MLB News: Bryce Harper's "Make Baseball Fun Again"

Bryce Harper made his message clear on Opening Day, building off comments he made during the spring about the current state of MLB.

Following his stupendous opener in which he hit his fourth straight Opening Day home run, Bryce Harper was seen wearing a hat with the words “Make Baseball Fun Again” in his post-game Q & A session.

Baseball, in the eyes of Harper is a “tired sport”, old in its ideals and practices, and boring to the young fan. He is part of the newest generation of baseball players who grew up watching the game during the steroid era. Growing up, Harper, much like countless other young fans and players, was inundated with clips of amazing feats of athleticism and showboating. Many of the younger players in the game fall in line with Harper and believe that baseball could do with a reinvention and makeover.

But are they right? Does their belief in a revolution have a solid standing in the game of baseball?

This question cannot be answered simply. Before it can be assessed, it is essential to understand what baseball means to the world and the country.

Baseball is the oldest professional sport in the country and as a result, its traditions and history are unlike any in America. Baseball as a game dates back to the Civil War, perhaps earlier. Baseball as an institution dates back to 1876 when the National League was founded. This marked the beginning of organized baseball as we know it. As baseball spread and came into the national spotlight, it developed a certain identity that was its own and could not be easily shaken or changed.

In the most basic sense, baseball is the game of America, a game of the people. It rewards your hard work and determination and allows the poorest of people to make something great of themselves. Baseball for many people is a lifeline that they rely on to provide for their families and make their lives better than their parents could have ever imagined.

The greatest example is that of Babe Ruth who was a delinquent of the streets of Baltimore in his youth. Even though he was going down the path of delinquency and crime, he overcame the odds and through hard work and an unrelenting passion for the game, he became the greatest home run hitter of all time. His success endowed him with more money and fame than his parents could have ever dreamed of providing him.

Now, back to the idea that Bryce Harper is proposing about baseball. In the March 2016 issue of Sports Illustrated, Harper was quoted in saying that baseball is, “a tired sport, because you can’t express yourself.”

Coupled together with his choice of headwear, this statement does not leave much to the imagination in the realm of Bryce Harper’s ideas about the game he loves. He wants freedom of expression; he wants to be able to show his excitement when he hits a home run. As it stands now, he is limited by the ‘unwritten rules of baseball’. His goal is to change this and make baseball a different game than it was when he entered it.

Harper is the direct result of the steroid era and the showboating of that era. He grew up seeing Mark McGwire hitting 70 home runs in a season and witnessing the greatest offensive era in recent memory. As a result of this, his idea of baseball and its practices has been based off this era. As a whole, baseball is not representative of this ten-year era and it is not what baseball is as an institution.

Now, before you jump down my throat on this, I would like you to think what showboating means to the game of baseball. Yes, the all-time greats did it. As shown by this clip of Mickey Mantle flipping his bat on a big hit.

Show boating is as old as dirt. It has been happening ever since the first caveman could do something that another caveman couldn’t. As much as your grandfather and father want you to believe, showboating has been a part of baseball forever. Rickey Henderson quite literally tore a base out of the ground when he set the base-stealing record. You cannot tell me that that isn’t equivalent to Jose Bautista tossing his bat to the side emphatically in Game 5 of the ALDS. They are both egregious and extraordinary shows of emotion and triumph.

Baseball history is filled with examples of showboating and upstaging your opponent. What I am arguing is that everybody has to stop worrying about what the players do and how they play the game. Baseball has always been a sport fueled by emotion. For its entirety, baseball has been filled with unique characters who showed off in their own ways.

And you know what? The game went on. Without a problem.

The game survived Al Hrabosky pacing his way around the mound prior to at bats and challenging any batter who so much as looked at him the wrong way:

The game survived the infamous bullpen cars of the seventies.

The game will survive Bryce Harper wearing his emotions on his sleeve. It will survive him beating his chest when he hits a big home run or making a motion to his teammates when he comes up with a clutch hit.

The game shall endure.

At this point in its history however, baseball needs to do more than survive and endure. It needs to prosper, advance and reach more fans than ever before. The way it needs to do it is to learn to accept a certain amount of showboating in its players.

For old fashioned followers of the game, this is an extremely hard pill to swallow, and I’ll admit as a lover of the game in a traditional sense, I hate to see these words materialize on the screen as I press the corresponding keys. Nonetheless, this adaptation is essential to the continued success of baseball and the proliferation of the sport we love.

This movement will not be easy. It will likely alienate a few older fans who pine for the days of old when ‘real men played baseball’. In the long run however, it will rejuvenate interest in the sport that owns a monopoly on television time in the summer.

Baseball is in such a unique situation. It is the only major sport that is broadcast daily across cable throughout the summer months. It is the only professional sport that is able to be attended when kids are out of school. If it could only learn to capitalize on this, it could catapult itself into the national consciousness once again.

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Baseball as a whole need to realize that it is a mirror of society, and society is trending towards a time of exuberance and excitement. Baseball was the first institution in the nation to accept integration among its workforce on a large scale, it offered its best players to the war effort in the 1940s and it united the nation following the harrowing events of 9/11.

Baseball is a microcosm of society and it represents exactly what we as a society are struggling with currently. The newest generation is dealing with unprecedented circumstances that the older generations could never imagine. In both society and baseball, these issues are multifaceted and cannot be solved with simple steps. They require meticulous planning and execution. The way these problems can be solved is through education at a younger level.

The issue that faces baseball is, for the most part, is an issue of respect.

Respect is essential in the game of baseball. For a long time, baseball was taught by fathers who understood the fundamentals of the game and they passed it onto their sons and other kids. In the most recent generation, we have seen an explosion in access to highlight reels of players. Often, young players are focused on recreating these events and do not pay due attention to the fundamentals of the sport. As a result of this lack of focus on the basics of the sport, young ballplayers often do not understand the intricacies of the game.

Eventually, in a player’s life, this lust for flare gives way to a certain hunger for learning as they advance up the rungs of the baseball ladder. But, deep down, all they want to do is recreate the swing of Ken Griffey Jr. that they watched

in their living rooms. They want to be ‘that guy’. ‘That guy’ who turned the incredible, silky smooth double play. They will always be those ten year olds in their backyards trying to turn the perfect highlight reel double play or pull off the greatest move of all time, the “Jeter”.

Respect is the knowledge that these plays come only after you have mastered the most basic of mechanics. Through no fault of any individual, this respect of the game has not been developed or fostered in the lower levels of baseball. Due to this, young baseball players do not understand the power that mastering the basics of the game has in developing a well-rounded ballplayer.

Baseball is not an antiquated sport only enjoyable to old men in rocking chairs sipping on sweet tea in the dog days of summer. It is America’s game. It is the quintessential game of the people. Change will happen. I promise you. We will learn to accept this new style of play with bat flips and fist pumps. But it will take time.

As with all changes in baseball, change is a hard thing to force. You must first propose the idea and then slowly, but surely allow it to take hold. Harper is doing exactly this. He is being the change he would like to see in baseball.

Next: Reds call up Robert Stephenson

He is changing the landscape of baseball one beautiful, elegant, powerful swing at a time.

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