Let me preface this by acknowledging my Dodger fandom plays
into this opinion. Everyone needs to get off
Yasiel Puig’s back, and the media needs to be far less lazy.
For some reason, two national writers decided to lambaste
Puig in columns this week. The first was
Jon Paul Morosi of Fox Sports. Here
are some excerpts from his Tuesday column:
“But if I were a Dodgers fan, I’d be nervous about Puig in
October. He’s as likely to cost the Dodgers a playoff game with a needless
mistake as he is to win one on a walk-off home run. For a while, Puig’s frequent
fundamental lapses were forgivable. Airmailed cutoff men and unnecessary outs
on the basepaths were accepted as part of The Puig Show. Besides, he was saving
the season. Let him be.”
and
“No more. Puig and Hanley Ramirez have turned the Dodgers into near-certain NL West champions. Now it’s
time to prepare for the playoffs. And clearly, Puig isn’t ready.”
Morosi would go onto talk
about Puig’s series against the Phillies in which he made a few mistakes.
“The Dodgers are in a
precarious position here. Mattingly should bench Puig for a day – the clearest
form of manager-player communication – to make certain he understands the need
to be more aware of game circumstances. But that’s probably unrealistic because
Puig helped the Dodgers go on an historic 42-8 run, and the paying customers in
L.A. would be displeased if they bought a ticket to Dodger Stadium only to
learn their hero wasn’t in the lineup.”
“You can see it coming from here to the autumn leaves. Crowd screaming. National television cameras blazing. Game 4
… or 5 … or 6 of the playoffs. And Yasiel Puig runs
into an out, overthrows a cutoff man, commits some egregious mistake that costs
the Dodgers the
game. Maybe even costs them the playoffs. The Dodgers go home for the winter. Their fans are left
hugging only their chipped and faded 1988 World Series champions coffee mugs. And Puig jets off to join a South Beach conga line for the
winter. Party on! Hoo, boy.”
and
“Do you think they haven't tried? School is in session every
day with Puig. Manager Don Mattingly talks with him. Coaches lecture him.
General manager Ned Colletti schools him. Teammates from Juan Uribe to Adrian
Gonzalez try to teach him.So far, Puig doesn't appear to
be much for school. Or lessons. Or umpires, or sleep.”
and
“So what do you do if you're the Dodgers? Wine and dine him even more? Sit him down indefinitely? Sit him down for six innings, then insert him into the game
in a sixth-inning double-switch? Wait. They did that last one Tuesday. And Puig emerged from
his time out to immediately stroke a game-winning home run. The guy can do no
wrong even when he does wrong.”
And probably the worst string of sentences…
“Biggest question this season now is this: Can the Dodgers
eke a Kirk Gibson moment out of Puig this October before they get a
Frankenstein moment?
This Tasmanian Devil of a
player has mesmerized a community and captivated a baseball nation. He is
Must-See TV, one of the game's most exciting talents. What Mike Trout and Bryce
Harper were last year, Puig, to some degree, is this year.
Yet this late-night carousing,
cutoff-man missing, curfew busting phenom borders on going berserk-o out of
control. Did you see the tantrum he directed at plate ump John Hirschbeck after
striking out Monday in Miami? Holy smokes.”
The fact that some think Puig is actually a detriment to the
Dodgers is something straight out of a bad “Saturday Night Live” skit.
Guess what? ANY player on the Dodgers could cost the team come playoff time. Just because Puig is young and "doesn't play the right way" doesn't make him any more or less likely to make a mistake. But don't let that get in the way of a pageview-grabbing column.
Where is this all coming from? Was it that Puig said, “Fuck
the media,” (
or did he?), or is it that he’s “different” than some of the guys
criticizing him?
I’m not accusing Morosi, Miller and others of flat-out
racism, but there are definitely some racist elements at play.
