What became evident this week, amid the bleating over Clayton Kershaw's removal from a game at Target Field, was that baseball's biggest problem is that baseball can't stop whining about its problems.
The calls are coming from inside the house.
Before getting into the specifics of Dodgers manager Dave Roberts' decision to remove Kershaw after seven perfect innings against the Twins, let's set the stage.
Modern baseball is flawed. The games are too long. There are probably too many games to begin with. The ball isn't in play enough. Baseball has done a poor job of encouraging young Black athletes to play. The game's unwritten rules are confusing because — not to put too fine a point on it — they remain unwritten. Analytics can be useful in team-building, but they are a terrible tool for elevating a sport's popularity.
Fine. Baseball has problems. Have you looked at the other sports?
The NFL is one deep investigation away from being proclaimed a crime syndicate. The league denied the existence of brain injuries, argued that Black players shouldn't be compensated for brain injuries because their brains lacked functionality to begin with, blackballed Colin Kaepernick for a peaceful protest that did not interrupt a game, and includes Dan Snyder, an ethics-challenged "Billions" character without the fictionalized charm.
The NFL is a racist, ethics-challenged league. The NFL is the most popular sport in the history of North America.
Basketball can be great but is far too dominated by the officials. Imagine a sport where someone can make a couple of routinely bad calls and thus permanently remove your best player from the game.
