Baseball needs Puig, even at Parra’s expense
Jun 26, 2013, 4:31 AM | Updated: 3:01 pm
We’re all reasonable baseball loving adults, right?
It’s plain to us that the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig is great for the game. He gets eyeballs on the sport. Gets people talking about baseball…excited about baseball. The only thing I hold against him is that he is a Dodger; other than that he’s fantastic for the sport of baseball.
Is it worth it if this attention comes at the expense of one of your own, namely Gerardo Parra?
Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports wrote a column Tuesday about the push to get Puig in the All-Star Game despite his limited number of games played. Rosenthal isn’t the only one pushing; I heard Colin Cowherd do the same on his show Tuesday.
The establishment — in the form of Giants manager Bruce Bochy — is pushing back.
Per Rosenthal, Bochy told SiriusXM radio that as the NL manager for the All-Star Game he’d have a difficult time selecting Puig for the game.
“I couldn’t take away from a player who has been here and done it the whole half and been out there grinding every day and he doesn’t go,” Bochy told SiriusXM. “I couldn’t look at that player. I couldn’t look at myself, to be honest.”
Rosenthal points out that one of the players who, perhaps, would suffer from a Puig selection would be Parra. Would he be the player who doesn’t go so Puig can? Hypothetically he could be. So are we Diamondback fans or baseball fans?
In this circumstance, I’m a baseball fan first.
It’s a showcase event or at least it should be. Sizzle over steak. A little more of a kegger and a little less of a thesis paper. Why would baseball want to keep the life of the party out of the second biggest bash it throws all year long?
If Parra’s hypothetical All-Star bid got wrecked in the process — and who knows if that happens or not — well, in baseball, players sacrifice all the time for the greater good. Parra is having a very good season, filled with “did you see that” moments. But Puig has the kind of buzz that baseball needs to put on display. Even I, as a Diamondback fan and Dodger hater, can see that.
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