Nogochocinco? The NFL Wants To Kill Fun.

At the end of this past August, Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco announced his plan to circumvent National Football League anti-tweeting regulations. For Ochocinco (nee Johnson) — a guy already responsible for an impressive list of self-branding antics — it was just another brilliant marketing move: Each week, in advance of every game, he’d pick one luck fan and fly him or her out to wherever his Bengals were playing so that he could — through a set of pre-arranged hand signals — indeed tweet from the field. But for the NFL it was some kind of threat, and less than a week later they had Ochocinco ready to delete his Twitter account. Critics might argue that this is the worst kind of showboating — that Ochocinco, through his actions (they’d say), so misdirects the focus of the game from the team (they’d say) on to himself that the ultimate goal (winning, they’d say) is lost in the shuffle. This is total horseshit. And, thanks to all of the various anti-showboating regulations put in place by most of the major North American sports leagues — the NFL in particular — fun is fast disappearing from the sporting landscape.

Funny, then, that the sport most associated with spectator boredom remains the last, best hope for truly spirited competition. What the NFL misses in such folly as its ridiculous treatment of Ochocinco, and the NBA loses in similar misguided attempts to control the personalities of its players (the NHL still doesn’t count as a major sports league), Major League Baseball — despite its best efforts — fully, unabashedly exhibits in the brilliant celebrations that often accompany the walk-off home run.

Take Manny Ramirez for example. In his time as a member of the Boston Red Sox, the … mercurial left fielder was overshadowed, at least in the clutch, by teammate David Ortiz, whose ability to orchestrate a walk-off was the main reason that team was able to overcome 86 years of futility in 2004. But orchestrating a walk-off and turning the event into an epic celebration are two different things. And, insofar as the latter is concerned, Ramirez was king — mostly thanks to this. For those of you unwilling to click, that is a photo of Ramirez standing at home plate, arms straight up, feet planted as he watches a playoff-game winning home run sail out of Fenway Park. Best part? He takes so long to begin his home run trot that the opposing team’s catcher can be seen walking off before Ramirez has even left the plate.

Recently, however, big-bat first baseman Prince Fielder and his entire Milwaukee Brewers’ squad surpassed even the great Ramirez. Check out this clip from a game against the San Francisco Giants. Here, after hitting his game-winning shot, Fielder rounds the bases, heads toward a mob of waiting members of the Brew Crew, jumps in the air, and watches as his whole team falls over when he lands on the plate. Brilliant. Simply fucking brilliant.

And — here’s the operative part — it’s wholesome. The showboat haters would have you believe that this stuff is bad for sport — that any amount of extraordinary celebration detracts from the rest of the game in such a way that it cheapens the experience for fans and stars alike. But they’re wrong. This sort of thing is the only way, in this era of instant athlete millionaires and super-agents, that we can all get on the same plane and share in the base-human enjoyment of a brilliant moment. Which is to say: The NFL shouldn’t just reinstate Ochocinco’s Twitter account; it should make every player, coach, and trainer sign up for one, too.

The yet-to-be-determined starting pitcher for the National League team throws out the first pitch of the 2009 Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Game on the evening of July 14th.

Cardinal Sin: St. Louis Will Play Host to Another Unholy Edition of the MLB All Star Game

Then, for the next nine or so innings, his manager for the day, Charlie Manuel, and Manuel’s American League counterpart, Joe Maddon, will quickly rotate through their respective rosters of deserving and not-so-deserving players. Which is to say that most of these folks won’t see more than two plate appearances (or two innings). This, of course, is the point: All-Star games were, up until 2002, exhibition matches: the ultimate answer to such time-killing water-cooler minutiae as what would happen if Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio played on the same team. And, in order to satisfy the answers to as many of these hypothetical super-combinations as possible, frequent substitutions are necessary. Even as the advent of free agency and a resulting fluid player marketplace have made these hypotheticals into more than idle speculation (what would happen if Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez played on the same team?), uber-roster questions persist — and they always will; this is part of the fans’ speculative privilege that makes team sports more interesting than their (mostly) solo counterparts.

The wrinkle in the All-Star-Game-as-exhibition concept came after the 2002 MLB version. Having seen that year’s event ended in a tie after MLB Commissioner Bud Selig decided that 11 innings was enough of a risk to the pitching staffs of the American and National League teams, fans unleashed a torrent of pissed-off responses. To its credit, baseball actually responded to the uproar and moved to insure no repeats of the incident could haunt the sport by granting the winning League of its All-Star Game home-field advantage in the World Series. (Cue ridiculous Fox ads.) But, having thrown some theoretical stakes into the mix, Baseball formalized (as the above linked blogger suggests) its hyping of its flagship exhibition match as something more than it actually is: Home-field advantage on the line, marketing execs would like us to think, makes the game mean something. And that’s too bad.

