The dire state of American parenting, baseball edition
It’s none of my business what you do with your young children. Dress them in sweater vests, take them to Iron Maiden concerts, raise them as Jet fans - I don’t care. They’re yours. You own them.
But I have to draw the line somewhere. While enjoying my one weekly indulgence just before, I happened upon a father and his two sons, the older of whom was cradling a way-fun baseball trivia book. When I remarked as much, the father said, “Maybe you can answer a question for us. Why, when a batter is walked with the bases loaded, does he get credit for a run batted in? He didn’t bat anything.” I answered that the batter gets the RBI because the run came in as a direct result of his status as the batter - he was at the plate, he gets the credit. Semantics, basically. I have no idea if this is the correct explanation, but the guy and his kids seemed to buy it.
The guy then said something that prompted a call to NYC’s Administration for Children’s Services. Continuing his discussion of the RBI stat, he said it was important “because RBIs show that you’re a clutch hitter.”
Goldarnit, no. No. RBIs are a function of the batter’s good fortune to come up to the plate when there are runners on base. The year when Albert Belle drove in 150 or so runs for the Indians, for instance - that sum had more to do with the three guys in front of him (Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, Robby Alomar) collectively getting on base something like 38% of the time than it did with clutchiness or a glut thereof. When there are lots of runners on the bases, it’s easy to accumulate RBIs. This is common sense. I’m too lazy to go back and look at the numbers, but I suspect that every big RBI season in baseball history can be credited to a batting order in which the RBI dude is preceded by a gaggle of OBP guys.
We’re making so much progress as baseball fans, in our understanding of the game. That this younger generation might be tainted by the ignorance of its forbears breaks my heart.
