You pokerface; you brought ‘er.

Get it? Anyways—the baseball pokerface. I came up with the idea for this post a few days ago and haven’t gotten around to it until today. I swear on the grave of the Rockies 2008 season that I thought of it a few days ago. Then, this afternoon, while I was doing research for a newspaper article, I opened up Mozilla. There, staring me in the face on the ESPN homepage was an article by fricking Jerry Crasnick about showing your emotions in baseball. Up until today, I thought Crasnick was a halfway-decent human writer. Now I know that he is some kind of crazy Alien from Europa or Titan with some form of mind-reading device, posing as a sports writer in order to gain perspective on our cultural and political practices, possibly with sinister intentions:

Do you trust that face? So very sinister…

Since Crasnick did lots of research and did a "Starting 9" of the most significant examples of emotional baseball players, I will instead just rant about the concept of the baseball pokerface, maybe providing a few recent examples. Actually, I’m doing that because I’m lazy.

There was a lot of hoopla and hullabaloo recently about Joba Chamberlain’s fist pumpage and the vexation it caused hall of famer Goose Gossage, who apparently still wants media coverage because he is bored and his newfound hall of famerness is no longer fulfilling. I would like to officially declare Shenanigans on Gossage and the other Debbie Downers and Negative Nancys who complain about emotion in baseball.

I completely understand why baseball players have the unwritten law that they must act like stoic robots. People don’t want to be shown up, whether it’s the umpire, a pitcher who just gave up a home run, or whoever. The problem with robotics is that it is dehumanizing. Instead of being normal, emotionally driven people, our heroes on the TV screen must act as though they feel nothing. Then when a reporter puts a microphone in their face, they spout standard sports clichés that are boring and tell you nothing about a player (see Bull Durham).

I, personally, enjoy when a baseball player acts out in baseball. If Barry Bonds didn’t pirouette, I wouldn't know that he wanted to be a ballerina as a child. If Manny Ramirez didn’t pose at the plate after every long fly ball, I wouldn’t know he was an asshole (well, maybe I would). If Ozzie Guillén didn’t firmly plant his foot into his mouth every time he opened it up, I wouldn’t have profanity-laden, homophobic tirades to laugh at. I could go on.

Sure, all of these people “disrespect the game” according to some archaic standard that was apparently established long before I was born. But, I’d like to see a little disrespect. It makes for good entertainment. When a rookie gets their first hit, instead of standing there acting like it is nothing, they should jump up and celebrate. They could even awkwardly high five the opposing first baseman. I’m sick of every announcer in the history of the world saying something along the lines of, “he isn’t showing it, but you know he’s smiling on the inside.” If the pitcher feels disrespected, they can give the rookie some chin music next time they come up. Maybe then, the rookie will get pissed and they can fight—more entertainment!

One of my favorite Rockies highlights of the last few years was the time that Matt Holliday hit a baseball to Jupiter (perhaps Crasnick put a communiqué into the baseball) against Matt Cain. He proceeded to run around the bases screaming “yeah, bitch!” at Cain.

Then there was that time when Beltin’ Helton hit the walk off homer against Takashi Saito that helped spurn the Rockies onto their end of season blitzkrieg. He ran and jumped into the homeplate mash-up like he was about to eat a live deer.

Then, as I write this, I just came upon a play today, in which Manny Ramirez made a running catch, jumped up the fence and high-fived a fan, then threw the ball back in to double off a runner. Ramirez being Manny.

I love baseball and I would be just fine with it staying as it is. If the MLB wants more revenue, however, they might encourage a little more emotion and showmanship out of their baseball players and managers. It has worked for the NFL. Everyone knows Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens are jerks, but they are fun to watch. It has also worked for television. There are all kinds of reality shows with insane people that flip out for no reason. Why do people watch it? For entertainment. For a few laughs. For the sense of security that can only come about when you know there are dumber, crazier people in the world than you.

When I see a pitcher pump their fist after a strikeout, or a batter admire their majestic home run, it let’s me know that they care about what they are doing; that winning matters to them. This helps convince me, as well, to care about what they are doing and whether or not they win.

Today’s Random Quote (or Exchange):

Tobias: I’m afraid I just blue myself.

Michael: There’s got to be a better way to say that.

- from Arrested Development