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Umpire in Chief
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A friend emailed this to me this morning.  And I really enjoyed it and wanted to share.

Will talks about the baseball I really long for a gentlemen's game, with respect and class. As Will mentions there is too much "preening" in professional football, one of the many reasons I hardly watch any pro football anymore. Overall baseball has been immune to this. Yes, there are some crazy dugout celebrations which don't really bother me because they're in the dugout. There are becoming too many bat flips for my taste. But overall baseball has remained unchanged in this regard. We need to keep the class, dignity & pride in baseball; and expand it to our daily lives. 

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/10/30/george-f-will-baseball/

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Class like managers spitting on and kicking dirt on umpires?  Umpires and managers bumping each other.   Players taking one in the ribs and instantly charging and guys getting thrown around.  Runners breaking catchers shoulders and costing them a career.  

 

IMO a bat flip doesn't hurt as much as a guys career.

 

As Archie Bunker sang......THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

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1 hour ago, Umpire in Chief said:

A friend emailed this to me this morning.  And I really enjoyed it and wanted to share.

Will talks about the baseball I really long for a gentlemen's game, with respect and class. As Will mentions there is too much "preening" in professional football, one of the many reasons I hardly watch any pro football anymore. Overall baseball has been immune to this. Yes, there are some crazy dugout celebrations which don't really bother me because they're in the dugout. There are becoming too many bat flips for my taste. But overall baseball has remained unchanged in this regard. We need to keep the class, dignity & pride in baseball; and expand it to our daily lives. 

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/10/30/george-f-will-baseball/

Love Will's book, Men at Work.  But I love the bat flip and the home run trot.   Mostly enjoy td celebrations in the NFL..   And used to love Billy "White Shoes" Johnson's end zone dances.  

 

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1 hour ago, Umpire in Chief said:

As Will mentions there is too much "preening" in professional football, one of the many reasons I hardly watch any pro football anymore. Overall baseball has been immune to this.

I don't fully agree with this. It seems every player has to make some sort of gesture toward their dugout anytime they reach base.

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No, In those terms baseball has evolved for the better. Virtually nobody retaliates by putting one in the ear hole. Heck even today's intentional throw at a batter is generally getting thrown at the thigh or butt which is a step in the right direction. I'd also say overall umpire vs manager /player interactions are becoming tamer (maybe not Martinez the other night) but once again a step in the right direction. 

While I was initially not a fan of replay I've bought in over time, but I do credit replay as a cause for the better relationship between umps and managers/players. But the other half of the improvement is that umpires' have focused on getting the call right vs sticking with a call no matter what.  Umpires are much more approachable and taught/instructed to be so. How many times has someone here mentioned Verbal Judo. That's just a technique to de-escalate a situation. 

So yes, there has been some huge positive evolution in the game of baseball.

One of my favorite things I see from time to time is when a  player acknowledges a great play by their opponent which I see in baseball more than any other sport (maybe golf?). Whether it is a batter tipping his cap to an outfielder who robs him of a HR or a batter who smiles at a pitcher and gives him the look of that was a great pitch, you got me. I love those things. I forget the players involved but when I lived outside of Baltimore I went to an O's game and the batter got robbed of a HR on a spectacular play. The batter just stopped short of second looked at the fielder and bowed to him. I thought that was so classy. 

But baseball allows for the class to show through more than virtually any other sport.

 

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5 minutes ago, yawetag said:

I don't fully agree with this. It seems every player has to make some sort of gesture toward their dugout anytime they reach base.

Yes. that happens too much as well; the moose antlers, baby shark .... these things do annoy me. But a routine single is not celebration worthy. One that drives in 2 runs , okay... 

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1 hour ago, Umpire in Chief said:

Yes. that happens too much as well; the moose antlers, baby shark .... these things do annoy me. But a routine single is not celebration worthy. One that drives in 2 runs , okay... 

You're kind of crossing over two areas.

One is how much "me time" a player should be getting in their celebration - the preening, attention-whoring, self-centered crap is one thing, often not only putting a player ahead of the time, but often at the expense of the team.

When and what to celebrate as a team is another - most of those times those gestures to the dugout are still team celebrations, not "me first" moments.

 

Now, whether or not to celebrate them...that's the ultimate debate in the "just do your job" sentiment.  And that's now spanning into the corporate world, and all new HR approaches.  Yeah, he did his job, but we should still celebrate it...instead of take it for granted.  Right, wrong or indifferent, celebrating a single would be the same.

Although, if you remember that the best hitters in baseball fail to get a hit more than 70% of the time, it IS something to celebrate.   I'd question the celebration of a routine catch, which is more in the 99% success area.  But even then, you still see cheers and fistbumps for those routine plays too - in the spirit of teamwork, I see no problem with that.

But shagging a can of corn and following it with throwing the ball into the upper deck, doing a pirouette and pulling a Sharpie out of your sock to sign your jersey would be a problem for me.

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1 hour ago, beerguy55 said:

And that's now spanning into the corporate world, and all new HR approaches.  Yeah, he did his job, but we should still celebrate it...instead of take it for granted.

I feel sorry for your workplace. We don't do that here - and we've got more younger-generation employees than anywhere I've worked before.

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1 hour ago, yawetag said:

I feel sorry for your workplace. We don't do that here - and we've got more younger-generation employees than anywhere I've worked before.

You don't say "thank you"? Substitute "celebrate" with "show appreciation"...old school is, "yeah, you did your job, why am I thanking you"...today, there's a shift to show appreciation for the mundane, and it is, apparently, to accommodate the millennials and gen Z.   We'll see if it sticks.   it's not just where I work...in fact, we're never leading edge in any of this stuff...if we're doing something "new" we're likely on the back side of the curve.

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27 minutes ago, yawetag said:

"Thank you" isn't a celebration - it's common courtesy, and something I've done since I was old enough to talk. I thank people of all generations, and everywhere in my life.

Well, apparently in most workplaces it's a problem getting a boss to say "thank you" to an employee who simply did his job.   One old timer manager said "I think him by giving him a pay check"...hard to argue with that.   Believe me, I've met a number of people who don't think you should thank a bartender for getting you a drink....that is definitely a generational thing (and probably a bit of elitism).

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