It would be good for baseball if they looked at the Tony Bennett case study and stopped fucking with it.
"It Don't Mean a Thing if He Don't Check That Swing"?It would be good for baseball if they looked at the Tony Bennett case study and stopped fucking with it.
You're beginning to see the light. Baseball is a many-splendored thing."It Don't Mean a Thing if He Don't Check That Swing"?
I agree with this.What needs to happen instead of fundamentally changing the game is taking the game to new places, increasing access, marketing baseball's stars better, maybe connecting the ephemera of baseball to the game itself and just being a bit more bolshy about the damn product rather than apologetic.
As the father of a baseball obsessed 8 year old, I agree with all of this. Its weird to watch my son try to enjoy the game that is being played in the present only to have the specters of the past constantly popping in.But there's another thing that MLB has to do and that's quit marketing stars that are either dead or haven't played in years. Yes, baseball has a wonderful history and it's full of a lot of great things -- it's one of the reasons why many of us are baseball fans. But kids don't give a shit about Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn or Ken Griffey Jr. They care about players like Mike Trout, Gian Carlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Clayton Kershaw and Mookie Betts.
Stop comparing these guys to names of the past, they're never going to win. Every time someone claims that Mike Trout is the best player since Willie Mays (or someone similar) someone argues that "Mays was better" or "the game was different, more difficult when Mays played", etc. That completely weakens the product that's currently on the field. It also starts to make kids wonder whether the players that they like and adore are as good as the ones from a previous generation. And if they're not, what's the point of watching them? Buying their jerseys? Following their teams?
The NFL and the NBA's marketing department is concerned about "the now". Every once in awhile someone will compare Brady to Joe Montana or LeBron to Jordan, but that's usually reserved for all-time greats. I mean, how many times have you heard a no-hit, great fielding shortstop compared to Mark Belanger? Belanger has been dead for 20 years. There are a bunch of contemporary no-hit, great fielding shortstops, use them as the benchmark. Elevate today's game. Baseball is so up its own ass about its history that it's doing harm to its current crop of young players. I watch MLB Network a lot and in the graphic packages that run during commercials or to introduce shows, there are players being promoted who haven't swung a bat or thrown a pitch in decades.
Compare that to the NFL Network or the NBA Channel. There is considerable less fetishizing of those sports' pasts.
Baseball has a wonderful history, it really does and it should be celebrated. But MLB has to stop making their history the best thing about the game. Otherwise it's going to eat itself, when there's no more new history to talk about.
Edit: No matter how many slings and arrows it gets, baseball is an awesome game. But MLB needs to realize that it didn't peak in the 1950s or 60s. There are still great players doing great things every day. They need to capitalize on that. Once MLB starts believing this, the rest of the sporting world will too.
I agree with this.
But there's another thing that MLB has to do and that's quit marketing stars that are either dead or haven't played in years. Yes, baseball has a wonderful history and it's full of a lot of great things -- it's one of the reasons why many of us are baseball fans. But kids don't give a shit about Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn or Ken Griffey Jr. They care about players like Mike Trout, Gian Carlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Clayton Kershaw and Mookie Betts.
Stop comparing these guys to names of the past, they're never going to win. Every time someone claims that Mike Trout is the best player since Willie Mays (or someone similar) someone argues that "Mays was better" or "the game was different, more difficult when Mays played", etc. That completely weakens the product that's currently on the field. It also starts to make kids wonder whether the players that they like and adore are as good as the ones from a previous generation. And if they're not, what's the point of watching them? Buying their jerseys? Following their teams?
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*sigh*Edit: No matter how many slings and arrows it gets, baseball is an awesome game. But MLB needs to realize that it didn't peak in the 1950s or 60s. There are still great players doing great things every day. They need to capitalize on that. Once MLB starts believing this, the rest of the sporting world will too.
I’ll address HBK when I get in front of a laptop, but baby boomers have ruined sex, drugs, rock n roll and the government. Why should baseball be any different.*sigh*
The baby boomers only care about themselves.
