This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95
using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)
--
The people mad about McCullough’s decision are wrong about the specifics. They do, however, point us to a very real change in how we appreciate baseball now. Baseball, all sports really, are now solely about reaching the playoffs and winning rings. All actions, all decisions, are subsumed to those goals. If letting Eury Perez go 120 pitches in a perfect game makes the Marlins 0.3% less likely to make the playoffs, it’s a bad decision.
That wasn’t always the case. Until the playoff expansion of the 1990s, success for a baseball team was defined in any number of ways. Just four teams made the playoffs in my youth, and while you always wanted your team to be one of them, and to go on to win the World Series, there were other markers of success. Did you contend? If you weren’t expected to be good, were you surprisingly so? Did you bring along exciting rookies, or have a player chase a batting title? Did you provide that one particular memory to build the season around?
