White Guys Play Hard

A few years ago, Grady Sizemore was one of the best players in baseball. But his career has been unhinged by injuries, and he’s played in only 106, 33, and 71 games over the last three seasons.

And recently news came out of Indians camp that Sizemore will miss the first 8-12 weeks of this season. Peter Gammons explains the source of the injury on MLB.com:

Sizemore’s heart cause of his hurts

Doctors performed an operation on Sizemore’s lower back, so if his heart really was the problem, he may need to find new doctors.

Also, Sizemore’s other ailments have included: a sprained ankle, a left groin injury, left elbow surgery, a hernia, left knee microfracture surgery, a right knee contusion, a second right knee injury, and a second sports hernia. Compared to the rest of his body, Sizemore’s heart seems to be doing just fine.

Gammons goes on below. His words are in bold; commentary follows.

“Grady Sizemore had just turned 25. It was August 2007 and he was one of the premier players in the game, the face of an Indians team that had been turned over and rebuilt from its powerful ’90s teams and was on a run that would carry it to the seventh game of the American League Championship Series.

Sizemore was in the midst of playing in 382 consecutive games. Part of his charm was that he was such an unassuming and humble person, and as talented a player as he was — averaging 77 extra-base hits per year from ages 23-25 — it was his intrepid style that made him so appealing.

Sizemore ran out every ball as if it were his last at-bat. He dove in the outfield and crashed into walls. ‘Do you ever worry about being the next Darin Erstad?’ I asked him. ‘Someone who plays so hard he beats himself up and shortens his career?’”

This question would have been better phrased like this:

“Do you ever worry about being the next Darin Erstad? Someone who just wasn’t a very good player?”

“Sizemore stared back as if the question had been delivered in Sanskrit. Clearly, he’d never given the idea any thought whatsoever.”

This was your first hint that it was a dumb question in the first place.

“‘I play the way I play,’ Sizemore answered, and looked down. For the record, I asked Erstad, when he was in his twilight as a backup outfielder with the Astros, if he regretted playing so fearlessly that his career was altered and shortened because of injuries, a career that included a season in which he had 240 hits.

‘Not at all,’ Erstad replied. ‘The only thing that I’d regret is if I didn’t play as hard as I could every day. I couldn’t do anything about the injuries.’”

Darin Erstad had one insanely-fluky year. It’s not like he had a Hall of Fame-caliber career derailed by injuries. Consider these four full seasons from 1999-2002 before injuries started to hit in 2003:

Erstad 1999: 148 hits, 13 HRs, 74 OPS+
Erstad 2000: 240 hits, 25 HRs, 137 OPS+ (!!!!!)
Erstad 2001: 163 hits, 9 HRs, 82 OPS+
Erstad 2002: 177 hits, 12 HRs, 86 OPS+

One of these things is not like the other.

Injuries didn’t destroy Erstad. He wasn’t all that much to begin with.

“…Grady Sizemore and Darin Erstad played the way they played. No downshift capabilities. But one sometimes wonders if there isn’t a better way than playing the crash-test dummy, or the special-teams Kamikaze in football.

One looks back at Pete Reiser, who…was infamous for crashing into fences…One looks back at Bobby Valentine, who at 23 tore apart an ankle on a chain-link fence making a daredevil try at a fly ball and thus was robbed of what the late Harry Dalton said “would have been a great career.” One worries about 23-year-old Red Sox outfielder Ryan Kalish, whose promising career has been slowed by injuries…”

Here’s my main beef. Sizemore, Erstad, Reiser, Valentine, and Kalish all suffered injuries because of their scrappy, fearless playing styles. These players are all white.

“Pete Rose played that way and played more games and had more hits than anyone in history. George Brett went out of the box “thinking double” every time he hit a ball and is in the Hall of Fame…”

Rose. Brett. Also white.

“When Buster Posey”

—white—

“was ordered to stop blocking the plate by Bruce Bochy, there was criticism from afar by some former catchers…In May 1974, Carlton Fisk”

—white—

“was on his way to making the All-Star team for the third time in three big league seasons, but in the ninth inning of a one-run game…Fisk tried to block home late with his left leg…Fisk’s knee was blown out.”

Can we think of no examples of minority baseball players whose injuries are explained away by a hard-nosed, fearless approach to baseball?

Speaking of which, here are some other clichés Gammons uses in the article to describe the ‘white playing style’:

Intrepid style
Ran out every ball as if it were his last at-bat
Someone who plays so hard he beats himself up
Playing so fearlessly
No downshift capabilities
Playing the crash-test dummy, or the special teams kamikaze in football
Crashing into fences
Daredevil
Went out of the box “thinking double” every time
Tough
Hard-nosed
Diving for fly balls

It seems like these clichés are attributed far more commonly to white players than to minority players. And it’s not like this is unique to Peter Gammons; sports journalists everywhere do it. Are Sizemore and Brian Roberts  and J.D. Drew ‘playing hard’ while Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes and Rafael Furcal are just ‘injury-prone’? No, of course not. It’s a silly rhetorical trap to fall into.