No one cares about the gifts. So what that the Astros gave David Ortiz a cowboy hat and the Royals some barbecue sauce and the Twins some peanut butter and the Mariners 34lbs of salmon. Ortiz shouldn’t not come back because he’s worried the Padres will be upset they bought him a surfboard as a retirement gift and then he didn’t retire. They probably still have the receipt.
“I thought a lot about it,” Ortiz said in November 2015, announcing this would be his final season after back-to-back last place finishes. “Every single one of us, athletes-wise, we run out of time at some point. Life is based on different chapters and I think I’m ready to experience the next one in my life.” Ortiz said all that on his 40th birthday, undoubtedly assuming that his skills would begin to noticeably erode in his age 40 season.
But they haven’t. In fact, Ortiz is having a career year and the best season in baseball history for a 40-year old. Name the stat – batting average, OBP, OPS, home runs, RBI – and it’s well above Ortiz’s career average. Meanwhile, the Red Sox have the second-best record in the American League and are a lock for the postseason.
There are zero reasons for Ortiz to retire after this season. Or at least zero good reasons. The farewell tour was a bad idea from the start, as Ortiz admitted himself back in June. If he ultimately decides to return for 2017, maybe his change of heart will put an end to these forced gift-giving tours for good. That alone would deserve a Hall of Fame nod.
That leaves the notion that Ortiz should retire so he can “go out on top.” Blecch. Going out on top is overrated. Sandy Koufax was forced to end his career because of arthritis after going 27-9 with a 1.73 ERA in 1966. Jim Brown and Barry Sanders cut their careers short in football while still among the best in their sports. Every discussion of the careers of Koufax, Brown and Sanders is hit with questions of “What if?” What if they had kept playing? What else could they have done? What records could they have broken? No one says: “Wasn’t it awesome how we didn’t get to watch them play as long as we could have?”
Ortiz was supposedly done in 2009 after back-to-back subpar seasons. Now, seven years later, he’ll get MVP votes. If he’s hitting like this at 40, why can’t he do it at 41 or 42 or 45? It’s not like the role he has on the Red Sox is a physically taxing one. He stands up to hit four times a game and occasionally has to run full-speed on a double. In between it’s massages and hot tubs and first class flights and five-star hotels. He doesn’t have to endure pounding on his knees like a position player, or on his arm like a pitcher, or on his brain like a football player. If 40 is the new 30 for everyone else, it’s 25 for career-long designated hitters. So what’s the point of retiring? DH and pro golfer are the only two jobs in sports where playing at the highest level is not too far off from being retired.
Keep the surfboard and cowboy hat and 34lbs of salmon, Big Papi. Or give them back. It doesn’t matter. Just please come back. No one will be upset. Well, no one except the Yankees, Rays, Blue Jays and Orioles.
Video of the week
Giancarlo Stanton has been a bit of a disappointment since signing his 13-year, $325m contract two years ago. Repeated injuries have kept him from reproducing the kind of numbers he put up in 2014 that spurred the deal. But if the Marlins ever regret paying him all that money – and team owner Jeffrey Loria most definitely regrets every dollar he has ever paid to someone other than Jeffrey Loria – they can pass a hat at every stadium they visit to help cover the cost. Fans will happily pay, because when Stanton is healthy and connects, there’s no one else with his power in baseball right now and maybe ever. (Or at least not until Tim Tebow arrived in the sport, right?)
Quote of the week
“People say to me: ‘What are you going to do [in retirement]? What are you going to do?’ And I say the same thing. You know if, you retire at the age of 65, the chances are you’re going to have 20 more years. And so ‘what are you going to do’ is important to fill 20 years. When you retire at 89, the only answer to ‘What are you going to do?’ is ‘Try to live.’” - Vin Scully
Feel free to take a few minutes away from the rest of the column to sob uncontrollably and then pick up from here.
Who’s closer to victory: Donald Trump or the Cubs?
It has been argued in this space before that Donald Trump has a much easier path to victory because he only has to beat one opponent, while the Cubs will have to through three rounds to win it all. And that’s true. But in the divisional round, the Cubs will get to play the winner of the National League wildcard game. Have you seen the teams currently fighting for the wildcard spots? They are a true basket of deplorables. Advantage: Cubs.
How did the kids piss off Goose Gossage this week?
While many of today’s whippersnappers undoubtedly enrage the man named Goose with their carefree approach to life, he can find solace in the knowledge that prominent players like Madison Bumgarner still want to enforce the olds ways. After retiring Yasiel Puig of the rival Dodgers on Monday night, Bumgarner said “Don’t look at me!” to the outfielder as he walked off the field. Then, per the unwritten rules of baseball, Bumgarner strategically positioned himself behind a team-mate and proceeded to pretend he was being held back from giving Puig the whooping he so deserved. This is a man who can shoot and field dress a coyote, but can’t handle another man looking at him? That makes no sense at all. Which means it makes perfect sense for baseball’s code.
