Soapbox Time: Broken records

Welcome to a new feature when this old man spouts off about things in the game that have become annoying. Since a lot of them are eventually covered in books or other items you can put on a bookshelf, I deem it appropriate.

I get a  good portion of my leads from Google alerts of any combination that leads to baseball books and writing. A lot of it gets discarded since they might include the right words but not in the right context for this blog.

One of the phrases that often pops up in those alerts is some form of “record books” or “history books”, which occurs with increasing frequency. It seems you can’t go a couple of days without something going into the record books. Some examples:

• “Nick Pivetta pitches way into Red Sox history books with dominant relief performance”
• “Atlanta Braves Home Run Distances Join the Top of the Baseball Record Books”
• “12 MLB teams score in double digits for 1st time since 1894, when record 13 accomplished feat”

Especially now with the new rules and new metrics, there are more opportunities for such inclusion. Take bat speed, for example. Every Mets game I watch at some point will include the three hardest hit balls of the game. Will this become a recognized statistic? Who knows? A lot of fans seem to love this stuff as a measure of power. What about spin rate? Will that worm its way into the record books?

Just finished Russell Carleton’s new book, The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Baseball. I base how much I enjoy the work and/or find it thought-provoking by the number of dog-eared pages, highlighted passages, and questions/issues I write in the margins. If you could look at my copy, you would see how engrossed I am.

Some of these “not-so-hidden forces” are responsible for these new considerations. I’m old school and the “Lords of the Realm” no longer care what I think. I am not in their target audience. They are charged with making the game accessible/enjoyable for younger fans, and that could include coming up with what I would call make-believe stats.

Carleton, who holds a PhD in clinical psychology, considers himself a researcher and as such asks a lot of questions, questions some fans might not think about. But that’s what makes this book a candidate for the revised edition of 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die, whenever that happens.