Brogna On Baseball: "Trade the Deadline, Please"
By Rico Brogna
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Real sports drama happens when it's least expected. Isn't that what makes something exhilarating and dramatic? "Boy, I did not see that coming, that was awesome!" There are many examples when we, as sports fans, had our breath swept away by an athlete's individual performance or by a team's heroic game that the underdogs prevailing.
My favorite of all time …
"Do you believe in miracles?" Al Michaels voice was actually cracking in pure disbelief and excitement at the same time. Craig, Johnson and Eruzioni were on the ice, yes, but they were not grounded. They had to feel as though they were floating high into the rafters at Lake Placid's 1980 Olympic hockey arena feeling like they had just conquered the universe. The point being that this was real. Something such as this was not even dared hoped for in the deepest of dreams. That is just what makes sports unmatched and unchallenged by anything else out there. There was a genuine disbelief and a natural feeling of exhilaration created by this now historic event on skates. "Miracle" helped create arguably the greatest sports moment in our nation's history. It's hands down #1 for me, not even close!
Artificially manufactured moments in time have a way of making headlines because they are in fact news worthy but that's kind of where it really ends. Something may scroll across the bottom of your 42-inch LCD and momentarily it surprises you. Twitter and Facebook rock out for ½ hour and then, "Ok, what's next?" We'd all like to say it's because we live in a world of new technology and fast-paced news clips that slap us every 8 to 10 minutes. Or some just say that things are just not what they used to be. That's a typical cop out type of answer.
WRONG! What a special sports moment can do to us all is make us stop cold and pay attention to nothing else that may be going on in our own lives. Something like a Tom Brady (youngster Brady back then) and a Patriots team stomping out the Ram and their "fastest game on turf" offense dead in their tracks because they did what always works in football, being tough. The Pats were physical and hit the snot out of all the other guys. Patriot's defenders hit 'em real hard and real often. What happened that night was something that will last in NFL minds forever. It is a sports moment not made up or temporary. It was a team victory as the Patriots accomplished something that nobody, absolutely nobody, thought was possible. And in sports, that's why they play the game.
Ahhhh, that brings me to the MLB Trading Deadline. Is it real drama or manufactured? There are actually rules, necessary rules, and MLB specifications that have relevant meaning to this point in time during each baseball season. So the need to have this date and these rules matter and are important for the game itself, this much is true. But what the ESPN's of the world, which by the way is becoming less and less relevant (after really messing up things like the Mike Leach and Bruce Feldman's situation), have done in the television sports world is create a false sense of drama for baseball fans. Deadlines do help people make decisions because it's just that, a deadline. However, we all have seen, and I have personally experienced, players moving from team to team after July 31st each summer as GM's work the waiver wire. A countdown clock is seen on some baseball show like it's the countdown to the NYC ball dropping on New Year's Eve. C'mon man!
Manufactured or real sizzle? You decide. General Managers have caught on to this and now make moves well before the deadline (see Beltran to Giants). Drama may happen and a nation may be inspired by the underdog once more. David clubbed Goliath, nice stone toss dude, and can you pitch too? Cool, but we'll have to put you on a pitch count … the fact is, sports has always provided moments that we cannot believe. Inspirational moments that not one person could have thunk would have happened.
I digress. Let moments in time just happen y'all. Sports have never let us down before and something out there will shock us into disbelief once more. It's sports after all and drama, real drama, will happen.
This trading deadline manufactured drama stuff provides zero suspense anymore. We actually know what's going to happen before it does anyway. What's so surprising about that? Everybody in the Big Apple knew even last summer that Beltran was gone. That's not drama, that's not news. Now, if the New York Metropolitans continue t play with this gutsy, blood on the uniform, smeared eye black grease on the sleeves of Daniel Murphy, diving and get dirty, nasty and an unrelenting kind of style that is becoming known as "Collins Ball", than there may just yet be a real baseball story coming that would sweep away an entire city and possibly a nation off it's feet. That's real drama folks and you know what? I am now rooting for these guys, man! They have heart, they have fire and they do not quite!
After all, isn't that what Herb Brooks did to those youngsters from Boston and Minnesota? He worked them silly, got them to buy into his ways by making them hate things which only made them pull tighter together and work harder as a until. They were going to sure as heck be in better conditioning enabling them to push it to the brink.
"Do you believe in Miracles?"
