They care because it’s an interesting thing that happens within the confines of a hotly contested match. Take away the game, make the statistic the reason people are playing, and it’s no more interesting than a Guinness world record attempt.
The statistic loses meaning if you’re playing for statistics.
Exactly! The statistics are currently meaningless when players keep getting credit for them after a game is no longer contested. Make a player earn that statistic by getting it while the opposing team is actually contesting it. No more pity pitches to a team who’s already lost.
Literally no one is suggesting anything of the kind.
And you’ll find yourself out of a job when you’re labeled a clubhouse cancer that doesn’t understand how the game works.
Your view on how baseball is contested is about as valuable as mine on what it’s like to be a woman in the workplace. People who actually play the game and have played the game for well over 100 years is different.
It’s not a pity pitch, it’s a normal pitch. The pitch you throw when you’re 8 runs up in the 9th and trying to finish the game strong… not the pitch you throw when you’re trying to throw garbage outsize the zone so he can’t extend his hitting streak.
Anyone who’s a fan or has played can tell the difference between a guy playing the game and the guy playing games.
But the reason why they matter is because they’re earned, not given. They only matter because the players are playing as if they don’t.
This.
A similar thing happened on the last day of the season in 1928. Goose Goslin of the Senators was leading Heinie Manush of the Browns by a point or two. The teams were playing each other.
When Goslin’s turn came up, he at first planned not to bat. But his team pressured him, saying he would look chicken in front of Manush, so he went to the plate. After getting two strikes, he tried to get ejected by yelling at the ump, who told him to forget it. Goslin managed to get a hit and win the batting title.
Not as gallant as Williams (who ever was?) but a funnier story.
The 1910 AL batting race was a classic in terms of bad sportsmanship. Ty Cobb was hitting .385 and Nap Lajoie .378 going into the final game of the season (Cobb sat out the last two games of the season, not to, um, protect his batting lead but because of a supposed eye ailment).
The Cleveland Naps were playing the St. Louis Browns, whose manager, not a fan of Cobb, ordered his third baseman to play back on the grass, allowing Lajoie to get six hits on bunts up the third base side (he went 8 for 9 on the day), giving him the batting title by a hair. Except that another calculation showed Cobb the winner by percentage points. Matters stood there for many years until it was discovered that stats for one of Cobb’s games had been wrongly entered twice, giving Lajoie and his tainted hits the batting title. Except that Bowie Kuhn, the Commissioner refused to alter the official record and Cobb’s batting title stood.
Also at stake in 1910 was the Chalmers Award, where the winner of the batting title was to receive a Chalmers automobile, what passed for a luxury car at the time. Chalmers wound up giving a car to both Cobb and Lajoie.
Baseball is weird.
So it is said, though both of the Athletics pitchers who faced Ted Williams that day were, to put it unkindly, numpties.
I was under the impression they were suffering from some sort of epidermal abdominal rash.
.406 IIRC. Also, as the story went, it was multiple games he refused to sit out.
A doubleheader, in which he went 6 for 8.
And they’d be really, really old.
As a sportsperson, possibly barring certain exceptions (such as the examples of freak injuries already posted), I’d absolutely hate to be gifted a record as some are talking about. A record not fully earned is almost meaningless.
A point scored to beat a record in a crucial play-off game is objectively way more valuable than reaching the same record on a blowout win (or indeed loss).
Marlins manager Skip Schumacher was asked if would consider walking Ohtani before he could hit his 50th home run (and bring the first member of the 50/50 Club): “Fuck that.”
All those details are now considered in Sabremetric type statistics. Some statistics will improve in blow out games but that teams see that now and will take note of a how a player performs when the pressure is on and adjust the numbers for the situation.