There is Crying in Baseball

March 19, 2016

 

I guess major league baseball players had to do something to enliven the insufferably boring game they play so they’ve decided to create a stir by supporting Adam LaRoche, the puerile, soft-hitting White Sox first baseman who quit on his team four days ago like a pouty brat because he was told by executive vice president Kenny Williams not to bring his 14-year old son Drake to the ballpark EVERY day.

 

Major league players, who always point to the sanctity of the clubhouse as a place where what goes on there stays there, apparently can disregard that credo when they want to mouth off about their boss who made the grown-up decision that children should not be omnipresent in a workplace environment.  White Sox pitcher Chris Sale essentially called Williams a liar while he whined about the LaRoche situation to reporters, apparently distraught that there’s no “safe space” in the White Sox locker room for him and his other pampered and overpaid loser teammates that finished 19 games out of first place last year.

 

Centerfielder Adam Eaton lamented that, “We lost a leader in Drake,” apparently oblivious to how stupid it sounds that grown men, all multi-millionaires, need to find a beacon of leadership in a 14-year old boy.  But leadership is, after all, in short supply in a league where sociopathic behavior like that of David Ortiz pummeling and destroying a dugout phone with his bat is dismissed as simply being competitive, and wife-beaters like Aroldis Chapman get nominal suspensions.  But hey, these major league softies aren’t even allowed to run over the catcher or slide anymore.

 

Dodgers’ pitcher Clayton Kershaw, apparently simpatico with LaRoche, conducted an entire interview today with his 14-month old daughter on his lap.  Perhaps this toddler could suit up and take the mound when playoff time rolls around so her old man can be spared the indignity of another one of his post-season collapses.

 

Former players got in on the act as well.  Chipper Jones, that champion of household cohesion, posted on Twitter, “Big ups to my boy for standing up for his beliefs.  We play a game.  Good for U brother.”  Jones, who is on his third wife, this one a former Playboy model who specialized in naked shower scenes, also has an out of wedlock son he sired with a Hooters waitress while cheating on his first wife.  But he’s a voice for the major league contingent of the family values crowd.

 

Sadly, this is the age we live in. Me, me, me.  From Twitter accounts to cell phone worship, the millennial generation has an insatiable need to be heard and to put its entire doings online for public consumption.  Everyone has to pretend they think it’s cute when Stephen Curry lets his obnoxious daughter hijack an interview after the 2015 NBA conference finals, before he finally releases her from his lap and lets someone who appears to be a team official clean up his mess.  This spectacle, unwittingly, bears sad testimony to the way many athletes deal with kids—have them and let someone else take care of them when the hard work starts.

 

LaRoche’s actions are equally selfish.  He wants the kid around 24/7, but there is no way he can monitor his son’s actions every minute, so fellow teammates and coaches are expected to bear the brunt.  While most players publicly expressed support for LaRoche, some must certainly be aggravated by the constant intrusion, and they are muted lest they be judged harshly by other teammates or the court of public opinion.

 

Jones claims that “we play a game,” but when LaRoche cites a piffling request to walk away from $13 million a year to play said game, he only reinforces the notion of the selfish, spoiled athletes who are so insulated they don’t even realize that most adults don’t have the luxury of quitting their jobs or EVER bringing their kids to work.  But I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts, that if some other team has use for a sniveling, .207-hitting baby like LaRoche, he’ll tuck his tail quick and come running back despite his “principled” stand.