Saving Baseball… Outlaw Batting Gloves

Batting Gloves 1
BobLee
June25/ 2017

Saving Baseball  … Outlaw Batting Gloves

“If batting gloves are outlawed… only Outlaws will wear batting gloves”

BL on Baseball

 

This column was supposed to be – BobLee Saves Baseball.  I have an incredibly simple solution to all of Baseball’s “supposed” ills. Restoring Baseball as “The National Past Time” for Biennials, Perenialls, Millennials, Gen Xers, Yuppies, Uppies, Hippies, Beatniks, Snowflakes, and all us Baby Boomers sitting on our front porches throwing rocks at passing cars.

That’s a PDBD = Pretty Darn Big Deal! You know how much I do love Baseball. That marvelous phrase “pitchers and catchers report …” is being uttered as we speak.

The marketing guys at SaidWhatMedia stepped in. BL if you add the phrase “… and a Roy HB2 Update” you’ll get THOUSANDS more clicks…. “at least 80,000, maybe more”. I said “THOUSANDS”??  They replied “well at least ‘SCORES’!”

I lobbied instead for a superfluous Kate Upton / Abigail Ratchford pictorial; but why have a Marketing Dept if you don’t use’em. I added “… and a Roy HB2 Update”.

But first let’s SAVE BASEBALL!

MLB is convinced that ubiquitous Demographic Godzilla – Millennials – are not enamored with “the old ballgame”. “The games are boring and too long” say MLB’s marketing wizards. Soooo MLB is now knee-jerking to this apocalyptic warning.

The past several weeks MLB has leaked several proposed “tweaks” being considered:

• “Intentional walks” to be awarded without throwing the four balls.
• Raising the strike zone “about 2”. (A Millennial with any clue where the current strike zone is is rarer than a Millennials who had ever heard of “The Electoral College” prior to Nov 9th.)
• Limit the # of times a Mgr/Coach can go to the mound/inning.
• THE STOOPIDIEST ONE of all…. When a game goes in to extra innings, each half-inning begins with the team-at-bat automatically having a runner on 2nd. Ergo, increasing the likelihood of scoring so everyone can go home.
• One that has not quite reached the “leaked” stage is revising the Replay Challenge process. This one actually makes sense and can be achieved rather easily….

BUT MY IDEA beats all of these….

ELIMINATE BATTING GLOVES. Batting Gloves

Historical Note: …. It’s all Nomar Garciaparra’s fault. a/k/a Mr Mia Hamm … Nomar, when he was a Red Sox in the 90, began the modern addiction of stepping out of the batter’s box AFTER EVERY PITCH to adjust the Velcro straps on his batting gloves. Now Little Leaguerers do it. Slow-pitch Softball beerbellies do it. Girls’ Softball players do it. Every ballplayer on Earth now “adjusts his batting glove straps” between EVERY FRIGGING’ PITCH. Street urchins “in the Dominican” do it playing stickball in the streets. Dominican street urchins don’t even have batting gloves. They pretend to tighten the Velcro straps on imaginary gloves. They have no idea who Nomar Garciaparra was.

It takes +/- 20 seconds to tighten the Velcro straps. Players take that 20 seconds to tighten their straps even when they TAKE the pitch. Simply gripping the bat loosens the straps. There are roughly 200 pitches/game – there are more but I’m being kind. 200 pitches times 20 seconds = 66 minutes.

I just reduced the average MLB game by OVER AN HOUR to under two hours. Well within the attention span of even “a millennial”. I did not tinker with a single sacred tenet of Abner Doubleday’s Marvelous Game. No records will require asterisks. All those stoopid “analytics” that Theo and Billy Bean et al swear by are untouched.

Guess what? The following “pretty darn good hitters” NEVER WORE BATTING GLOVES…. Babe Ruth – Lou Gehrig – Rogers Hornsby – Ty Cobb – Ted Williams – Hank Aaron – Bob Kennel – Stan Musial – Mickey Mantle – Joe DiMaggio – Albert Long – Enos Slaughter and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson.

I’m betting the current crop can adjust OK to accommodate all those potential millennial fans with Acute Attention Deficit Disorder.

##

“…. And a Roy HB2 Update”

Roy Williams MadI guess you’ve all heard that UNCCH Men’s Basketball Coach Ol’ Roy Williams Really Really Really HATES HB2 … a/k/a “The Bathroom Bill”. 

Coach K doesn’t like it either and even NC State Coach (for the time being) Mark Gottfried thinks it is “appalling”. But you gotta give it to Ol’ Huckleberry over in Chapel Hill. It’s what Roy has been blurting this week that’s gotten everyone attention.

Roy Williams cannot spell HB2 if you spot him the “H” and the “2”. His total knowledge of HB2 can be tweeted with enough of the 140 characters left over to spell out Krzyzewski seven times.

BL NOTE: I, and AgentPierce, are both on-record saying HB2 was a hastily-cobbled together piece of flawed legislation that waaaay over-reaches in countering the incredibly stoopid and constitutionally illegal “bathroom ordinance” that the dim-witted Mayor of Charlotte and her seven cronies tried to enact last March. …. The Great Bathroom Kerfluffle was a brilliant strategy devised by the LGBTQ Gender Terrorists to overthrow the Republican majority in the NCGA. It did succeed in ousting Gov. Pat McCrory but failed miserably to affect the NCGA. … HB2 is “a flawed bill” created to stop a much worse illegal city ordinance. …. I just told you more about HB2 than Roy Williams could tell you if you held a blowtorch six inches from his eye. It has very little/nothing to do with where/how “transgenders” do #1 or #2.

Roy’s latest “Roy being Roy” started last Sunday after the Notre Dame game in Greensboro. Roy blurted that there would NEVER be another ACC game in Greensboro because of HB2. That was stoopid even by Roy Standards…. But it got the local “sports media” all knee-jerking and slobbering at the mouth.

The local “sports media” hate HB2 too because (1) their bosses told them too; and (2) they don’t know much more about it than Roy does.

I’ve always said that (1) Roy Williams is an outstanding big-time college basketball coach well-deserving of his HOF status… (2) he is a low-hanging fodder fruit for me because he is forever biting the heads off live microphones and auditioning for the role of Ernest T. Bass if they ever revive Mayberry.

If Roy is serious about showing us how much he REALLY REALLY HATES HB2 I have the PERFECT WAY to do that.

I propose Roy bring his wife Wanda… his daughter Kimberly… and his granddaughter to the Dean Dome locker room and have the three of them “shower with the team”.  Fifteen nekkid college boys and three nekkid Williams’ women sharing a shower. … maybe UNC Chancellor Carol “Chihuahua” Folt will join the happy showerers?  Where would a nekkid chancellor attach her lapel ribbon?

WRAL-TV5, The N&O, and even John Skipper’s (UNC’75) ESPN will surely give the event prime time coverage. Betcha that would really help recruiting… wouldn’t it Roy?

Roy apparently sees no problem with removing all the gender restrictions on rest rooms, dressing rooms and locker rooms as it would affect all the citizens of North Carolina.  Whats more important the safety of the citizens of this state…. or Roy Williams’ recruiting?

UNC Basketball Coach Roy Williams and his wife, daughter and granddaughter can show us how harmless that would be?

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