Reflections on the 2013 All Star Game. One: Mariano Rivera is boring and that’s why he’s great

Wednesday morning, July  17.

The blonde (who went to bed early): Who won the All Star Game?

Me: The American League.

The blonde: Those stinkers.

This year's All-Star Game might not have been as big a snoozefest as it seemed if Fox had actually covered it and not used it as filler for their maudlin Mariano Rivera Memorial Services.

I admire Rivera.  He's one of the reasons it's been no fun for me to hate the Yankees over the last 18 years. Almost by himself, he's made it just about impossible to hate them at all. Doesn't stop me from rooting against them. Just takes some of the old pleasure out of it. But the way Tim McCarver and Joe Buck were going on...and on...and on...about him,I began hoping Mo would come into the game, put three men on in twelve pitches, then give up a grand slam to Marco (2 HRs at the break) Scutaro.

And it was nothing against Rivera, just me wanting to hear how Buck and McCarver would deal with having their bombastic narrative broken up.

Listening to them tell it---and they told it and told it again, at the top and bottom of every inning--- and you didn't know better, you might have gotten the impression that no greater or more beloved player had ever appeared in an All-Star Game before or, at least, no future Hall of Famer had appeared in one in his final season.  (Tim? Joe? Last year? Name Chipper Jones ring any bells?)  Buck and McCarver grew so worshipful that I gave up my fantasy of a Scutaro grand slam and started to worry they knew something they weren't telling us and Rivera was seriously unwell.

Here's the thing.

It may have been that Rivera was the only guaranteed first ballot future Hall of Famer in uniform in CitiField last Tuesday night.

Ortiz seems like a shoe-in to me, but there are those rumors, and he'd be the first player to get his plaque as a pure DH.

So I think it'll depend on who's on the ballot with him.

I’m not sure Joe Nathan's a safe bet. Again, though, it'll depend on who else is on the ballot.

Beltran probably needs one more stellar season after this one of the kind he may be too old to give, just to get in the Hall at all, never mind on the first ballot.

Cliff Lee's been up and down his whole career, but he's still managed to put up some impressive numbers. How do you not put in the Hall a pitcher who despite breaking down a lot still has a .622 winning percentage, a 3.51 ERA, over 1600 strike outs, and 12 shutouts over the course of close to 2000 innings?

I don't know. How do you keep out a guy with a .634 winning percentage,  a 3.51 ERA, 2293 strike outs, and 24 shutouts?

There were a slew of players in their primes any one of whom, many of whom, possibly all of whom, if they stay healthy and things continue as they've been going for them, could end up in the Hall. Cabrera. Molina. Wright. Philips. Fielder. Votto. Mauer. Cano. Pedroia.

Who am I leaving out?

It's an if-ier proposition with pitchers, but Verlander and Wainwright  are looking good.

And then there were a bunch of exciting kids who if they fulfill their promise are going to make the game a lot of fun to follow the next ten years.  Trout. Posey. Harper. McCutchen. Harvey. Machado. Fernandez. Sale.

But none of them did much to make this game great fun to watch, and neither did any of the veterans.

Brandon Phillips made a couple of beautiful grabs.  Prince Fielder hit a triple. Say that again. Prince Fielder hit a triple. He does that but it's always amazing to watch him leg one out. How can a guy built like that fly like that? Manny Machado backhanded Paul Goldschmidt's two-hopper down the line and gunned him out at first in the kind play the baseball gods dreamed of when they created the game. Jose Fernandez retiring Dustin Pedroia, Miguel Cabrera, and Chris Davis one after the other on 13 pitches may not rank with Carl Hubbell striking out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx in order (with two on and nobody out, by the way), but, oh doctor! It was still impressive!  But the AL scored their three runs quietly. The NL collectively went to sleep at the plate. And the most exciting and tension filled moments occurred in the top of the first inning when Harvey let one get away and drilled Robinson Cano just above the knee and then when Harvey pitched out of the jam he'd pitched himself into.

So it may have been that Buck and McCarver couldn't shut up about Rivera because the game really was a snoozefest and they had nothing else worth talking about.

But they should have realized that their harping on when Rivera would get into the game---besides the underlying assumption that that's what we were all watching to see. Some of us aren't Yankee fans, guys.---amounted to their rooting for the American League.  They clearly thought that we didn't just want to see Rivera take the mound, we wanted to see him take it in classic Mariano fashion, in a save situation with three dangerous hitters coming up he'd retire in order on a handful of pitches.

