All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, Not that injury is ever the intent; it’s just that injuries happen more often when a guy runs into another guy on purpose, when he’s already out. Utley probably went further than most other players would’ve, but we’re talking percentages. Probably, actually, a little bit more. the only major league ball player killed during a game, An Open Letter to Major League Baseball Hall of Fame Voters, Baseball: A Game of Inches, a Game of Seconds. Torn ligaments are going to happen. Baseball is not a contact sport. But I diverge from my basic point, that injuries in baseball are usually accidents. Aaron Rowand, playing for the Phillies in 2006, made a spectacular catch of a fly ball and then had a serious and bloody collision with the outfield fence, resulting in a broken nose and face lacerations. What I remember, paradoxically vaguely and clearly at the same time, is Cameron’s reaction. He literally knew what it felt like. Remember Pete Rose taking out Ray Fosse at home plate in the 1970 All-Star game? C.J. It’s powerful, but it stands in the way of improvement. Hell, we got used to the 15-team leagues and to inter-league play. The further back you go for opinions, the more progress you effectively undo. Where else do you see fans cheer a non-score, i.e. Infielders won’t have to consider that the guy on first base is particularly likely to try to take out their legs. As an argument, “that’s how it’s always been” is a bad one.
The goal isn’t primarily to maximize player health, but to find the optimal balance of health and quality of gameplay. Baseball Is Not A Contact Sport…Or Is It? These are some serious, serious injuries. Fortunately for him, that did not prevent the offer, happily accepted and signed, of a career-long $30 trillion contract. We hoped you liked reading Baseball Is Not a Contact Sport by Jeff Sullivan! ( Log Out / My friend John says that football is not a contact sport, it is a collision sport. In 2011, Scott Cousins of the Marlins infamously took out Buster Posey at home plate, breaking his leg in about 200 places, in order to score (okay, I probably could have written THAT ONE more objectively too). I was at one such game. Obviously, only weeks ago, there was the Chris Coghlan incident. My seats are down the right field line, just beyond the infield dirt. The only argument in favor of the takeout slide is that baseball has an established history of allowing the takeout slide. Infielders will be next. When this play goes away, everyone will get used to it. Baseball should be played in the spirit in which it was intended. Tony C, Tony Conigliario, the next great Red Sox outfielder following Ted Williams and Yaz, had an incredibly promising career ended, essentially, in 1967 by a Jack Hamilton fastball. It doesn’t go with everything else, especially now that we’ve mostly gotten rid of collisions at home, and the reality is that baseball has enough of an injury problem already.
Promising young Indians’ pitcher Herb Score’s career was permanently affected by a line drive off the bat of Yankee Gil McDougald, who actually ignored usual practice by running to the mound and checking on him. And it will be fixed. A (full) contact sport is any sport for which significant physical impact force on players, either deliberate or incidental, is allowed or within the rules of the game. by Handedness, asked a bunch of players about the Utley incident, Sunday Notes: Cubs, Pirates, Managers, more, The Near-Term Outlook for Tommy Pham, 27-Year-Old Rookie. But baseball, at its core, isn’t a contact sport. He’d been instructed to do that because baseball allowed those things to happen. That of course resulted in a rule change about blocking the plate and contact, and I really don’t want to get into THAT controversial hotbed. Change ). You ever wonder why players don’t wear pads? The game is always growing.
There have been a number of players seriously hurt in that ultimate baseball mano-a-mano, pitcher vs. batter, confrontation.
Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted I mean, catchers wear pads, almost from head to toe, but that’s because they’re getting shot at by a cannon 130 times a game. It doesn’t matter if former players don’t like it. Baseball is not a contact sport. Baseball is not and never has been among them. AN ALL-STAR game, for Pete’s sake, pun intended. Of course, the ball bounces, metaphorically, both ways. But it can be fixed. Nothing meaningful will be lost, and something will be gained — days not lost to the disabled list. Now we have this incident, and people are talking about this incident instead of talking about, say, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard. Some recent plays come to mind; I want to point them out as examples but NOT get involved in a discussion about whether the plays were dirty or intended to hurt. Players should be protected as best they can. It doesn’t matter if there are fans who don’t like it. In a playoff situation, things were only more intense, Utley under only more pressure to break up any potential play. The game keeps getting closer. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous. In the language of sports officials and associations: Baseball, softball, soccer, and basketball are Contact sports. Sometimes, they do so violently, and sometimes, when they do so violently, they’re even on opposing teams. But no one is a baseball fan because of the moments of contact, and the people who like those moments the most aren’t primarily baseball fans, because baseball doesn’t deliver those moments as often as other sports, and those fans will gravitate to those. Lacrosse has all that stick checking and body banging, and my goalie brother Kevin used to measure the success of his game by how many black and blue marks he received from body saves. We’re in a period of transition. Batters hit in the head by pitches, pitchers nailed by line drive come-backers. As nearly everyone has come out to say, Utley more or less did as he’d been instructed to do all his life. Football, well, is there any discussion necessary about that?
