to be able to keep his streak alive. If you are a Viking fan, you are probable more interested in can the team win this week, not can the streak win this week.
I guess the real question will be “when will this stop being about Bret, or the streak, and start being about the team again?”
Thanks for the indulgence…
Showing posts with label MLB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MLB. Show all posts
November 5, 2010
June 4, 2010
Buddy Boy Blew it!
I am a baseball fan, big time. This will surprise no one. As such I have an opinion about the recent perfect game / not perfect game that occurred in Detroit on June 2nd. This should surprise no one. I’m going to tell you my opinion on this. Hey, I do a podcast and write a blog, of course I have an opinion and I’m going to share it.
First, Jim Joyce, umpire and supposed evil doer. He is a person and he made a mistake. Mistakes do happen, lots of umpires make them but when they make one on a national stage like in a playoff game or World Series or when both ESPN and MLB TV have joined in coverage of a game live, then the magnitude is intensified, the hot lights of fame and history begin to scorch. Look, he made a mistake; he checked the replay, realized his error and then apologized profusely, expressed sorrow at the bad call and actually was genuinely emotional the next day when he returned to the place of his mistake. He did everything right except make a good call but his grace and aplomb under the intense pressure and scrutiny is exemplary.
Armando Galarraga has been a fringe major league pitcher who was on the doorstep of immortality in baseball terms. Perfect games are rare and his performance during the game, after the mistake was made and following the game in interviews and actions, was unbelievably strong, a lesson for us all. In my mind, he may now be even more famous as the pitcher who was robbed of his perfect chance yet he should be known and held up on a pedestal as an example to us all of grace under pressure, showing compassion and understanding and maintaining his dignity when many others lose theirs. Contrast his smile and getting back to work in the game to George Brett’s dugout explosion so many years ago and tell me which is the better role model for our kids AND us.
Finally Bud Selig, Baseball commissioner. Well, he blew it. He blew it big time. He had a chance to hit a grand slam in this situation and instead bunted into a double play. Instead of showing that the human element is important to baseball and correcting a bad mistake, he allows it so stand, for the umpire to take the heat, for the player to lose his moment in the sun because of a presedent he was afraid to set, yet has already been set many times before. Brett’s none home run to home run, Haddux’s perfect game to not perfect game, trades rescinded for the good of baseball, drug suspensions, all examples of baseball stepping in and fixing errors. Look, the player was out at first base. The umpire admitted such, the Tigers admitted such, the batter himself admitted such yet Buddy Boy failed to act, instead saying that this will cause him to look at the use of instant replay further. And here in lies the double play. Bad enough he popped up the bunt but he compounds it by talking about the human element in baseball and mistakes, and then offers to review the call for more TV cameras, video tape machines, computers, maybe an eye in the sky to correct mistakes from happening in the future. It could have been simple. Selig could have just said “Baseball is a great game played by and umpired by people. Occasionally a mistake is made of such proportion that we need to intervene. Jim Joyce admitted he was in error and so I am going to do the most human of all things possible in our game. We are going to forgive this mistake. I am going to rule that Mr. Galarraga effort be judged to be a perfect game, a masterpiece of excellence and as such Baseball will hold both Mr. Galarraga and Mr. Joyce up as examples of grace and humanity to us all in this emotional time.”
Simple. human forgiving. A lesson for us all. Taught by Armando Galarraga, missed by Bud Selig.
First, Jim Joyce, umpire and supposed evil doer. He is a person and he made a mistake. Mistakes do happen, lots of umpires make them but when they make one on a national stage like in a playoff game or World Series or when both ESPN and MLB TV have joined in coverage of a game live, then the magnitude is intensified, the hot lights of fame and history begin to scorch. Look, he made a mistake; he checked the replay, realized his error and then apologized profusely, expressed sorrow at the bad call and actually was genuinely emotional the next day when he returned to the place of his mistake. He did everything right except make a good call but his grace and aplomb under the intense pressure and scrutiny is exemplary.
Armando Galarraga has been a fringe major league pitcher who was on the doorstep of immortality in baseball terms. Perfect games are rare and his performance during the game, after the mistake was made and following the game in interviews and actions, was unbelievably strong, a lesson for us all. In my mind, he may now be even more famous as the pitcher who was robbed of his perfect chance yet he should be known and held up on a pedestal as an example to us all of grace under pressure, showing compassion and understanding and maintaining his dignity when many others lose theirs. Contrast his smile and getting back to work in the game to George Brett’s dugout explosion so many years ago and tell me which is the better role model for our kids AND us.
Finally Bud Selig, Baseball commissioner. Well, he blew it. He blew it big time. He had a chance to hit a grand slam in this situation and instead bunted into a double play. Instead of showing that the human element is important to baseball and correcting a bad mistake, he allows it so stand, for the umpire to take the heat, for the player to lose his moment in the sun because of a presedent he was afraid to set, yet has already been set many times before. Brett’s none home run to home run, Haddux’s perfect game to not perfect game, trades rescinded for the good of baseball, drug suspensions, all examples of baseball stepping in and fixing errors. Look, the player was out at first base. The umpire admitted such, the Tigers admitted such, the batter himself admitted such yet Buddy Boy failed to act, instead saying that this will cause him to look at the use of instant replay further. And here in lies the double play. Bad enough he popped up the bunt but he compounds it by talking about the human element in baseball and mistakes, and then offers to review the call for more TV cameras, video tape machines, computers, maybe an eye in the sky to correct mistakes from happening in the future. It could have been simple. Selig could have just said “Baseball is a great game played by and umpired by people. Occasionally a mistake is made of such proportion that we need to intervene. Jim Joyce admitted he was in error and so I am going to do the most human of all things possible in our game. We are going to forgive this mistake. I am going to rule that Mr. Galarraga effort be judged to be a perfect game, a masterpiece of excellence and as such Baseball will hold both Mr. Galarraga and Mr. Joyce up as examples of grace and humanity to us all in this emotional time.”
Simple. human forgiving. A lesson for us all. Taught by Armando Galarraga, missed by Bud Selig.
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