As a meaningless event, the MLB All-Star Game provided the sports’ partisan aesthetes with a means of true relaxation. From the midsummers of 1933 to 2002, deep-feeling baseball fans could, for one evening, put aside all wishes of gruesome death for the other guy’s starting nine and watch the game with better, more sporting intentions (Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio didn’t always spell success, but back then it didn’t matter). Now, forced to really care about what happens in their All-Star Game (in baseball, even halfway through the season, hopeless is never entirely hopeless), the loyalists are returned to their edge-of-the-coach perch, thinking terrible thoughts.

All of that death-wishing? All of that rooting for your home team? All of that mental effort expended in the name of pushing your favored nine ever on to victory over the course of a 162 game season? It’s exhausting. Debilitating even. The players get their days off, do the fans not deserve the same courtesy?

This is not to suggest that This Time it Counts is all unholy. Indeed, the fact that baseball responded to the complaints of its fans is in and of itself a major positive. And, frankly, anything that keeps the sport relevant in the eyes of would-be fans is something of a victory. Still, six years after MLB made its All-Star Game into the exhibition-plus that it now is, this baseball diehard is, for one, wishing that he could go back to the droll hum of a meaningless game.

Small Balls: Will the Nats shrink from Boras' price tag?

Stephen Strasburg is a six-foot, four-inch, 220-pound right-handed pitcher who finished his final season at San Diego State University with a record of 13 wins and one loss. Rumor has it that, when he wants to, he can reach back and offer up a 104-mile-an-hour fastball — which might come to a hitter just before he sees what one blogger termed a “two plane break” slider, or maybe what is reported to be an already Major League-average change-up. To parse the vernacular: Strasburg looks to the baseball punditry like “one of the most talented prospects in the 45-year history” of the Major League Baseball (MLB) draft.

Scott Boras is baseball’s Shylock: A convenient scapegoat — thanks to the millions he’s scored for such perceived brats as Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramírez – for the inability of small-market teams to compete for the services of big-name stars, and thus the supposed inequities inherent in the sport’s economic system. In 1997, he encouraged outfielder J.D. Drew (then just drafted) to ignore a $3 million offer from the Philadelphia Phillies in favor of a year’s worth of independent league ball (where he might have made less than $3000 a month) and the possibility of more money in the 1998 draft. The following year, Drew signed for $8 million. This time around, Boras may try to use Strasburg to “redefine the MLB draft.”

The Washington Nationals is the latest incarnation of MLB’s most embarrassing franchise. The team started in Montréal in 1969, peaked in time for the 1994 baseball strike to take away what could have very well been a World Series victory, and thereafter became something of a perpetual turn-to on trade-deadline day. Thanks to a lack of interest at one home stadium, Les Expos tried to cultivate fans at another, splitting home games between their Canadian digs and Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2005, the citizens of Washington, D.C., inherited this festering mess, and, despite an inaugural-season playoff run, they’ve promptly ignored it. Among other indignities, players have had to endure the shame of wearing a home jersey with the name of their team misspelled across their chests.

On June 9th, these three parties were brought together when the Nationals, by virtue of yet another season of futility, selected Strasburg with the first pick in the 2009 draft. What happens next could mean the end (again) for baseball in Washington.

At first glance, Strasburg might seem like the perfect solution to the Nationals’ woes: A gleaming prospect with great stuff, who offers the Nats’ quickly dissolving fanbase something to look forward to as their team challenges baseball’s ultimate pinnacle of failure. But, as Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon notes, the pitcher represents something of “a risky choice.”  For starters, the most recent example of a 180 from a previously-clowned MLB franchise would seem to suggest that the Nats might have to wait 10 years for the results of a careful rebuilding process to start bearing playoff appearances — which is to say that it’s probably going to take more than one guy. And, if that guy’s representation is intent, as veteran baseball analyst Peter Gammons has suggested, on extracting as much as $50 million from his next employer, one has to wonder what sort of impact that guy and his dollars might have on other steps in the team’s restructuring.

As fans watch Boras and the Nats fight over Strasburg, they will no doubt repeat the familiar accusations about the superagent and baseball economics and, with their fingers-crossed, talk about how their would-be franchise-saver doesn’t really want to go pitch for the St. Paul Saints. Still, if the team adds the failure to sign baseball’s next sure bet — and its few remaining season ticket holders are forced to watch him first make fools out of middling independent leaguers and then sign with one of the industry’s powerhouses — what was a problematic-but-stem-able defection could well turn into a more damning finality.

Of course, the Nats’ had to take Strasburg: The fallout from a more prudent selection would have read to the casual baseball fan (and, really, that’s all that D.C.’s got) as a different sort of failure — one that would have resulted in a similar loss of interest. Now, members of the team’s front office have until August 15th to figure out a way to get him into the fold without damaging their immediate collective future. The trouble is that with so much in the way of past and current baseball failure reminding Beltway sports fans that the sport and their city haven’t ever really gotten along — and Boras lurking in the background — the Nats may find themselves forced to overspend just to keep the ghosts at bay.

Worse? That may not even be enough to keep the team in town. After all, it took the last D.C. baseball franchise only about a decade to figure out that things would be better somewhere else. And 2015 is fast approaching.