It might disappoint the bloodthirsty among us, but baseball isn’t selective for many of that kind of fan. In a way — in a big-picture way — baseball should emerge better for this. Hockey is a contact game that, I think unfortunately, has evolved, at least at the professional level, into a game in which grace and beauty takes a back seat to the body checking and fighting, which fans love. The vast majority of injuries are either accidents or conditions that develop over time. In 1976, Dodger catcher Steve Yeager was in the on-deck circle when Bill Russell’s bat shattered, with nine pieces of wood piercing Yeager’s throat. Players make contact with each other, and there may be a collision but not typically. There are fans who loved those collisions. This has happened to pitchers countless times. It matters more than former players, of course, but people are always resistant to change, even good change, and there’s always a reluctance to have to try to learn something new. Countless batters have been victims of the hit-by-pitch and seriously hurt; broken wrists, hands and fingers are not uncommon. Giancarlo Stanton of the Marlins was hit in the head by a Mike Fiers pitch. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account.
We also know that, according to baseball precedent, Utley didn’t do much of anything wrong. I can only speculate that his horror was perhaps even more intense because he had been in his own horrific head clash with Carlos Beltran when they both went after a ball in the Mets’ outfield in 2005. by Retrosheet. Little known rookie Joe Martinez was pitching for the Giants early in the 2009 season when Mike Cameron came to the plate for the Brewers and promptly hit a line drive off of Martinez’ forehead. Baseball can be a destructive game, and there’s always going to be pain and consequence, but there are unavoidable injuries and there are avoidable injuries. In soccer, there is plenty of body contact going for the balls, especially those ferocious header plays, and even though I encouraged my son David to play soccer and would have tried to stop him from playing football if that were even an option, the concern about him getting a concussion always was in my mind. Brandon McCarthy was pitching for the A’s when he was nailed with a line drive to the head. That much is true, but given that baseball isn’t and never has been a real contact sport, it’s a little odd that we got here in the first place. They’ll find new ways to be aggressive within the rules — they will always always always test the limits of the rules — but if the rules are written and enforced well enough, that’s okay. Every year, we lose some of the most talented pitchers in the world, simply because they tried to pitch.
People always prefer the circumstances they themselves experienced, and former players don’t have to worry about any consequences these days.
Ironically, Cameron, acknowledged to be a really good guy, was also comforted by some of the Giants players who knew how upset he was. Joey Gallo attempting a takeout slide on someone like Dee Gordon might knock him into the outfield. But no one is a baseball fan because of the moments of contact, and the people who like those moments the most aren’t primarily baseball fans, because baseball doesn’t deliver those moments as often as other sports, and those fans will gravitate to those. It already knows it’s going to lose a few. They’re talking about this incident instead of the rest of the playoffs. And they can be quite horrific. Or is it? FanGraphs does not have a paywall. Soccer and lacrosse, while not contact sports per se, see a lot of banging and hitting. and play-by-play data provided by Baseball Info Solutions. Batters wear helmets because sometimes the cannon has a calibration error or an attitude. No matter if you term it a “takeout slide”, or a break up the double play slide, they describe perfectly what the intent is, and that is to interfere with the fielders ability to make a play and that is against the rules (5.09 a 13) everything else is nonsensical blather. Baseball should keep safe as many as it can. There’s an argument for why baseball would be worse if pitchers weren’t allowed to throw 95 miles per hour anymore.
Godawful comebackers to the mound are going to happen. Pitchers, and now position players, are tearing their obliques. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
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