Hey there, fly swatters. Joe Schlombowski, super Cubs fan here with my 2 cents on the upcoming All Star break’s Home Run Derby. Unless you’ve been vacationing on Neptune, you’ve seen that Jake Arrieta and Maddison Bumgarner are lobbyin’ to show off their power hitting chops by participating. Maybe on Neptune — or Mars or Jupiter or even Uranus — that’s the way they do things, but on Earth, not so much, pallie. (By the way, I most definitely don’t wanna know how you do anything with Uranus.) On this planet, the Home Run Derby is for guys who are relative experts at hittin’ yard shots. Arrieta and Bumgarner? Pitchers. Damn good ones, too, but I don’t wanna see them pulling a rib cage muscle tryin’ to imitate Babe Ruth. Not Arrieta, anyway.
To me, the Derby is like the Miss America Pageant. Now I don’t know about women, cuz I’m a guy, but when guys are forced to watch the Miss America Pageant — and we all are now and then — we agree to it for one reason and one reason only; to see which babe looks the hottest. We don’t really give a crap about whether they can tap dance and juggle at the same time, or can give an intelligent answer to the question, “If you could be a hammer or a nail, which would you be, and why?” We just wanna see the swimsuit part — the part they’re really good at. That’s it.
MadBum and Jake are great pitchers and they’re fun to watch pitch. You might even say they’re good hitters … for pitchers. But if you wanna be in the Derby, you gotta be a great hitter, with no qualifiers. And … AND … you gotta do it with power, my friend. I’m about as interested in seeing them in the Home Run Derby as I am is seeing them in evening gowns.
I tend to look at the Home Run Derby the same as I do the Pageant. I watch it for just one reason; to see the likes of Trumbo, Arenado, Cano, Ortiz and Bryant send a few balls up there with Neptune. Cuz, hey … if we’re gonna open up the friggin’ thing to anybody who thinks they’re Kyle Schwarber, why don’t we just go full-on Miss America and have guys do anything they think they’re good at besides playin’ ball. Maybe somebody can do bird calls. Or how ’bout lion taming or opera singing? Maybe the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies on banjo. Personally, I’d like to see Bartolo Colon doin’ one of those military rifle-twirling routines to a Herzegovinian march. That, or freestyle rollerskating to the Star Wars theme wearin’ a tutu. What about a ventriloquist act with a puppet of Rob Manfred makin’ up more new rules? Entertaining AND poignant. ($5 word bonus!) You get my point. And if you don’t, you must be a Mets fan.
If Arrieta and Bumgarner were gonna light up the world with the lumber, they’d be position players not pitchers. They don’t belong in the Derby.
Of course I could be wrong. But I’m not.
Joe