I want to know whose idea it was to place young children in the outfield during the Home Run Derby. In my opinion, this has become the most interesting part of the Derby. 500-foot home runs? Seen it before. Call me when you hit 600. But children running amok while 80 MPH screamers are whizzing past their ears? That's about as close as it gets to televised utopia for a sardonic asshole such as myself.
I get that you want to bridge the gap between millionaire athletes and the youth that will fill the rosters of tomorrow. And what better way than letting them grace the same field as veritable demigods blasting inanimate objects into orbit? It's awe-inspiring to a child, the type of thing that resonates for a lifetime.
But would you put your own child out there? Let's be honest, kids are stupid. I have a scar in the back of my head that resulted from falling out of a cardboard box onto my family's fireplace that can attest to that. And once again, I saw it again tonight. Most of the kids out in the outfield were more preoccupied with talking to each other and running in circles than they were wary of the certain death screaming off the bat of Vlad Guerrero.
It's become a strange curiosity to me, as I would hate to see some kid suffer serious injury. But why should I try to fool myself into believing I wouldn't laugh uncontrollably should a child take a one-hop to the sternum? I still enjoy Sports Disasters a bit too much. Something about people getting hurt in a non-lethal fashion just entertains me to no end. I refuse to believe that a majority of those that read this blog don't feel the same way.
It's essentially a living, breathing, drooling version of the 8-run bonus for hitting the big glove in MTV Rock-N-Jock softball. I promise that if you put Frank Thomas in the competition again, he'd peg a kid in three pitches. The man was a damn assassin when it came to that stuff.
So seriously, keep trotting children out there, MLB. You've at least got this viewer's attention until a kid gets plunked and it all comes to a screeching halt.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
6 comments:
My absolute favorite was the kid who was standing ten feet in front of the warning track in center, lining up a deep fly ball, only to watch it go over the fence for a homerun.
They must have let the kids man the cameras too, because I watched a 'ball' get lost in the sky going out to left, only to have the camera hard cut over to right center as the ball went out of the park. Bang-up camera work fellas. Bravo.
I always thought that putting the kids out there gave the players more incentive to hit homeruns, instead of the alternative, which would be taking kids heads off with a double in the gap...But then I realized that's just sick...
Or when the assholes broadcasting on the radio get faked out by the kids... "Thiiiiisssss one's gonna be a bit short - OH...475!"
Not to mention, not one of those little fuckers even came close to catching one.
I thought that it was even crazier to have kids and adults sitting along the base lines. There was a near miss there in the last round when the batters were getting tired.
Post a Comment