The Pirates season started well Thursday. Prize rookie Ke’Bryan Hayes hit a home run in the first inning.
As Hayes rounded the bases, he was doubtless dreaming of escaping from Pittsburgh at the earliest possible opportunity. If he could have, Hayes would have crossed home plate, sprinted to the dugout, through the locker room, out the door and straight to Yankee Stadium.
The Pirates won. The magic number stood at 62. Sixty-two more wins to avoid losing 100 games. That’s the current measure of “success” for Pittsburgh baseball.
The Pirates’ opener wasn’t a reminder of the Pirates’ current state. Those will come soon enough, and repeatedly.
It was a reminder that baseball stinks.
The temperature for the opening pitch at Chicago’s Wrigley Field was 36 degrees. Baseball can’t control the weather.
But that opening game was a microcosm of why baseball has become a micromanaged, picayune, petty game that has abandoned entertainment value for bland efficiency.
The teams combined to use 15 pitchers. The starters threw three innings each. Nobody else threw more than an inning. The relievers threw 104 warmup pitches. (The notion that each pitcher needs eight warmup tosses upon entering the game — after throwing plenty of those in the bullpen — is one of baseball’s many time-wasting endeavors based on ceremony.)
The number of pitchers was exacerbated by the cold, but only slightly. There’s no such thing as an ace anymore, let alone a workhorse pitcher.
When I was a kid and the St. Louis Cardinals visited Pittsburgh, I didn’t go to the game and hope the Pirates could work counts against Bob Gibson and get him out of the game ASAP. I wanted to see Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell take him deep. I wanted to see who the better man was. Not who could squeeze out the most analytically.
The teams combined to draw 15 walks Thursday. The Pirates drew 11. That’s baseball’s primary objective. Go deep in the count and try to finagle walks.
How exciting. Seeing Colin Moran jog to first base three times was so thrilling.
When kids play baseball these days, do they pretend to be Kevin Youkilis?
The game took four hours. There’s a reason movies don’t last four hours. I still can’t force myself to watch “The Irishman.”
Baseball has so many flaws. Most involve wasted time.
Game 7 of the 1960 World Series is one of baseball’s most famous moments. The Pirates beat the New York Yankees 10-9 on Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. The teams scored 19 runs on 24 hits. There were five walks and no strikeouts. The ball was constantly in play. Runners were flying around the base paths.
The game took 2 hours and 36 minutes. That’s nearly 90 minutes less than that abomination Thursday.
When baseball is criticized, the sport’s “purists” — who refuse to let themselves understand how impure the game currently is — very often say, “If you don’t like it, don’t watch.”
OK. I won’t.
David Bednar of Mars pitched a scoreless inning for the Pirates on Thursday. Did he win a contest? Maybe a different local guy gets to pitch one inning for the Pirates in every game. That should be sponsored by IC Light Mango.
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April 04, 2021 at 12:37AM
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Mark Madden's Hot Take: Most of baseball's flaws involve wasted time - TribLIVE
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