Dave Racaniello, the Mets’ bullpen catcher, grooved a fastball, and David Wright drove it to left-center field — where it landed harmlessly at the edge of the warning track.
So concluded the New York portion of our evening here at Citi Field. Both Wright and Robinson Cano did their teams a favor by getting eliminated in the first round of the perennially dreadful Home Run Derby, which Oakland’s Yoenis Cespedes won over Washington’s Bryce Harper. Just by participating, the Mets third baseman and Yankees second baseman lent a dose of undeserved dignity to the event.
Wright, representing the host National League team, finished tied for sixth (with Detroit’s Prince Fielder) with five homers. Cano, participating in his third straight Derby for the American League, placed last with four dingers, hit off his father Jose Cano. It’s just as well. Why risk physical exhaustion for such an unworthy cause?
“I woke up this morning and told myself, ‘Don’t embarrass yourself,’ ” Wright said afterward. “And I don’t think I did that.”
The next time Wright professionally embarrasses himself will be the first. He did his employers an unnecessary favor by lowering himself into the muck for this dreck.
All you need to know about this venture, which is one step removed from a cow-milking contest, is that in 2006, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig admitted even his wife, Sue, was bored by the Derby’s length. Yet it remains eye-gougingly long since it draws strong television ratings, presumably because there are no other sporting events competing with it and therefore every sports bar airs it. When you’re pounding beers at a sports bar, it’s probably fun to scream each time a ball leaves the yard on TV.
This isn’t just a matter of shortening the Derby to fix it, though. It’s an awful idea, representing the very worst elements of the sport and our species — short attention spans and obnoxious, meaningless displays of power. What a shame the Derby tarnishes, by association, the two tremendous events that surround it. Everyone loves the Futures Game, featuring the top minor league talent, and tonight’s All-Star Game boasts of much history and occasional intensity with the World Series homefield advantage at stake.
Not surprisingly, the New York crowd behaved well last night, distinguishing itself from the small-market hayseeds that have shamed themselves in recent years. Most notably, the Kansas City fans last year heavily booed Cano, even verbally harassing his family, for declining to select Royals slugger Billy Butler. Good grief. This group roared for Wright and mostly yawned for everyone else.
These fans, Cano said with a smile, were “way better” than the Kansas City folks.
“The thing I’m going to take away from this is 100 percent the ovation, the crowd. I can’t tell you how humbling and how cool that was,” Wright said. “I didn’t know when to step forward and raise my hand, because I couldn’t hear Chris Berman talking over the crowd. That was awesome.”
Any time you can’t hear Chris Berman talking, it’s awesome.
Yup, the event features a charity element. Yet with all due respect, we’re talking about a multi-billion dollar industry featuring employees who by and large make very comfortable livings. If we can’t come up with a replacement for the Derby, then let’s scrap it and just have all of the involved parties write checks to cover the difference. That way, we can support a good cause without advocating an activity that worsens us all by its mere existence.
Kudos to Wright and Cano for being good sports. Now let’s hope, as we do annually, Selig liberates all of the game’s players from ever having to do something this degrading again.