Just checked in with Frank the Tank and he's got a new posting/links day that went up since I last paid a visit.
As will happen from time to time, Frank is on the pipe. He's usually pretty right on, but his preface on the return of pro football is a little off kilter.
"At least in Spring Training baseball games, there is a feeling that the game of baseball is actually being played with the players that are going to be out there every day," Frankie said.Uh... dude? Split squads? Extended stretches for minor leaguers? Pitchers with numbers like 87 and 88 (and some of those are doubled up)?
No way. Granted, he's right about preseason football and the need to get in, run plays and get the hell out of the stadium before you hear the third quarter gun, but no way is Spring Training anything more than a chance to shake of the rust and get the family out of New York, Chicago or Boston when the weather is still slushy and grey.
Side story: My buddy Rich and I are sitting in the Twins spring stadium in Fort Myers and watching the first game we're seeing that trip. Things seem a bit off and pitchers are in and out in two innings or less. We're sitting on the third-base side and watching guys do lazy jogs along the outfield fence while the game is going on and the players are all but Babe Ruth-ing it up by order beer and hot dogs from the vendors.
I'm looking around and I see a guy, ass-up in right field, stretching his back out and rolling around the grass, loosening up his legs, I guess. I nudge Rich and point it out, thinking it's weird for the right fielder to be stretching so vigorously while there's a man in the batter's box and he tells me to lean around the support beam to see the real right fielder, who was standing a few feet over in the obstructed portion of my view.
That's about the time I lost any sort of respect for the scores that fill the ESPN crawler every March.
Can you imagine defensive linemen stetching in the opposite end zone as their team in the red zone? Or receivers jogging sideline to sideline on the 20 while a team is heading away from them on the opponent's 40?
At least the football players seem to be trying.
I also took a little exception to the claim that it's not real football. I'll warn you right now that after working with a lot of those scrubs, I have a completely different view than most football fans.Some of my favorite players were the ones who were rookies or free agents looking for a chance. I drove vans to and from practice to get them back for lunch between two-a-days and back to the dorms after the afternoon workouts and saw that a majority of them were pretty cool guys.
That doesn't mean that they should be given free passes to start in the NFL, but sloppy as the play can be in the preseason, you won't find harder working guys than the practice squad/special teams candidates.
The Girl thought I was nuts a few years ago when I was watching one of these Pop Warner type slugfests and just kind of smiling at all of these guys doing all they could to keep chasing the dream they've had since they were little kids.
In Frankie's defense, some of them are terrible and some of the do not belong anywhere near a professional football field without a mower and a can of line paint, but I don't get the feeling that the garbage time is any more worthless than any other sport's preseason.
Actually, I'd rather see less time spent in the preseason period to cut down on the injury factor and anyone who has seen what the players go through every day in the summer heat probably feels the same way. While I don't pity anyone who is given the talent and opportunity to at least try out for a professional team, I have to say it's difficult to watch guys slowly fall off the roster, sent home or trying to sign on with other teams to play one more year.
You'd hear rookies telling each other that they were trying out for 31 other teams each time they geared up for a preseason game and there's a lot of truth to that. While most of the players who go that route never become stars, a few stand out each season.
People forget that Ryan Longwell wasn't supposed to make the Packers roster his rookie year (and was undrafted in 1997) with the job reserved for Brett Conway from Penn State. He went on to start every possible game for Green Bay until his jump to Minnesota this year. If I remember correctly, he'd been with San Francisco who let him float, was picked up by Ron Wolf and when injuries opened the door for him, he took over and became the career scoring leader for the franchise with 964 points.
So, while I agree that games can be brutal to watch when the third string defense is punishing the fourth string offense, it all comes down to how you're seeing the game. Is it the best football available? No, but neither is opening day for Arizona.
The simple fact is that most fans refuse to believe that even though it's the preseason, their team doesn't give a shit about who wins. They're focusing on routes and defensive packages and getting rookies up to speed with the tempo of the pro game.
At least the scrubs are playing their asses off. Well, that and there's a little more credibility when no one is working on their tan from the bullpen.
(Images from joe-ks.com / vmedia.rivals.com)
1 comment:
I know that spring training baseball has as many scrubs as preseason football, but the nature and pace of the sport of baseball makes a spring training game, or for that matter, an exhibition such as the All Star Game, actually feel like a real baseball game. The gap in the intensity levels between a spring training game and the average regular season baseball game is not that great, while the difference in intensity levels between a preseason football game and a regular season football is so overwhelming that it seems as though they aren't even playing the same sport. That's why spring training gets me into the mood for baseball, while the NFL preseason just makes me want the month of August to go away.
Post a Comment