While the flashy aspect of MLB is nothing new, has 2019 in part changed the views of some of those on both sides of the issue?
From the beginning, MLB has been a game built on tradition. While the original rules have certainly been expanded upon, the crux of the game remains effectively the same. At its’ core, MLB is a simple game of human chess between a batter and a hurler, one of the few games where the defense controls the pace, and in part controls the outcome.
Because of this, one mistake on the part of a pitcher can result in exactly what happened between Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants and Max Muncy of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The latter deposited a fastball from the former over 420 feet into McCovey Cove beyond right field at Oracle Park, jawing with the former World Series MVP in the process as he made his way around the bases. This was punctuated with the expression, in Muncy’s own words, “if you don’t want me to watch it, go get it out of the ocean.”
While this may be one of the more savage verbal responses to this kind of a situation during this 2019 season, it is hardly the first, and things need to go no further back than mid-April on a cay in Chicago. As most MLB fans know by now, this is when White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson unleashed one of the most talked-about bat flips since Jose Bautista‘s legendary toss against the Rangers in the playoffs a few years back.
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Anderson would be suspended one game as a result of the incident, as Joe Torre cited his use of the n-word in his own trash talk after the home run. From Muncy to Anderson and so many instances in between and similar to them, a debate has added steam: how much should be allowed in terms of “letting the kids play”?
Leading up to last season’s playoffs, MLB released a commercial starring Ken Griffey Jr. following up clips of some of the game’s most exciting young players with one simple statement: Let the kids play.
It was a fairly clear stance by the league itself towards some of its most old school fans, as an endorsement of sorts of bat flips, pitcher exuberance after big strikeouts and the like.
Then, prior to the start of the 2019 season, MLB released a follow up ad, this time featuring the game’s brightest from Mike Trout to Christian Yelich and Giancarlo Stanton at a press conference filled with the more typical athlete cliches before Alex Bregman breaks the ice for each player to make their own bold predictions for the coming year. This ranged from Bregman himself declaring the Astros will win “this World Series and the next one” to Yelich saying he will hit 50 home runs (a prediction he’s not off to too bad of a start on).
The message of this ad was equally as simple, as it said that while there is plenty of room for players to say the cliches when appropriate, a little bit of confidence is not necessarily a bad thing either.
If you look at Twitter or any form of social media in response to a play such as Muncy’s or when a notably flashier player like Javier Baez or Ronald Acuna Jr. does something jaw-dropping and emotes a similar reaction, it appears that the public sentiment of the game’s audience whether young or old, old or new school, is beginning to shift to a similar side of the debate.
#LetTheKidsPlay