Craig Calceterra of Hardball Talk tackled the issue:
“If you go back and look at
the commentary about a young Roberto Clemente or, really, almost any other
young Latin superstar in baseball history, you see a lot of the same things being
said about them that are being said about Puig. Many of the actual words are
different — I don’t think anyone these days actually calls them “hot-blooded”
or anything — but there is this presumption, it seems, that most young Latin
ballplayers are some breed of wild horse that needs to be tamed. Contrast this
to young American ballplayers who mess up sometimes and are talked about as if
they need to grow up. We assume age-appropriate immaturity in the latter that
will inevitably be grown out of and assume culturally-determined otherness in
the former that must be beaten out of them via discipline and disapproval.”
Morosi got his wish – kind of – on Tuesday when Puig was not
in the Dodgers’ starting lineup. Of course, he promptly came in on a
double-switch and hit the eventual game-winning run with a towering home run to
left-center field – because of course he did. That’s Puig. That’s who he is.
I was, foolishly, listening to ESPN Radio on my drive home
last night (while Scott Ferrall was on commercial) and the clueless host (Jeff
something-er-other… didn’t catch his full name) was talking about the Puig
situation. He said Puig was benched on Tuesday “for being late,” which was entirely
untrue. He then said Puig has been in the country for all of “six months,”
which is also untrue. He got a number of facts wrong – facts that can be
confirmed with a simple Google search.
Some of the national media has gotten lazy and have
officially reached troll status. When guys with some of the biggest platforms
are writing and broadcasting things that are completely foolish, uninformed and
subtly racist opinions, that’s not good.
This epidemic breeds uninformed opinions, treated as fact,
and the masses eat it up. Because of that, it becomes the popular and
prevailing opinion, no matter how wrong it might be.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend there aren’t facets of
Puig’s game that need improvement. He absolutely needs to hit the cutoff man
(at times) and make smarter decisions on the basepaths. That will come with age
and experience. He’s 22, after all. This time two years ago, he was trying to
defect from a country – an experience many of us will never (thankfully) know.
He’s literally gone from nothing to almost everything. The culture shock is
something I know I can’t relate to.
Bloggers, despite still
being labeled as those in their mother’s basements, are some of the most
informed and intelligent folks around (this blogger notwithstanding). Yet, most
of their platforms are miniscule compared to the likes of Fox, ESPN and CBS.
Some are trying to fight the good fight. The aforementioned
Calceterra brought up Clemente when talking about Puig. Man, if only
Puig hit the cutoff man more, he might be
less
like Clemente.
Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports brought up
Vladimir Guerrero in his
column. Man, if only Puig didn’t swing at pitches out of the strike zone, he
might be
less like Guerrero.
And here's another great piece. This is where Puig comes from.
"A few months after Puig made his debut, with every game he plays still opening itself up like some brand new, unexpected gift, I feel like the isolated one. Despite our various advantages in communications, Americans are nearly as removed from Cuban baseball stars as Cuban fans are from major leaguers. Puig may only now be learning the blessed and sacred unwritten rules of American baseball, but we are only learning now what the Cuban game has to offer."
People seem to forget that just two years ago, he was trying to escape Cuba so he could pursue his dream of playing Major League Baseball. It's not like he's been around this lifestyle that long. He's 22 years old and this level of fame for someone who hasn't experienced anything close to it is something difficult to digest.
So, to the lazy national media writers attempting to crucify
Puig for being 22 years old and for “not doing things the right way,” I say,
start being better at your jobs and stop stooping to the same level as an
Internet troll. You’re better than that (I think). If not, then how the hell
did you get your respective jobs?
At least Bill Plaschke didn’t jump into the fray. What’s that?
He did?
Son of a bitch.
“They need less of Puig's reckless on-field behavior. They
need less of his arrogant refusal to listen to instruction. They need less of
an attitude that infuriates umpires.
But they love the victories that the reckless, arrogant
attitude produces.
They needed to bench him Tuesday. But they couldn't bear to
bench him for the entire game.
He needs to learn. But Mattingly showed that he's unwilling
to possibly sacrifice a victory to finish the lecture.”
I can’t…
Photo credit: Dustin Nosler, Feelin' Kinda Blue
