In My Day Things Were So Much Better

The Blue Jays had a team meeting today to discuss comments made by Omar Visquel to a Toronto Sun reporter about how the team needed more veteran presence and that the coaching staff needs to punish players more for mistakes. I'd link to the story but I'd have to find it, and well, you know what it said: young players are too pampered, they don't have the understanding of the game we did in my day and coaches treat them with kids glove. Most players wait till they are retired before they start that stuff.

I don't know, players have been saying the same since the start of baseball. I've seen quotes like that from the 1970's. To me, Omar's words seem to be telling us that he didn't do the one thing that we figured he was here to do.

The season hasn't been good and when things don't go, everything get analysed to death. Zaun has been doing the 'our young players don't respect the game' for months now. Guess what, players have been doing that since the start of the game.

I don't know, I've heard young people are no good/been raised wrong/have no respect, since I was a kid. There seems to be a gene that kicks in at the age of 45 that makes us all say things were better when I was young. The world is going to hell in a hand basket and it is because of all these young people. Please shoot me if I ever start talking like that.

I understand that everyone my age and older walked to school everyday, up hill, through snow. I guess I'm just tired of hearing about it. Adults, when I was young, said people my age would ruin the world when we became adult. Maybe we did, I don't know. Maybe today's kids will ruin the world. Maybe today's rookies will ruin baseball. But let's not pretend we are saying something new.

Here is a quote from Bill Joyce from 1916:

In my days the players went into the clubhouse after losing game with murder in the hearts. they would have thrown out any guy on his neck if they had even suspected him of intentions of singing. In my days the man who was responsible for having lost a game was told in a man's way by a lot of men what a rotten ball player he really was. It makes me weep to think of men of the old days who played the game and the boys of today. It's positively a shame, and they are getting big money for it, too.

And guess what, if you are lucky, all of you will get old one day, and you'll be saying the same thing.