Frontpage Features

BY RICK TITTLE

Lousy, lame, terrible, awful, stinky, atrocious, and just plain bad.  These are only a few of the words that can describe many Major League players these days.  The talent is now so watered-down in the Bigs that there are no hitters and perfect games are dropping out of the sky every week.  Or so it seems…

When baseball was the only game in town, like in the days of Ruth and Gehrig, you had to be extremely talented to be on a big league roster.  But with 30 teams nowadays, you have hundreds of pathetic players who don uniforms every day.  Now let’s be fair: they’re good baseball players, they’re just not good enough to be MLB players, yet here they are.  I’d trade places with them – who wouldn’t want to be playing baseball for a living?  But they simply make the game cruddy with their weak performances.

Think about it.  Your favorite team has at least five of these imposters.  Do I need to name names?  Just look at the box scores in your sports page.  The names will jump out at you.  Pitchers will have an ERA over 5.00.  Hitters will sport a batting average below .230.  It’s really an epidemic of ridiculous proportions!  Yet we are forced to watch these guys day in and day out.  For people who love baseball, we have no choice.  What are the options?  Watch an even lamer brand of baseball in the college ranks?  No, thanks.

So the next time you see a player strike out looking on a pitch right over the middle of the plate, or a pitcher hit a guy on an 0-2 count, remember that it’s not really their fault.  They just happen to be playing in the era of mediocre talent.  I suppose it makes us appreciate the guys who can actually play well…right?

Rick Tittle can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it