It is a quiet Saturday afternoon here and I just turned off the Game of the Week. Between the interleague matchup ( Mets vs. Yankees) and the broadcast team of Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, I decided that my time would be well spent otherwise. Remember the “good ole days” when we were blessed with Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek on a Saturday afternoon. What happened ?

Watching the game this afternoon, I notice how many players nowadays are wearing ankle-guards, Major League Baseball’s latest fashion statement.   In fact, today’s ballplayer is covered in armour, some of it practical – meant to protect against costly injury – but much of it cosmetic it seems.

As I just finished a book on Ty Cobb I thought to myself what would Ty Cobb think of this ? The injuries that Cobb played through during his career just boggles the mind.  Cobb once even took the field with open knife wounds, suffered in a scuffle with fans before a game.  No doubt he would be rolling – or more likely cursing, for such was Cobb  – in his grave if he saw all the additional protection that today’s player puts on before stepping into the batters box e.g. the batting gloves, the elbow braces, the ankle-guards….what is next ?

Not only are all these uniform accessories ( for lack of a better term) an eyesore but it slows down the game considerably when players have to call time to adjust their gear time and time again. No one is more guilty of this than Nomar Garciaparra who goes through a lengthy OCD ritual in which he fastens and unfastens the straps on his batting gloves several times before stepping into the box.

Anyway a far cry from yesteryear, when players, real warriors like Frank Howard, Norm Cash, Mickey Mantle, just grabbed a bat applied a little pine tar and stepped into the box to take their cuts. The game back then had a decidedly simple quality which it completely lacks nowadays.  

Why do I even watch anymore ?