With the NFL season within the rearview mirror, baseball is again. Spring Coaching is underway, and baseball reporters in every single place are determined for one thing to write down about.
Amidst the standard “best shape of his life” tales popping out of camps, oft-injured Los Angeles Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon couldn’t have picked a worse time to be brutally trustworthy about what he does for a residing.
Right here’s what Rendon — who was quoted in 2014 as saying he doesn’t watch baseball because it’s “too long and boring” — instructed reporters, courtesy of The Athletic’s Sam Blum:
Let’s begin with the truth that this isn’t the primary time Rendon has acknowledged that his religion and household come earlier than baseball. Again in a 2018 interview, Rendon said, “I want to be known as the Christian baseball player. I’m still trying to grow into that. But at the end, I want to be more ‘Christian’ than ‘baseball player.’”
None of that raised any eyebrows on the time, although that in all probability needed to do extra with Rendon hitting .308 that season for the Washington Nationals than it did with individuals approving of his life-style decisions. It’s a lot more durable to argue that *insert professional sport* isn’t your high precedence when your common has dropped to a paltry .236.
However to be truthful to Rendon, he’s been hampered by accidents because the COVID-shortened 2020 season, together with present process hip surgical procedure in 2021, wrist surgical procedure in 2022, and fracturing his shin final season. For what it’s price, Angels’ supervisor Ron Washington mentioned he has no subject with Rendon’s priorities.
“He was asked what was important and all he said was his family and faith,” Washington said. “He’s here. He’s getting there to take this journey with us through this 162-game baseball season. He wasn’t saying he doesn’t care about baseball. He’s here and fired up and ready to go.”
So why then, the outrage from followers and sportswriters alike? Rendon doesn’t appear to have modified his perspective since his sweet-swinging days with the Nats, although having youngsters has a manner of taking your focus off of every part else in your life and refocusing it on the tiny, psychotic ankle-biters attempting to place every part into their mouths. I’m sufficiently old to recall when Aramis Ramirez told a magazine that he was devoted totally to his cockfighting roosters, and nobody batted an eye fixed at that being his precedence.
However there’s extra happening right here, with Rendon, I feel, than simply followers caring about his harm historical past and rapidly declining hitting stats.
Former A’s GM Billy Beane infamously mentioned, “It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball,” and he’s proper. Regardless of America’s love for the NBA and flat-out habit to the NFL, no different sport so readily conjures photos of enjoying catch within the yard, lengthy, languorous days spent within the bleachers, and enjoying .500 together with your neighbors within the lazy golden after-dinner gentle of summer time. And as baseball’s ageing fan base watches baseball fumble their youngsters’s consideration away, witnesses their pursuits flip to Madden and fantasy soccer as an alternative of Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, there’s a way of panic. A way that our kids may by no means know the fun of a pickup recreation in the home with the largest yard, of hotbox and ghost runners, of the sound of Vin Scully’s voice.
Everybody who loves baseball is romantic about it.
However baseball, for individuals who make a residing at it, is a job. And since it’s a job so many followers dreamed of getting as children (and let’s be trustworthy, The Rookie gave hope to an entire technology of 40-year-olds), we demand that these chosen few who’re residing out our desires deal with the game with the identical reverence we picture we might, had the Baseball Gods deemed us worthy of a thunderbolt for an arm or an ideal swing designed to ship balls looping into the outfield. However any job, irrespective of how laborious you labored for it, how a lot you wished it, how a lot you find it irresistible, continues to be a job. Baseball isn’t any totally different.
Positive, gamers get winters off, their places of work are pastoral cathedrals, they usually receives a commission tens of millions to play a baby’s recreation. However they nonetheless should go (virtually) each day from mid-February to September, in nagging accidents and in well being, when issues are going nice and after they aren’t. They’ve bosses, efficiency expectations, lengthy stretches away from their households, and, particularly on days when issues go south, a scrum of reporters standing round their lockers, ready to ask them precisely why issues went so poorly.
I’m not shedding any tears for baseball gamers, God is aware of most of us would swap locations with them in a heartbeat if we might, however isn’t there room for somebody to see their job, even when it’s enjoying baseball within the sunshine, as a … (gasp) job? And why is it that, in virtually some other occupation, saying one’s job is their high precedence is considered chilly, heartless, anti-family, and a few sort of Cat’s Cradle tragedy, except the individual saying it’s a pro-athlete? You’re alleged to say your loved ones is an even bigger precedence than your job, except your job is to entertain the plenty. Then you definately’d higher kick your wife to the curb throughout childbirth as a result of we’d like your bat within the five-hole.
There’s additionally a good bit of sexism at play right here. I’m guessing Rendon wouldn’t be getting practically this quantity of blowback if he performed in, say, the WNBA or NWSL. Personally, I bristle after I hear a lady with an awesome profession say she “lives for her children,” as a result of it erases her as a human being with issues to contribute to the world totally. However that’s an appropriate factor for a girl to say as a result of, on the finish of the day, we anticipate ladies to subjugate their priorities to their spouses and kids. However not males and positively not manly males who get soiled for a residing. The irony that lots of the net criticism being tossed Rendon’s manner is coming from the “society’s problems stem from too many absent fathers!” crowd will not be misplaced on me. So, right here’s a dad who says he cares about his household greater than baseball. Isn’t that what we wish fathers to say? Aren’t dads alleged to be current and engaged and placing their youngsters first?
The problem with Redon has layers to it. He’s perceived by followers as prickly and he’s made it clear that speaking to reporters will not be his favourite factor. And admittedly, there are lots of conditions the place he might deal with himself higher, together with reminding himself that “being a jerk to reporters trying to do their jobs” will not be what Jesus would do. However the regulation of averages calls for that whereas there are gamers like Sammy Sosa, who beloved each single second he was on the diamond, there are additionally gamers like Rendon — who uncover they will do one thing higher than 99.9 % of society and put up with it for a paycheck.
If it makes followers really feel higher, Rendon would in all probability quite be enjoying baseball than doing regardless of the outrage brigade does for a residing, sitting in a cubicle tweeting furiously about priorities in between Zoom calls. Or perhaps he wouldn’t. However does it actually matter?
