MINNEAPOLIS — What became evident this week, amid the bleating over Clayton Kershaw's removal from a game at Target Field, was that baseball's biggest problem is that baseball can't stop whining about its problems.
The calls are coming from inside the house.
Before getting into the specifics of Dodgers manager Dave Roberts' decision to remove Kershaw after seven perfect innings against the Twins, let's set the stage.
Modern baseball is flawed. The games are too long. There are probably too many games to begin with. The ball isn't in play enough. Baseball has done a poor job of encouraging young Black athletes to play. The game's unwritten rules are confusing because — not to put too fine a point on it — they remain unwritten. Analytics can be useful in team-building, but they are a terrible tool for elevating a sport's popularity.
Fine. Baseball has problems. Have you looked at the other sports?
The NFL is one deep investigation away from being proclaimed a crime syndicate. The league denied the existence of brain injuries, argued that Black players shouldn't be compensated for brain injuries because their brains lacked functionality to begin with, blackballed Colin Kaepernick for a peaceful protest that did not interrupt a game, and includes Dan Snyder, an ethics-challenged "Billions" character without the fictionalized charm.
The NFL is a racist, ethics-challenged league. The NFL is the most popular sport in the history of North America.
Basketball can be great but is far too dominated by the officials. Imagine a sport where someone can make a couple of routinely bad calls and thus permanently remove your best player from the game.
The NHL — I can't believe this is true, but I just looked it up — allows bare-fisted, in-game fighting in 2022, when we're supposed to know about CTE.
These are popular sports. Their fans and media will argue about tweaks that could make the games better, but in general the fans and media love these sports and act like it.
Baseball fans and media hold their game to an impossible standard. Baseball, to them, must not only entertain, it must Honor Tradition and Adhere To Unwritten Rules and Make Us Feel Better About Ourselves Every Day.
After Roberts removed Kershaw — a decision Kershaw agreed with — some of baseball's most prominent writers and analysts acted like the sport had just taken a swan dive off the Empire State Building without a parachute.
This was tragedy, they said. This was farce, they argued. This, they maintained, was Killing The Game.
We saw this kind of overreaction during the labor negotiations. Two sides met and argued and postured, and then ensured that baseball would avoid missing a game because of a work stoppage for the 27th consecutive season. Everyone who sold you the Armageddon story line was not only wrong but wrongheaded.
Same with the Kershaw story.
Kershaw is a 34-year-old former workhorse who was limited to 121 innings last year. He required shots in his elbow to get through last season. The Dodgers hope and plan to win the World Series. He had thrown 75 pitches in a simulated game but had not thrown more than 74 pitches in a real game since June 27, 2021.
He made one more start after that, on July 3, then went on the injured list because of forearm inflammation.
Kershaw is a key to the Dodgers' postseason hopes, and he is fragile. Sending him out to throw a possible 105-115 pitches following a shortened spring training on a cold day in early April is a fireable offense, and Roberts would rather not get fired or blow a chance at winning a World Series.
It wasn't just a good decision, it was the only conscionable decision.
Baseball has met its enemy and it is us.
The game should continue to find ways to improve as an entertainment option. Getting a great pitcher hurt on the chance that he might make us feel warm and fuzzy for a few hours in early April would not improve the sport, but it is fun to whine about.
