Seton Hall
Changes in the game of baseball
Date: June 22, 2019By: Justin Morris
It was just two weeks ago on June 9 that the Dodgers’ Max Muncy smacked a first inning home run into McCovey Cove off Giants ace Madison Bumgarner. The home run was a near 500-foot blast that would end up being the Dodgers’ only run in a quick 1-0 defeat of San Francisco.
The shot was a towering one, a high sailing moonshot worthy of all admiration, and that’s exactly what Muncy did. He knew it was gone off the bat, and immediately dropped his bat upon contact, stopping for a second to see just how far it would go before beginning his home run trot.
He wasn’t alone on the journey though, and just steps into his roundabout found accompaniment in the form of a livid Bumgarner, who had followed Muncy out to first base, barking at him all the way. Bumgarner, a three-time World Series champ and two-time Silver Slugger as a pitcher, is an imposing presence on the mound, standing 6-foot 4-inches and weighing 250 pounds.
He is one of the last guys in the league hitters would want to see barreling towards them on the field, a brawny, rugged workhorse with a distinctive southern drawl and forearms the size bowling balls, plus a ferocious competitive attitude to boot, the current active home runs leader for pitchers.
Muncy though, welcomed Bumgarner’s torrent with open arms, egging him on as he rounded the bag before the two were broken up by an umpire. The at bat and subsequent altercation served as the only eventful occurrence of the afternoon but was more than enough to create a storyline palpable of lasting much longer than nine innings.
When asked about the incident with Bumgarner, Muncy said of the exchange, “I hit the ball, and he yelled at me ‘don’t watch the ball, you run’ and I just responded back ‘if you don’t want me to watch the ball you can go get it out of the ocean."
“You are now the next chapter in the Giants-Dodgers rivalry,” he was told by a Sportsnet reporter.
Muncy chuckled, and offered his simple, honest response, “He just kept mouthing off, and I told him to come get it.”
Exchanges like these are exactly what baseball needs to get back on track to its glory days. Baseball ratings and attendance have been on the decline for years, topping at a whopping 62% on this season’s opening night compared to 2017, and its executives have been desperately searching for ways to reverse their negative trend, experimenting with pitching clocks, timers, even stadium perks and sponsorship in efforts to reduce game time.
One major drop-off that has been identified though, is the numbers of millennials, and baseball seems to be losing out on its younger audience members. It’s not a global game and runs much slower with favorably less action than America’s most popular sports: basketball and football, a calculated, methodical “thinking mans game.” The types of things we saw that Sunday afternoon though, could change that.
They are the epitome of the kind of fire and excitement baseball fans yearn for, the grit, passionate emotion, and competitive fire of America’s pastime in unfiltered dosages, and the players that play it, love it. It’s their life, and for some, saved it. They deserve full free reign to express themselves.
Sports fans love action, drama and excitement. It’s what we saw with Jose Bautista’s historic bat flip on a home run that rocked Canada, it’s what we saw when Bautista and Rougned Odor were involved in a fight that garnered so much attention it ended up being recreated in tattoo form on a fan’s arm, and it’s what we saw in the countless heated rivalry bouts between the Yankees and the Red Sox of the 2000s and the Dodgers and Giants of yesteryear. Muncy-Bumgarner, was all of that.
Bumgarner said after the incident, “they want to let everyone be themselves, then let me by myself. That’s me. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. Everybody is different. That’s how I want to play, that’s how I’m going to.”
Well, Bumgarner, you are correct. Everyone should be allowed to be themselves in the game of baseball. That also means though, that Muncy is allowed to watch his home run ball. The Dodgers next played the Giants on June 17, beginning a four-game series, and Muncy kept the drama going, wearing a “Go get it out of the ocean” T-shirt prior to the game.
On the June 20, another Muncy swing produced the same 1-0 result, this time a single off Bumgarner in the first to give the Dodgers a lead in a 9-8 win. The Dodgers remain atop the NL West by a matter of 12 games as of Saturday and will see the Giants multiple times as the season continues. Expect to see fireworks, which will not only produce one heck of a series, but more of exactly what baseball needs as the season continues.
Justin Morris can be reached at justin.morris@student.shu.edu.
