The Pecan Park Eagle

The debate over Ruth’s alleged “called shot” will rage forever. The fiction is too fanciful to rebuke in the minds of some.

OUR PECAN PARK EAGLE FAVORITE BASEBALL TRUISMS

1) Hope springs eternal in the spring.

2) Players often look better or worse than they actually are in spring training.

3) Somewhere along the way, some writer will note that baseball is a long season.

4) Many players will come to explain a disappointing loss or performance as “just one of those things that we have to put behind us and move on to the next game.”

5) Ibid, the “take it one game at a time” expressed wisdom will always come into play.

6) Some good player in a contract year will hit  like the resurrection of Ty Cobb..

7) Some player in the first year of a six-year, $100 million dollar deal will hit like the resurrection of Ray Oyler.

8) In most years, at least one manager for some disappointing club will be fired during the season “because you can’t fire the team.”

9) Some MLB teams will explain their failures (and they probably will be right) on a lousy bullpen.

10) An outstanding rookie will be described as the kind of player with talent that only comes around once in a generation of play.

11) About the seventh game of the World Series, some media person will pass the remark that winning is now imperative because “there’s no tomorrow.”

12) Some utility player will be described as “a good man to have in the dugout.” (As opposed to what, having him in the lineup?)

13) NL fans will describe the AL as “not real baseball” because that league uses the DH.

14) AL fans will quietly pull their punches and simply enjoy not watching the pitcher bat.

15) Someone eventually will write another tired article in support of their belief that Babe Ruth actually “called his shot” in Chicago during the 1932 World Series. (Babe well may have called his shot in Chicago that time, but if he did, it was in a bar – and the called shot was, “Bourbon. straight up!”)

16) Another eventual writer again will come out in support of the idea that Joe Jackson was a pure-as-the-driven-snow victim in the famous 1919 Black Sox scandal.

17) When bad radio/tv broadcasters are remembered, some talking head will always recall how Harry Caray’s difficulty in pronouncing certain hard-to-say names got worse with each new beer he took into the 7th inning of play-by-play work.

18) Some manager will be proclaimed a “genius” for leading a $300 million dollar payroll club to a World Series championship in New York, Boston, or Los Angeles.

19) During one of those Cardinal home games in which the network commentator describes St. Louis fans as “very smart”, the stadium crowd cameras will catch one of those high IQ Cardinal fans falling down drunk with a Budweiser in his hand.

20) No sane writer will ever start the season predicting that this is the year in which the Chicago Cubs win their first World Series since 1908.

REGARDLESS OF YOUR SUPPORT FOR ALL THE ITEMS ON OUR LIST, WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE BASEBALL TRUISMS?

If you have any offerings, please place your list in the comment section that follows this piece in The Pecan Park Eagle.

Thank you – and have a great weekend!