Do racial slurs, profanity have place in baseball? How about a brushback pitch?

The outburst that occurred Wednesday between the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals wound up having consequences that has some people convinced baseball has gone too far.

Tim Anderson, the White Sox shortstop who actually got hit by a pitch, wound up getting a one-game suspension – one that he voluntarily accepted by sitting out Friday’s ballgame at Detroit against the Tigers.

SOME ARE SAYING it is absurd that the guy who got hit (in the buttocks) by a pitched ball is somehow being penalized. Major League Baseball officials justified the action Friday, saying it was because Anderson responded to being hit by using inappropriate language.

Based on various news reports, it seems that in addition to the brawling that occurred between the White Sox and Royals (that we all saw on television), Anderson shouted out to Royals pitcher Brad Keller – telling him that he was a …

Well, let’s just say that Anderson managed to combine an insult, a profanity and a racial slur in saying just what he thought of Keller for hitting him deliberately with a pitch.

What makes the incident particularly odd is that Anderson is a black man, while Keller is a white guy. Anderson is alleged to have used one of the most elemental racial slurs meant to offend the sensibilities of black people and turned it around by using it on a white guy!

Both Anderson and Keller (below) … 

WHICH I’M SURE has many people confused. Although it seems that baseball officials are taking the simplistic attitude that n----- (the Chicago Defender stylebook way of downplaying use of THAT word) is always inappropriate – regardless of the circumstances.

Now for what it’s worth, Keller also got a suspension (five ballgames, but because pitchers traditionally only pitch every few days on a set rotation, it means Keller will lose one ballgame).

Some may argue that punishing both guys with a one-game suspension seems fair. While others are trying to claim Anderson is being singled-out for abuse.

Although personally, I think Anderson behaved like a “dink” on Wednesday, and some of his conduct since then has offended my own baseball sensibilities. So I can’t get too upset over him losing a single ballgame. He’ll be back Saturday.

… lost 1 ballgame as discipline for incident

THIS INCIDENT ACTUALLY became significant because of the circumstances. Anderson managed to hit a home run that briefly gave the White Sox a lead, and he reacted by doing what some are calling a bat flip (although White Sox broadcasters described the moment as him throwing his bat aside “like a javelin”).

Two innings later, Anderson came to bat again, and wound up having a Keller pitch bounce off his behind – which caused the Anderson outburst that led to both ballclubs charging the field and throwing punches.

For the record, White Sox manager Rick Renteria and Royals coach Dale Sveum (both former Chicago Cubs managers, for what it’s worth) also got suspensions, with Renteria also sitting out Friday night’s game.

Anderson has consistently claimed to be the victim in all of this, and claims there is nothing wrong with the way he reacted to hitting a home run. “Our fans pay to see a show,” is how he tries to justify it.

AS THOUGH CLOWNISH antics are what some people think baseball ought to become about. Certainly not something I need to see a lot of when I pay the ridiculous prices that get charged for tickets these days to a ball game.

Although what really bothers me about such logic is the notion that batters can engage in egotistical behavior, but pitchers who might try to do similar things are somehow acting inappropriately.

Maybe it’s because I’m old enough to have baseball memories of pitchers such as Bob Gibson or Juan Marichal – both ballplayers who used the threat of intimidation or retaliation in order to try to keep a batter off-balance enough. Just as batters are always looking for an advantage to throw a pitcher off his rhythm.

So if this issue wasn’t already absurd enough over the issue of when a brushback pitch is appropriate, now we have to determine just when a white guy can be dissed as a “n-----?” Groan!!!

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Time passes on, but is it really for the better? Or, I wanna make a phone call!

The Illinois General Assembly is considering a change in law that I’m sure some people are going to think is long overdue – the “phone company,” so to speak, wouldn’t have to give you the option of a real-live telephone in your home.
 

This 'phone' would definitely freak out the kiddies

As in the landline, the one that’s actually hooked up to cables and theoretically provides your phone calls with a sense of security that our cellphones don’t.

SERIOUSLY, THE LEGISLATURE is considering a request that the laws obligating AT&T to make landline phone service available to everybody in Illinois should be abolished.

The entity we used to jokingly refer to as “Ma Bell” (a reference that may, in and of itself, age me) says so many people now rely on cellphones exclusively for their phone service that the old requirement is a financial burden because it requires them to maintain an infrastructure of cables that is no longer necessary for people to speak to each other via the “telephone.”

Now before I proceed, I probably should point out that I gave up a landline about one year ago. I rely exclusively on the “smart phone” (which often makes me feel dumb) for the ability to make calls, and also keep up with the work-related e-mails I get from people who think the best way to get my attention is to tap out a few characters of the English alphabet, then hit the “send” key.

Yes, I get those e-mails, but I often am astounded at how atrocious their spelling and grammar is. I also have to admit that many of the e-mails I get wind up being deleted unread – particularly the ones that are blatant appeals for me to donate money to yet another political gasbag of a candidate.

Confounding telecommunications?!?

BUT I HAVE to admit that even though I gave up a landline (I found that the people who were calling me were overwhelmingly using my cellphone number), I miss it. Particularly when I see other people who use the “freedom” of not having a phone cord to deal with to become so meandering and thoughtless that they lose track of what is going on around them.

Besides, I also wonder what it is with our contemporary society that they don’t fully appreciate how much of their privacy they give up when they do away with a cord. Because the reality is that there is no assurance that people aren’t listening in on all our cellphone calls, or reading every single e-mail sent to us through that “phone.”

Doing away with landline requirements might be accepting a certain reality, but it also means our reality is getting a little less logical.

Just trying paying a phone bill in this box!

Then again, I’m becoming an old man, and I know watching younger people, particularly my teenage niece Meira. I could go on and on about all the stupid, trivial things she looks at (mostly video snippets of people doing pointless things) when using her phone.

BUT THE CONCEPT that most catches my attention is that she seems to resent it whenever anyone actually “calls” her and expects to have a traditional phone conversation.

She and her friends don’t even bother to pick up on those calls, and ignore the messages that get left. Although they don’t seem to mind having conversations where they can look into their “phones” and see each other – usually in such close-up that their facial features become freakish and unrecognizable.

The “phone” truly has become a toy, one used for video games and watching video snippets and, occasionally, to talk to each other. I’m sure the loss of the cables that maintain “real” phone service won’t be missed.

Except by those cranks such as myself – the kind of people who looked at the Tuesday morning news reports in absolute astonishment that the Chicago White Sox signed their shortstop, Tim Anderson, to a contract providing $25 million during the next six seasons.

The high price of competence

I’M OLD ENOUGH to remember when a salary in the millions was considered unthinkable, then something reserved only for the elite of professional baseball. Not for the journeyman who barely meets the league average!

Although I suppose there are those people who will say I ought to take my out-of-date complaints and make them to someone with a landline phone so we can rant and rage about how the world has gone amok.

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