They should also have realized that with the game actually trending that way, their maunderings made things feel scripted.

Look.

Mariano Rivera is the best (closer) there ever was, possibly the best there ever will be. Seemed to me McCarver and Buck fixated on his number of saves, but that incredible number, 638, really indicates two things: his longevity, remarkable among closers whose tenures in that role tend to be short, and the fact that he's had the New York Yankees playing behind him his whole career. His truly astonishing stats are his 2.20 ERA, over 1150 strike outs, and his almost negligible number of blown saves. (I need help with that last one. I can’t find the exact number. But for an indication: This season he has only failed to save 2 games while saving 30 so far.)

[Update: As he so often does, the Linkmeister comes through with the answer. 72. See more by following the link in his comment below.]

And he's a good guy. Generous, modest, kind, friendly and polite to one and all. He deserved that ovation and he deserves to go into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

What I'm doing here is television criticism. Buck and McCarver didn't trust us to understand the significance of what was happening because TV covers sports as if everybody tuning in is uninterested in the game being played. We're all here for the spectacle and the hype or the conflict and the drama or to see history being made or to join in the worship of celebrity for celebrity's sake.

Then TV is never content to leave a good thing alone. If something played well once, it'll play well a thousand times. And so out strolls Neil Diamond to "sing" Sweet Caroline again, totally out of context, as if we're going to be moved the way the Fenway Park crowd was when he led them in singing it at the first home game after the Boston Marathon Bombing three months ago.

And of course, the moment being forced and faked, looked faked and forced, Diamond himself, who wanted to do a generous thing, looked foolish, vain, and old, and the crowd looked like they were determined to be good sports even though they were baffled and bored.

In trying to infuse Rivera's final All-Star appearance with all the spectacle, hype, conflict, drama, history, and celebrity worship the game itself lacked or failed to merit, McCarver and Buck oversold Mariano himself and made him...boring.

But here's the sad fact.

He is boring.

Not as a person or as a player.

But in his role.

Closers are boring, compared to starting pitchers and hitters and fielders.

That's their job, to be boring.

They don't win games. Closers who win games are closers who failed to be boring in the worst way.

Their job is to make sure games already won stay won. It's almost inapt terminology to credit them with saves. They don't come in when a game needs saving, not if the manager has been managing his bullpen effectively. It's just that it would sound stupid to credit them with preservations.

The days of a Sparky Lyle type of fireman are long past.

Nobody comes to the ballpark to see a closer, no matter how good he is.  Not even fans of the team he pitches for want to see him pitch because his appearance means their team isn't winning handily going into the eighth and ninth innings. They're glad to see him, but they'd rather their team was up 6-2 at this point than 2-1.  If the closer comes in with his team up 6-2, that means the game is in the process of being lost! And while there are plenty of ways a 2-1 game can be exciting, the closer isn't really part of it. His job is to put an end to the excitement.

Consequently, a closer's appearance isn't as much a part of the story of a game as its final punctuation mark. If he becomes part of the story it's because something has gone wrong for his team. The summation of his time on the mound should be no more than a sentence or two that amount to “And they all lived happily ever after (until the next game).”

So when all is said and done closers can be stars but they are, generally speaking, supporting players.

You see where I'm going with this, right?

Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Ah, the old rhetorical hidden ball trick.

End of Part One: Click on the link for Part Two, Baseball isn't a religion, the Hall of Fame isn't a shrine, and Barry Bonds deserves his plaque.

Photo by slgckgc via Wikipedia.

Comments

[JD]

Can't agree with you there, Lance, unless he, McGwire and the rest go in with the Asterisk of Shame. And I don't advocate Pete Rose even with an asterisk.

[Lance Mannion]

JD, I can accept the asterisk. I even endorse it. But what I'm trying to do in Part Two is argue that his asterisk is part of why Bonds is going to be in the Hall even if he's never formally inducted. And I'm with you on Rose.

[Linkmeister]

Blown saves leaders, career

[Sherri]

I don't really care that much about the Hall of Fame, even though I've been a baseball fan as long as I can remember. But I do get annoyed with the holier than thou sportswriters who are offended by the PED cheaters but think that Gaylord Perry's cheating was just a colorful part of the game.

[Bill Hicks]

Fox Sports is fundamentally in the service of Fox politics. It is a foot in the door, and a burnishing of the brand. Without Fox sports--baseball, NFL, NASCAR, etc. etc.--Fox "news" has much more limited viewership, much less, credibility.