I didn’t drag the cameras to this one, which is actually okay because the main highlight wasn’t visual. It was the sound of 40,000 fans all booing at once.
The issue was lineup selection for the Home Run Derby. Earlier in the week American League derby captain Robinson Cano indicated that he’d like to include someone from the home team on the AL foursome. However, come selection time he didn’t.
Royals fans took offense. A plane with a tow banner fired the first shot, congratulating Billy Butler for making the team and proclaiming that “Cano got it wrong.” Then the real fun started during the pregame introductions. When Cano was introduced by the roving microphone moron, the stadium-wide chorus of booing got underway. The moron even tried “Aw, c’mon Kansas City. Let’s give it up for Robinson Cano,” the response to which was pretty much “We are giving it up for him! Booooo! Booooo!”
Nor did the chorus abate when he came to the plate during the derby itself. The catcalls started before he was announced and didn’t stop until his at bat came to an end, pausing only for cheers every time he made an out. And the outs came ten in a row without a single home run
Let’s start the analysis with a partial defense of Cano. He may not have meant his remark as a commitment. And even if he actually intended to select a Royal, he may not have known that his choices would be Billy Butler and Billy Butler.
More directly to the point, I have no direct knowledge of the behind-the-scenes dealings that go into Home Run Derby player selection. But I have no doubt that Cano chose exactly whom the Commissioner’s office and ESPN told him to pick. At the risk of stating the obvious, the derby is designed to generate ad revenue by drawing viewers, and a player from Los Angeles is likely to do the trick better than a player from Kansas City.
I even felt a little bad for the guy. The fans’ response really seemed to get to him. Though as a Yankee he should be used to getting booed, the volume and duration were genuinely overwhelming. That level of anger over something as trivial as the Home Run Derby probably caught a lot of people by surprise.
It shouldn’t have. Network executives and Yankees fans have no right to be surprised at the outrage engendered by their arrogant disregard for other people’s feelings, especially when they drag their rudeness into somebody else’s home. All the “Royals fanz are teh stoopid” responses ranging from Twitter feeds to the broadcast booth are the moral equivalent of playground bullies who run crying when someone finally gets sufficiently tired of their crap and shoves them back.
Had it merely been the derby lineup, it might not have been all that big a deal. But it’s long decades of this disrespectful crud, culminating with the way MLB and its broadcasting cronies are handling the All Star festivities. A small example: the signage on the video boards that kept referring to the nearby highway as “The I-70.”
But I would have taken all the crappy lineup moves and California freeway definite articles if it would have exempted me from one thing: Reggie Goddamn Jackson in the Buck Seat.
Whomever made that call, here’s an assignment for you: get out a piece of paper. Draw a short, skinny line horizontally near the bottom edge of the page. Then next to it start drawing a box. Draw it all the way up the page. Don’t even stop at the top edge. Just keep coloring onto the desk.
What you’re looking at is a bar graph. The thin line represents everybody with fond memories of Jackson’s days as a Kansas City Athletic. And I do mean days. We’re talking about 35 games way back in 1967, during which he got 21 hits and struck out 46 times, collecting a whopping .178 batting average.
And the box so big it messed up the desktop? That’s all the people who remember Jackson as the epitome of bad sportsmanship, the hateful antihero of the legendary Royals/Yankees rivalry of the late 1970s and early 80s. And this is who we’re honoring in our ballpark? For the love of baseball, even Yankees fans admit he’s an asshole. If Buck O’Neil’s spirit really did live at the K, Jackson would have vanished into thin air the moment he sat down, sucked into nothingness like the house at the end of Poltergeist.
In many ways the All Star experience has seemed a lot like Christmas, especially when we used to get really jazzed about the holiday when we were kids. So at this joyous time of year, we shouldn’t dwell on the negative. Still, MLB could learn a lesson from all this. And in my experience as a teacher, “Yeah, we screwed up” is the beginning of education, while “You gave me an F because you’re mean” tends to portend even more F’s in the future.
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