I'm not saying that remembering the past is shitting on today's stars, what I'm saying is that by constantly bringing up what players have done in the past; MLB is devaluing what is happening now. And that's a big deal. Aaron Judge deserved to be pushed. So does Clayton Kershaw, Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Jose Altuve, Mike Trout. It's important for MLB to have household names and faces that kids recognize.Remembering history isn't really shitting on today's stars. They pushed the hell out of Judge so hard last year, that he's now a household name
I used to go down to the library every week, taking out old baseball books. I loved the history. I started watching in the 80s, my father doesn't watch sports , this was all of my own doing. I actually preferred Ruth and Gehrig era over Mantle and Mays
WWE has FINALLY embraced the past, and it's doing gangbusters. The network, the retro shows (their version of old timer's day), the action figures etc. You can acknowledge the past while pushing the present.
To me, ever since they expanded the playoffs, it's reinvigorated dead towns like Pittsburgh and Kansas City. Jim Kaat always said on commentary that he wished he played in front of the huge crowds of today. They didn't draw back then, nearly as well (like wrestling, most will claim 'hanging from the rafters'). Not to mention many more teams now.
And baseball has always been about comparing. Nobody ever cared about football or basketball records, but you say 56 or .406, and you'll get the name to match. Rollins got a ton of pub when he had his hit streak a few years ago.
I think it's in much better shape than it was mid 90s, and I'm not even counting the strike
What a ridiculous statement! I was following baseball when Mantle and Mays came up as rookies. What awesome baseball have I missed? What obsession do I have with the past? I was fortunate to have seen them, and others from earlier eras, play against their peers; to see them play against players who were coming to the end of their careers and to see them play against ones just beginning their careers.And if you were alive during the Mantle and Mays years, you missed out of some awesome baseball by being obsessed with the past.
Okay...little touchy?What a ridiculous statement! I was following baseball when Mantle and Mays came up as rookies. What awesome baseball have I missed? What obsession do I have with the past? I was fortunate to have seen them, and others from earlier eras, play against their peers; to see them play against players who were coming to the end of their careers and to see them play against ones just beginning their careers.
Baseball and numbers have been locked together for around 160 years. Should we just forget the stats? There are layers and layers of statistics that provide a way of measuring the history of the game. While what is measured and how the measurements are made had evolved throughout the history of the game.
Maybe what the youth of today need is for the game to be replaced with a computer version in which the players never change, the only difference being the variation of random numbers that determine the outcome of each event. Use random numbers to construct each player, then have a draft for the teams. If weather effects are ignored and there are no park factors, there will be no need for trades, injuries and retirements. Every season there will be a "best" player and in the long run that player will undoubtedly change from year-to-year. And best of all, there won't be any fetishizing about players past.
Ok, wait. I understand government but how have baby boomers ruined the other things? Sex is a swipe away. Heroin is dirt cheap. Rock and roll has countless genres and is more diverse than ever. What's ruined? How did BBs ruin these other things, exactly?...baby boomers have ruined sex, drugs, rock n roll and the government
I`m 60. Do I have to get off your lawn too?What a ridiculous statement! I was following baseball when Mantle and Mays came up as rookies. What awesome baseball have I missed? What obsession do I have with the past? I was fortunate to have seen them, and others from earlier eras, play against their peers; to see them play against players who were coming to the end of their careers and to see them play against ones just beginning their careers.
Baseball and numbers have been locked together for around 160 years. Should we just forget the stats? There are layers and layers of statistics that provide a way of measuring the history of the game. While what is measured and how the measurements are made had evolved throughout the history of the game.
Maybe what the youth of today need is for the game to be replaced with a computer version in which the players never change, the only difference being the variation of random numbers that determine the outcome of each event. Use random numbers to construct each player, then have a draft for the teams. If weather effects are ignored and there are no park factors, there will be no need for trades, injuries and retirements. Every season there will be a "best" player and in the long run that player will undoubtedly change from year-to-year. And best of all, there won't be any fetishizing about players past.
