viz.

(Image credit: SB Nation)

I can’t help but write about baseball today. My apologies, my apologies. If you don’t feel like reading anymore, by all means, you’re more than welcome to click over and read more pundits’ spin about last night’s debate. What I have to say below deals with the San Francisco Giants, and even if you don’t continue reading, their rabid internet fan base is sure to increase our blog’s trafficking statistics. So do as you will, no offense taken. But I know you’ve already read your fair share about last night’s Presidential debate, and that any more emotional reactions might be dizzying to the point of a certain paralysis, so let us think about baseball for a moment. Was Matt Holliday’s slide into Giant’s second baseman Marco Scutaro during Monday night’s Game 2 of the National League Championship Series a dirty play? There’s no way.

(Image credit: SB Nation)

Check out Hal MacRae’s “slide” from the 1972 World Series above. All the Giants sympathizers are complaining that Holliday didn’t slide before hitting the bag. MacRae didn’t even touch the bag. Just imagine if I could make a .gif of a Ty Cobb postseason slide. Now that you’ve had a chance to look at the MacRae hip check, scroll back up and take a second look at the Holliday slide: by comparison, Monday night’s play looks like good, clean baseball. Holliday didn’t leave the base path, and by his own admission he wasn’t trying to harm Scutaro. He only wanted to break up the double play. Scutaro only got hurt because he was insistent upon completing his throw. Had he just settled for the force play at second, his upper torque would not have resisted the slide as much and his body would have gone away from second. But Scutaro was playing the game hard. His body gave at its weakest points, which happened to be his hip and knee. By remaining persistent on that throw to first, Scutaro was only playing the game as hard as Holliday.

(Image credit: Charles Conlon)

What’s at stake here, and why I think this play is relevant in a blog dedicated to visual culture, is that the entire hullaballoo says a great deal about how fans’ views of baseball have changed over the past 20 odd years. Without much exaggeration, the general outrage directed towards Matt Holliday over the past two days is what I’d expect from a baseball league comprised of businessmen, not athletes. Fans should expect athletes to play the game hard, whether that entails Holliday going in fast at second or Scutaro trying to make his throw even in the odds of immanent pain, which is exactly what we saw on Monday night. Instead, what’s left in the wake of Monday’s game is a bunch of fans sounding off in online forums about their “outrage.” (Probably not all that different than what you’ve been reading about last night’s Presidential debate. I know. Sorry. But I had to entice the non-fans into reading about baseball somehow.) Holliday’s slide says a lot about the current state of American culture, even if what this means is the exact opposite of what we’d like to think. With that cold irony of the advertising machine, Monday night’s play is exactly what’s celebrated in Ty Cobb posters throughout professional ballparks. From this vantage, it’s kind of endearing that fans would get so upset.

The series continues this afternoon in St. Louis, first pitch at 3:07 PM.