NEW YORK, NY – This past week the Baltimore Orioles hosted Game 1 of the Wild Card series at Camden Yards. The ceremonial first pitch before the game was thrown by none other than #ESPN sports commentator Scott Van Pelt. Either the PR dept. of the O’s has been smoking too much weed or they’re just bird-brains for authorizing this move.
Nothing against Van Pelt, who is a Maryland native, but what happened to the past greats of Cal Ripkin, Eddie Murray, Jim Palmer, or Boog Powell to name a few. Is this another way to cancel culture?
The day before the game “The Hit King” Pete Rose passed away. His death was a shock to me as it came so suddenly. What was even more of a shock was the young generation, who was supposed to be our future, not knowing who he was. I got responses of, “Never heard of him” to “What did he sing?” This came from youths that play the game who actually believe that Shohei Ohtani is the Greatest Of All Time.
By allowing a media personality to bless the playoff opener, instead of a pioneer from the past, it shows how stupid Major League Baseball is by disrespecting “The Greats.”
Peter Edward Rose aka “Charlie Hustle” gave hope to every youth that with hustle and desire anything is possible. He’d be the first to tell you that he wasn’t a great prospect, but you could never question his heart. With Pete it wasn’t about exit velocity or launch angle, it was about busting your ass which led to his record 4256 hits. He was the soul of “The Big Red Machine,” and for any youngster to not know The magnitude of Pete Rose it’s downright criminal.
MLB has done its best to portray Rose in a negative light to the point of tuning him out of his achievements. Let the record show that “Charlie Hustle” was a real life superman when he head dived through the bases. When Rose wasn’t playing, his knowledge and history of the game is something that every ANALytical employee is totally clueless about, especially if they tried to debate with him.
Rose always preached that he would probably get into the Hall of Fame after he dies. Now that he’s gone, MLB needs to save itself the embarrassment of enshrining him after death.
It gets enough embarrassment on a daily basis with its rule changes during the postseason, and the way it ignored its pioneers from holding coaching positions, or throwing out the first pitch.
