Chris Roemer: Technology, hubris threaten baseball’s rich traditions

During a recent rant, Jon Stewart questioned why the national anthem is played before the start of baseball games. He called that tradition a “weird ritual.”

I freely confess I’m a baseball purist, convinced the game’s future lies in it’s past. Give me back the heady days of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Brooks Robinson and Johnny Bench. The game has changed in so many ways since they played, but never did I think we’d reach the point when playing the national anthem would be referred to as a “weird ritual.”

“Let the Kids Play” was a MLB marketing slogan a couple years back that tried to sell ego and grandstanding as the values today’s game should embrace. It was just another capitulation to an American culture that has learned to worship “self” above all else. Another MLB lockout and delayed season provide ample evidence today’s participants and owners do not have “the good of the game” front of mind.

Baseball’s heroes once embodied the character traits we desired for our children. Not so much anymore. Personally, I would prefer our kids not grow up to be conceited egotists who celebrate nothing larger than themselves and the money they can make. If that’s your thing, there’s always professional football.

Each week during the football season, I’m amazed how puerile and ostentatious NFL players have become. Choreographed frolicking in the end zone. Players preening after making a tackle or knocking down a pass even when their team is down by four touchdowns late in the fourth quarter. They may be highly paid athletes, but their behavior is hardly professional.

Maybe I should be more sympathetic to the excuses some have proffered for Antonio Brown’s buffoonery a few months ago. Remember? Unfortunately, his antics were not terribly dissimilar to how I see NFL players acting week-in and week-out during the football season.

On the same day Brown stormed off the field shirtless, Los Angeles Rams corner Jaylen Ramsey, while on the field, angrily hit one of his own teammates in the face between plays. The week before, there was a sideline fight between two Washington players. Dak Prescott gave “credit” to Dallas fans for throwing trash at the referees after the Cowboys’ wild card loss to the 49ers. And Rams running back Cam Akers taunted Cardinals safety Budda Baker as he lay on the field waiting for a stretcher to take him to the hospital. Akers said he didn’t know Baker was hurt. Does that matter?

Does baseball really want to travel down the same path the NFL has taken?

Playing baseball, my son heard a thousand times, “Respect the game.” Embodied in that saying was a code of conduct that made self-promotion anathema to anyone wearing a uniform. Players were taught never to do anything that would draw undue attention to themselves, or embarrass their team or the game.

Today, ballplayers like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are popping up all over the place, and boorish behavior like bat flipping and posing at the plate after hitting a home run are becoming more common. There was a time when any player who dared to showboat in that way could expect a fastball in the ribs at his next at-bat.

Technology has already done tremendous damage to the game of baseball. Machines now tell managers who to play, where they should stand, and when to have a runner steal. Machines tell us if someone is safe or out, and a machine soon may tell us if a two-seam fastball clipped the corner of the plate.

Baseball was great when it was “a game of inches.” Replays have changed it into a game of some measurement too small to calculate. Debating an umpire’s call once kept fans engaged in a game long after it was over, when next-day arguments at work or school over whether a runner was safe or out happened all the time. Today, even a play at the plate, which was arguably the most exciting play in baseball, has all the excitement of a haircut.

What’s the call? Who cares. People in New York are going to microscopically dissect the play and will let us know how things work out in a few minutes. Who knows, maybe the catcher had his foot in the wrong place.

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Baseball is a game of subtleties, of human interactions governed more by unwritten canon than anything found in the rule book. What holds it together, what gives the game its enduring appeal is its character, an ethos, a set of traditions and customs developed over more than a century of play.

MLB may soon opt to use a machine to call sterile, clinically accurate balls and strikes. Of course, that exactness will cost the game much of its richness and color. If Earl Weaver and Billy Martin were around today, they would be just two more managers. Maybe they could kick dirt on the keyboard.

The great managers of the past used their extraordinary intuition and knowledge of the game to manage their teams on the field. They just knew where to place their fielders, what pitch to throw in any given situation, who to pinch hit, and when to steal a base. Today, all a manager needs to know is the location of his laptop. Press enter and out pops the answer.

Technology and a growing hubris among players threaten to destroy baseball.

Technology is attempting to turn an elegant, if imperfect art into an uninspired machine-like science, and baseball was never intended to be a science.

And to see what unbridled hubris does to a sport, one need only watch any professional football game on any Sunday afternoon.

Chris Roemer is a retired banker and educator who resides in Finksburg. He can be contacted at chrisroemer1960@gmail.com

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