Is there any sporting event more boring than the annual Home Run Derby? Every year, I try to watch it, and every year, my eyelids sag to my knees within five minutes. Please. Are there no Wheel of Fortune reruns to watch? Or wet paint?
The thing is, I love baseball, and I can stay riveted to the screen even in a 1-0 sandbagger. You would think that the game’s biggest occurrence – the home run – would be exciting to watch when served up in heaping helpings during the Home Run Derby. Not for me.
They gather the games beefiest sluggers, throw batting practice cream puffs up to the plate, and 50,000 people, who paid scads too much for the privilege, ooh and aah at the towering drives produced under these ideal laboratory conditions. They call them home runs, but they’re not really. Do they count for the teams these sluggers play for? No. Are they added to the players’ home run totals, so maybe they could catch up to the likes of Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds? No. Do they count in the next evening’s All Star Game (another event with a high yawn factor)? No.
David "Big Papi" Ortiz clubs one of his 32 homers to win the 2010 Home Run Derby. He may not have 32 real home runs all season.
Ergo, those are not home runs. They’re just batting practice fly balls that sail over the fence – sacrificing a horsehide baseball and adding another $4 to the gross revenue of Rawlings and to the meager take-home pay of a Costa Rican laborer.
If there’s any drama at all, it’s whether the muscled sluggers can continue to lift the bat after 30, 40, 50 mighty swings. Ya snooze, ya lose. Some hitters ruin themselves for the rest of the season, trying to rip homers on Home Run Derby Night, and some say “thanks, but no thanks,” when asked to participate.
Would that they all would say that.