I get what you're saying, and I agree in a sense that it does seem like a lot of the conversation around baseball is based on this idea that baseball was better "before." That said, I think MLB itself is trying to market its young stars. Go to MLB.com and you'll see Ohtani, Syndergaard, Francisco Lindor on the cover of a video game, etc. etc. etc. It's all the various local/national columnists (like Cafardo) and TV talking heads who keep perpetuating the stuck-in-the-past idea, perhaps because they are catering to a certain vocal subset of the overall baseball fanbase. Yeah, fine, some of those types of media personalities are employed by MLB.com or the MLB Network, but they can't dictate what Bert Blyleven says on Fox Sports broadcasts of Twins games.I'm not saying that remembering the past is shitting on today's stars, what I'm saying is that by constantly bringing up what players have done in the past; MLB is devaluing what is happening now. And that's a big deal. Aaron Judge deserved to be pushed. So does Clayton Kershaw, Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Jose Altuve, Mike Trout. It's important for MLB to have household names and faces that kids recognize.
Every kid knows Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Steph Curry, James Harden, Kyrie Iriving because the NBA pushes stars. They've been doing it since Magic and Bird, and it's worked out for them pretty well. In the NFL, they push teams. The Pats, the Packers, the Cowboys, the Eagles. And that makes sense because with all of the injuries and talking about concussions it's not wise for NFL marketing to focus on actual human beings.
What does MLB push? Nostalgia. And nostalgia is a powerful thing because nothing now is ever going to compare against what happened in the hazy water-colored memories of days gone by. How old are you? Why did you prefer the Ruth and Gehrig era to Mantle and Mays? Even if you're 60, both players had been long dead. And if you were alive during the Mantle and Mays years, you missed out of some awesome baseball by being obsessed with the past.
That's a big problem.
If you keep having people wistful of the past, they're not going to respect the present. You keep talking about players who are long dead or are living in an old age home doesn't show reverence for the game's history, it shows a fear of the game's future. There are a lot of really awesome baseball players playing in the major leagues today. Talk about them. I hate to use this as an example, because it's well known how much I despise his writing, but in yesterday's Boston Globe's national baseball column, Nick Cafardo said that Judge and Giancarlo Stanton could be the next Ruth and Gehrig.
Number one, they won't. That's crazy to set a level of excellence at that height. Two, you know the last time that Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were in the same lineup together? 1934. That's 84 years ago. There is no one who is eating solid food today that remembers when Gehrig and Ruth were in the same lineup together. In the 84 years since then, there have been literally hundreds of duos that Cafardo could have used. But he does what every other baseball writer does, goes right to distant past. If you're a kid and you're a new fan of the game and you happen to read this, what are you thinking?
Do NFL writers do this? Do NBA writers do this? How about NHL writers? Even golf writers do fetishize the past as much as MLB and their writers do. And it's a problem. NBA Championship games start at 8:30 or 9:00 and usually end somewhere around 11:30 or midnight on school nights. No one ever complains about them ending late because kids want to watch their heroes. If MLB made a solid effort to dial the history back by 90% and really play up what's great about the game today, they would have a lot healthier sport. Football is teetering, baseball has a great opportunity to jump back in the consciousness of the kids.
I disagree with this somewhat, I think this actually misses the point I was trying to make. Use baseball's history to promote the current product. One of the best commercials I've ever seen, and I can't find it on YouTube, was the NFL showing a snarling, eyes-bugging-out Mike Singletary* and slowly transforming it into Patrick Willis, who he was coaching at the time. It was chills down your spine stuff.I agree with this.
