4. Managers Wearing Uniforms: It’s been said before and it will be said again: seeing baseball managers in uniform is one of the highest forms of unintentional comedy. Could you imagine coaches in other sports rocking their team’s outfits? Without further ado, here’s the first rendition of the Charlie Weis All-Star Team for coaches that would look the funniest/grossest/most disturbing in their team’s uniform: The Namesake Weis (Notre Dame football), Lawrence Frank (New Jersey Nets), Don Nelson (Golden State Warriors), Stan Van Gundy (Orlando Magic), Bill Laimbeer (WNBA’s Detroit Shock … a sports bra is part of the uniform), Romeo Crennel (Cleveland Browns), Andy Reid (Philadelphia Eagles) and, before he retires, Mike Holmgren (Seattle Seahawks). This silly phenomenon, paired with all the downtime in a baseball game, has left me asking the following questions: Does a baseball manager wear cleats? Hockey coaches don’t wear skates, and I doubt the skipper needs traction on his visits to the hill. Why doesn’t a manager have a sense of humor and wear a glove? That way, when he takes the ball from the pitcher, he’ll have somewhere to hold it until the reliever makes his way to the mound. Do managers wear cups? I would. These new bats are shattering at a much higher rate and I’d take all the necessary precautions.
3. Drinking: NBA and NFL players catch all the flak for their partying ways, but MLBers are the ones who know how to get after it. It’s no secret that pro ballplayers drink their faces off—Jonathan Papelbon’s Riverdance after Boston clinched the 2007 AL East pennant was about as sober as prom night. On a radio show, ex-pitcher Jeff Nelson claimed that former teammate and first-ballot Hall of Famer Wade Boggs routinely downed between 50 to 70 Miller Lights in about a 10 hour span during cross-country trips, a fact later backed up by another former teammate. Not all drinking is for pleasure, though, which I learned when Amherst slugger Angus Schaller gave me a lesson in the long history of stimulant use in the Majors. Over the last 150 years, players have taken drugs ranging from cocaine to amphetamines, and a six (or sixty)-pack may have been the only way a jacked up ball player could get to sleep. Regardless of the reason, baseball is the only major sport where 12-ounce curls are a part of the daily workout regimen.
2. Loooong regular season: MLBers play over 10 times as many games as NFL athletes, and almost twice as many contests as players in the NBA and the NHL. The St. Louis Rams and Cincinnati Bengals just dropped to 0-4 and their seasons are basically over, yet the 2008 Detroit Tigers lost their first seven games and managed to stay in serious playoff contention until the middle of the summer. The long season makes for quite the mood swings for fans. Lose four in a row? Fire the manager! Win a couple against the division leader? Now we’re only back 10, we can do this! Heck, there was a stretch in May when even Orioles fans could smell October. The Seattle Mariners had to play 27 games this month after they were already mathematically eliminated from the Wild Card. Twenty-seven! The long season may be the worst for the already-tortured Cubs fans. When every game is either vindication that this is The Year or proof of the curse, 162 games is like Chinese water torture.
1. Heroic Fat Guys: The Milwaukee Brewers are in the playoffs, and have two heavy heroes to thank. First baseman Prince Fielder weighs in at 270, but looks like Ally McBeal compared to the hefty lefty, 290-pound pitcher CC Sabathia. After the acquisition of Sabathia, Fielder said, “I’m like his mini-me.” Go figure. But this is by no means a new phenomenon. Baseball is the only sport whose most iconic player, Babe Ruth, was large and in charge, and he sticks out like, well, his gut, when compared to other sports heroes. Michael Jordan was fueled by Gatorade; Babe Ruth was fueled by beer and hot dogs. Wayne Gretzky was strong and wiry; Babe Ruth was strong and … not wiry. Walter Payton trained by running up hills and will be remembered as a good man; the Babe often breathed like he was running uphill while sitting in the dugout and was played memorably by a Goodman. Sure, NFL linemen are often larger than life, but they rarely get the glory … Leon Lett ruined it for all of them. And the tradition continues today, not just in Milwaukee, the beer and cheese capital of the U.S., but elsewhere as well. Big Papi lives up to his nickname. Even the umpires are fat. Who cares? Not me. Like ex-White Sox pitcher Terry Forster said to David Letterman, “A waist is a terrible thing to mind.” No wonder they call it the national pastime. Long live baseball.