fbpx

GRIZ GRIT: In the Tradition of the Game

By Beacon Staff

I’m big on sports traditions.

Whether it’s slapping a sign before you leave the locker room or entering the field or even the personal one I engage in by sitting in the north end zone at Washington-Grizzly Stadium, pausing to enjoy the sights and sounds for a moment before I go upstairs to broadcast a University of Montana football game.

Different sports have their own traditions, but none more than baseball.

Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriquez raised the ire of some traditionalists when he distracted an opposing player who was waiting to catch a pop fly by yelling at him as he ran by. And it about started a fight when he breached the area around the pitcher’s mound by running across it on the way to the dugout after he was called out.

In my mind those are forgivable and silly gaffes. But what Jose Reyes did to secure the season batting title and the actions of Baltimore manager Buck Showalter, who I know personally to be one of the true gentlemen of the game, are far removed from each other on the “tradition” spectrum.

Reyes became the first New York Met to win a batting championship when he successfully bunted in the first inning of the last game of the season, then opted to be lifted for a pinch runner to protect his lead in the batting race.

This on the 70th anniversary of Ted Williams winning the batting title. Williams refused to sit the bench on the last day of the season. Instead, he was six for eight in a doubleheader to an was the last person to hit .400.

Williams’ average going into the game would have been rounded up to .400 if he had chosen not to play in the finale.

Now you might think it was all about money for Reyes, but Major League Baseball has a contingency that a player can’t receive a bonus for winning a batting title.

Whatever happened to winning it on the field?

That’s what Showalter did when the last-place Baltimore Orioles faced the Boston Red Sox in a game with playoff implications on the last day of the regular season.

With nothing to win, 29 games back in the division race, the Showalter-led O’s played as if it was their post-season future on the line and fought from behind to beat Boston with a walk-off single.

Couple that with a seven-run comeback by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays over the New York Yankees and Sox fans suffered yet another devastating disappointment.

Despite a disappointing season of their own, there was no way the Orioles would not respect the tradition of the game by rolling over, opting instead to play to the last out of the last inning.

While it surely doesn’t replace all their losses this season, the Orioles can spend the winter months knowing they were a prime example of paying due respect to a game that deserves it.

For Jose Reyes, well, not so much.