But there's another thing that MLB has to do and that's quit marketing stars that are either dead or haven't played in years. Yes, baseball has a wonderful history and it's full of a lot of great things -- it's one of the reasons why many of us are baseball fans. But kids don't give a shit about Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn or Ken Griffey Jr. They care about players like Mike Trout, Gian Carlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Clayton Kershaw and Mookie Betts.
Stop comparing these guys to names of the past, they're never going to win. Every time someone claims that Mike Trout is the best player since Willie Mays (or someone similar) someone argues that "Mays was better" or "the game was different, more difficult when Mays played", etc. That completely weakens the product that's currently on the field. It also starts to make kids wonder whether the players that they like and adore are as good as the ones from a previous generation. And if they're not, what's the point of watching them? Buying their jerseys? Following their teams?
The NFL and the NBA's marketing department is concerned about "the now". Every once in awhile someone will compare Brady to Joe Montana or LeBron to Jordan, but that's usually reserved for all-time greats. I mean, how many times have you heard a no-hit, great fielding shortstop compared to Mark Belanger? Belanger has been dead for 20 years. There are a bunch of contemporary no-hit, great fielding shortstops, use them as the benchmark. Elevate today's game. Baseball is so up its own ass about its history that it's doing harm to its current crop of young players. I watch MLB Network a lot and in the graphic packages that run during commercials or to introduce shows, there are players being promoted who haven't swung a bat or thrown a pitch in decades.
Compare that to the NFL Network or the NBA Channel. There is considerable less fetishizing of those sports' pasts.
Baseball has a wonderful history, it really does and it should be celebrated. But MLB has to stop making their history the best thing about the game. Otherwise it's going to eat itself, when there's no more new history to talk about.
Edit: No matter how many slings and arrows it gets, baseball is an awesome game. But MLB needs to realize that it didn't peak in the 1950s or 60s. There are still great players doing great things every day. They need to capitalize on that. Once MLB starts believing this, the rest of the sporting world will too.
I started to create a response that hit on this point. I actually wonder what impact "the steroid era" has on this. Even guys everyone assumes were clean, like Griffey Jr, aren't really talked about, it always looks beyond the 90's and early 2000's to guys like Hank Aaron.To the extent that baseball sells nostalgia I think the issue is how far back into the past baseball tends to look compared to other sports. The NBA and NFL look back a lot too, but when the NBA looks back it's mostly to the Jordan/Barkley era, less so to Magic/Bird, and much less to anything before that. If you look at NFL Network, their most important show other than live games and the draft is probably the excellent Football Life documentaries, and those tend to be about guys who played/coached in the last 25 years. Baseball too often is reaching back to players and events that aren't in the living memory of the 18-49 demographic. That seems like a big mistake.
I'm not saying that baseball forget about its past, I'm really not. One of the coolest things about baseball is that people legitimately give a shit about the past. Every once in awhile an NBA or NFL writer will write something about how LeBron James would do in the 1960s or 70s (he'd destroy everyone in his path) or how Tom Brady would fare against teams from that time period (depending on his line, probably the same as LeBron), but baseball is able to transcend time because it's not the exact same game as it was 125 years ago, but its pretty damn close.I disagree with this somewhat, I think this actually misses the point I was trying to make. Use baseball's history to promote the current product. One of the best commercials I've ever seen, and I can't find it on YouTube, was the NFL showing a snarling, eyes-bugging-out Mike Singletary* and slowly transforming it into Patrick Willis, who he was coaching at the time. It was chills down your spine stuff.
I've seen the NBA and NFL use its history, but it does it with the current product in mind. Baseball either doesn't do it at all, or does it really ham-fistedly. Here's a commercial idea, get Willie Mays talking about how great Mike Trout is. Get Johnny Bench talking about Buster Posey. Get Ozzie Smith talking about Andrelton Simmons. Hell, get Randy Johnson - a legend who isn't eligible for Social Security yet - talking about Clayton Kershaw or something.
