This Is Bad Writing

The enemy.

My mind was just assaulted by Peter Gammons' latest article at MLB.com ("Spring a reminder of glory to come"). Strange word choice, factual errors, embarrassing attempts at faux-poetry... I'm not quite sure what's going on. It begins:

Technically, the season is two games old, with Yoenis Cespedes atop the Triple Crown leaderboard.

Just a terrible, terrible start. Yoenis Cespedes is in no way atop the Triple Crown leaderboard. He's tied with Dustin Ackley in RBI (2). He's tied with four other players in HR (1). And he's behind Ichiro by over 100 points in batting average (.444 to .333). How can Gammons possibly misread a simple column of numbers when only fourteen players have actually gotten the 8 at-bats needed to qualify for this very very small leaderboard??

Logical conclusion: Peter Gammons is senile. The rest of the article, which points out some reasons why this spring training was extra-special, proves this fact.

On the $2.15 billion sale of the Dodgers:

...the Dodgers have Magic and they're not going to be restricted to bidding for Aaron Harang and Adam Kennedy. They can poster up Matt Kemp against Albert Pujols, throw Clayton Kershaw against Tim Lincecum and late-night baseball means Rangers-Angels or Dodgers-Giants-D-backs. Their programming has stars, it has pennant races, it has riches, it has faces, and while the big money seemingly resides on the coasts, the defending World Series champions reside in St. Louis, the National League Central could be a three- or four-team see-saw and the long-standing fans of the Detroit Tigers will sell out Comerica Park on Thursday, looking out at three megastars -- Justin Verlander, Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera -- with the belief that this is 1984 redux.

Whew. The mother of all run-on sentences. Gammons starts by talking about the Dodgers' newfound financial power, then seemingly shifts to West-Coast-Baseball in general, but then quickly points out that not all the money is centralized on the coasts, because the Central divisions have some strong teams and the Detroit Tigers are reminiscent of another Tigers team that played 28 years ago. No need to use multiple sentences to express that straightforward thought. I also like how Gammons mentions that West Coast programming now has "faces," as if pre-2012 Dodgers-Giants games were played by amorphous, faceless blobs.

On the addition of a new wild card to each league:

...and the fact is that fans in Texas and Southern California feel more strongly about making the postseason than those in New York and New England.

Umm...why? They're all competing against each other for the same wild card spots. The AL West didn't get its own special wild card, regardless of how psyched Gammons feels about West-Coast-Baseball ("Now With Faces!"). Sure, the Rangers and Angels have better postseason chances because they play a bunch of games against the A's and Mariners, while the Yankees/Red Sox get the Rays and Blue Jays...but that was true before the extra wild card, too. So...take that.

Spring training was also special because:

3. The spring focused on the game's rising stars...this is part of what we love, and the regeneration of fascinating, talented and star-personality players is vital if baseball is going to be an entertainment as well as sentimentally evergreen. 

There must have been a way of communicating that thought without trying to force "sentimentally evergreen" (????) down my throat.

The insightful reasons continue:

4. There was a huge, natural fascination with the present stars.

As opposed to the olden days, when fans were more fascinated with backup catchers and Dooley Womack than the superstars. Glad we finally bucked that trend.

Now time for my favorite reason:

6. We finally will learn if baseball can succeed in Miami.

Finally. It's about time that age-old question has been answered. Next project: can bowling succeed in Yonkers?

Meanwhile, it's going to be a boffo opening for the Marlins. The ballpark is unique, it is Miami cool and the team is very good.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but: I'm quite certain this was written by a fifth-grader who's learning English as his second language. "Miami cool"????

Hanley Ramirez has accepted the move to third base and is a kid again.

If there's some kind of freaky, Benjamin Button-style reverse-aging thing going on with the Marlins' franchise player, Gammons needs to notify the proper officials posthaste.

Jose Reyes is ever-energetic.

"Energetic" always being the common baseball euphemism for "small, fast Latino middle-infielder with a big smile and hamstring troubles."

If Giancarlo Stanton's knee is all right, he is one of the great young stars anywhere, as well as precisely what we all want our stars to be.

Uh...blessed with robust knees and an Italian-sounding name? Care to elaborate on those 'precise' characteristics? Guess not.

If Josh Johnson can make 30 starts, he can be an NL Cy Young Award contender, the Marlins will be contenders and we're all going to board the Ozzie Train.

Listen very closely: I have absolutely no interest in boarding the 'Ozzie Train.' None whatsoever.

To repeat: Ozzie Guillen is Robin Williams; had they made a Spanish "Good Morning Vietnam," Ozzie would have played the lead.

Had they made a Korean "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," Shin-Soo Choo would have played the lead ("Shin-Soo Choo with the Dragon Tattoo"? I think we're onto something).

Oh, wait. I forgot. This is ludicrous. Go away, Peter Gammons. Far, far away.

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.