Nine things in order
1) Some in baseball remain very bitter that Tebow is getting a look from the Mets. “He’s taking a spot from a deserving player,” the argument usually goes. It’s a bad argument and one that really doesn’t deserve to be addressed, but let’s do it anyway. Yes, it’s true Tebow is taking someone else’s spot, but he’s taking the spot of the absolute worst player at the lowest-level of the organization. If Tebow didn’t take it, that person was going to lose his spot tomorrow due to his lack of skill and the arrival of absolutely anyone else who might not be as bad. The Mets aren’t cutting the next David Wright for an old quarterback.
2) There is zero downside for baseball with Tebow. The best-case scenario is that Tebow earns a ton of media attention for the game while failing out of the minors, thereby reminding everyone that hitting is an incredibly difficult skill a select few humans can master. The other option is that Tebow proves to be a capable player, makes it to the majors and ... generates exponentially more publicity for the sport. There is no worst-case scenario. To borrow a Tebowian phrase, baseball is “blessed.”
3) While the rest of the United States votes on whether to become an international joke on 8 November, the residents of Arlington, Texas, will also be determining if they want to build a new, retractable roof stadium for the Rangers to replace the 22-year old Globe Life Park. Commissioner Rob Manfred appeared in town this week to push for the new stadium, saying the current one puts the Rangers at a “competitive disadvantage” and the heat in an open-air stadium in Texas “makes it harder getting players to play there.” That is some Trump-level bullshit from the commissioner.
As for being “competitive,” the Rangers are set to win the AL West and make the playoffs for fifth time in seven years. They also made the playoffs three times in the first six years the stadium opened. And if it’s hard for the Rangers to get players to play in the Texas heat, why did Prince Fielder waive his no-trade clause to get there from frigid Detroit? Why did Cole Hamels do the same to come from Philadelphia? Or Carlos Beltran from New York? Why did Yu Darvish sign there? Why did Adrian Beltre sign a six-year contract to leave Boston and play there? Is the Texas heat appreciably worse for someone who grew up in the Dominican Republic? The Rangers have the eighth-highest payroll in baseball, so perhaps players are OK with the heat. Or maybe they’ve decided they can handle a bit of sweating in exchange for zero state taxes. Either way, the Rangers “competitive disadvantage” hasn’t prevented the organization from being valued at $1.225bn by Forbes, 11th highest in all of baseball.
But, yes, let’s get the Rangers a new stadium. One with a retractable roof. One to rival Jerry Jones’ monstrosity. By the way, that Cowboys stadium has been open for more than seven years now, right? And Dallas haven’t won anything. The Cowboys are at an obvious competitive disadvantage. Time to replace it.
4) Cubs second baseman Ben Zobrist rode his bike to Wrigley Field on Saturday in full uniform save for a pair of PF Flyers.
It’s come to this. Baseball is so easy for the Cubs that they’re entertaining themselves by recreating 90s baseball movies. Perhaps this is good news for the rest of baseball. There’s a better chance the Cubs might lose in the postseason if they pay homage to Rookie of the Year and let a kid with a broken arm pitch. Although I’d still pick the Cubs in seven.
5) The red-hot Cardinals are now the favorites for the top NL wildcard spot. That is, if they all managed to survive their series in the extreme, high-altitude conditions of Denver. The team set up an oxygen station for players who got winded from the very brief stretches of running that the sport of baseball sometimes requires.
The Cardinals have a recuperation area for Coors Field https://t.co/mmlyZaiy2J pic.twitter.com/cLAfLOl8HJ
— Mark Saxon (@markasaxon) September 21, 2016
It’s sad that a once-proud franchise is openly using PEGs. Tony LaRussa never would have allowed this on his watch.
6) Baltimore Orioles rookie Trey Mancini got a home run in his first major league game and his mom understandably exploded with pride and joy:
One proud mom! Trey Mancini's mom, Beth, got to witness her son's debut, and his first hit/home run. She gets the HR ball, too. #Birdland pic.twitter.com/c7MLVODcDk
— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) September 21, 2016
Sure, it’s not the excitement a mother feels when her son’s baseball column goes online, but it’s probably in the same ballpark.
7) Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard is featured on the cover of this week’s New Yorker. (Disrespectful to Mets superstar Tim Tebow, in my opinion. How many jerseys are you selling, Syndergaard?)
While Derek Jeter was the last baseball player to appear on the cover in 2014, the Mets are really the team for the magazine. The Mets are identified with New York City and they are a joke that a lot of people don’t get. The Mets are essentially a New Yorker cartoon brought to life.
8) No one saw San Francisco’s collapse coming. After all, this is an even year so the World Series title was theirs, right? But even without that odd historical coincidence, the Giants had the most wins in the majors at the All-Star break. But in the second half of the season they’re tied for the fewest wins in baseball and are in danger of failing to even grab a wildcard spot. The inability to score runs and the struggles of the bullpen are the obvious reasons for San Francisco’s downfall, but there’s something else out there that can be blamed by a sports columnist desperate enough for page-views. Yep, you guessed it: San Francisco has obviously been distracted by Colin Kaepernick.
9) It’s not quite the 1998 home run chase as far as excitement goes, but the 2016 MLB season is on pace to set the all-time record for strikeouts. You can look at this as an accomplishment for pitchers or a failure by hitters or just the logical outcome of the destigmatization of the strikeout in Major League Baseball. Look at it any way you like. Just don’t look at Madison Bumgarner.