But that rarely happens, even in the past. Babe Ruth finished with the Braves, Willie Mays with the Mets, Hank Aaron on the Brewers. Ty Cobb played with the A's. As did Tris Speaker. Jimmie Foxx played for the Phillies and Cubs before retiring. For every Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn there's a Dave Winfield who bounced around or Rickey Henderson or Mike Piazza or Pedro Martinez or Ken Griffey Jr.One thing that would make it easier to market the game, and its players, is if teams could actually retain their star players for their entire careers, a practice which has now become a rare exception.
Number of Players Who Played for Just One Franchise (note that is not team)The idea that one player stays with one team for his entire career is more of an anomaly than anything. Even back in the old days when it was much worse. After a player wasn't useful, they were cast off and another team picked them up so they could get a quick bounce at the gate.
How many of these are one season or less? Like Steve Lomasney played his entire career for the Red Sox just like Ted Williams.Number of Players Who Played for Just One Franchise (note that is not team)
ARI--56
ATL--426
BAL--379
BOS--345
CHC--362
CHW--383
CIN--372
CLE--355
COL--79
DET--351
HOU--141
KCR--130
LAA--151
LAD--332
MIA--72
MIL--147
MIN--456
NYM--143
NYY--262
OAK--517
PHI--484
PIT--390
SDP--137
SEA--111
SFG--370
STL--434
TBD--49
TEX--153
TOR--95
WSN--126
(from bb-ref)
.How many of these are one season or less? Like Steve Lomasney played his entire career for the Red Sox just like Ted Williams.
Don’t bother and save yourself some time..
I just found out that I made a mistake with the above number as bb-ref listed pitchers separately (I didn't scroll down far enough to catch that because at the top they listed nnn players played for this franchise exclusively and the fact that it said Batters didn't ring a bell). I'll have to redo it and since year(s) played is included your question can be answered but it will take some time.
That's not true at all. There's the whole defensive side to (most) hitters. Adam Jones makes as many game-saving grabs as he does game-winning hits. Same with Jackie Bradley Jr. or Kevin Keirmaier or Kevin Pillar. Mike Trout too, for that matter. And those are just American League centerfielders.The critique about baseball’s failure to market its stars overlooks something critical: the fundamental nature of the game makes it incredibly difficult to market any one player.
In basketball, the best players have a major impact on the outcome every game they play in. This is not the case in baseball, where in any one game Mike Trout is more likely to go 1-4 with a walk and no runs scored than 3-4 with a HR. In basketball, the stars drive everything—they are the story of every game and ultimately every season. The nature of baseball just doesn’t allow that.
I'm not sure that's what O.M. is saying - I think the point is more that other sports enable teams to plan around/lean on/feature a star in a way that baseball can't necessarily (on offense, at least). Like, the Rockets can keep feeding James Harden the ball and play him for 40 minutes. But in an average game, Bryce Harper is only going to get to bat 4-5 times; the Nationals can't keep reconfiguring their lineup to get him to bat every inning. Even defensively, Mike Trout might get the chance to make a spectacular catch, but he's just as likely to handle a few routine fly balls and that's it.That's not true at all. There's the whole defensive side to (most) hitters. Adam Jones makes as many game-saving grabs as he does game-winning hits. Same with Jackie Bradley Jr. or Kevin Keirmaier or Kevin Pillar. Mike Trout too, for that matter. And those are just American League centerfielders.
What about pitchers? They have a major impact on the outcome of every game that they pitch.
As far as game-to-game situations, in January when the Cavs were in town, LeBron had a shitty (for him) game -- he didn't play the entire fourth quarter. Yet, he's still a star of the NBA. Tom Brady had a so-so December, yet he's still front and center in the NFL. My point is that in the midst of a season, players are going to ebb and flow -- even superstars. Saying that the MLB can't promote a player because he has a game where he goes 1-4 with a walk is incredibly short-sighted. You don't market a player based on one good game, otherwise Tuffy Rhodes would have been all you saw in 1994.
I did it anyway because I was curious.Don’t bother and save yourself some time.