Bassitt averts possible disaster
Hey, baseball gods — it’s time to give A’s a break
One of the cardinal rules of sportswriting is that writers don’t root.
Sure, we scribes have certain athletes and teams we enjoy covering more than others, for various reasons, but what we mostly root for (silently) is a good story to write.
Some of us will be making an exception to our rule, for Chris Bassitt and the Oakland A’s.
Bassitt, on the short list of AL Cy Young candidates this season, stopped a 100 mph line drive with his right cheek Tuesday night in Chicago. We’ve all seen this scene too many times: Bassitt threw up his gloved hand a microsecond too late to deflect the ball.
His cheek is fractured. Apparently his vision is not affected.
It looks like Bassitt is going to be OK, aside from facial surgery, and that’s the important
thing. But isn’t it time the A’s got a little love from the baseball gods?
The A’s are baseball’s orphan team, anyway. With the absurdly cheap owner making sure the team has no stability year to year, and little hope of retaining stars, the clubhouse is like a Greyhound station.
Yet, the A’s continue to rise above their circumstances to play exciting, winning baseball, with a unique underdog pluck and spirit.
But they can’t catch a break. The A’s lost center fielder/ sparkplug Ramón Laureano recently to an 80-game steroid suspension. Was Laureano a foolish cheater, or an innocent victim, as he claims? Who knows? But this likable team leader is gone for the year.
Before that came the news that Ray Fosse, A’s broadcast color analyst, is stepping away from the booth to battle cancer. Fosse is not a member of the team, and yet he is. So was Dick Callahan, the A’s longtime public-address announcer and another good guy, who passed away in late January.
Throw in the outside noise from management’s ongoing attempts to build a ballpark. That distraction has been part of the A’s scene for about 20 years now, but this plan gets messier by the day, creating the feeling that the A’s are trapped in a weird holding pattern.
Yet somehow the A’s are — were — kicking butt, 68-51 going into Tuesday’s game in Chicago, with their ace on the mound. Bassitt was leading the league in wins (12) and innings pitched (150). He was on a three-season roll, 27-10 with a 3.23 ERA over that stretch.
The video of the line drive is sickening, but nothing new. We’ve seen this too many times before. Bassitt is the third pitcher drilled in the past two-plus months.
In June, Rays’ Triple-A prospect Tyler Zombro took a liner to the face and underwent major brain surgery. On Sunday, Red Sox pitcher Adam Ottavino took a 105.2 mph shot on the shoulder.
If you’re on the fence about whether or not pitchers should be required to wear protective headgear, cue up the photo that Zombro shared, post-op. His shaved head has a massive, curved surgery scar with stitches that make his head resemble a giant baseball.
A few years ago, two or three big-league pitchers tried wearing experimental protective headgear, then the whole idea seemed to go away and be forgotten. The helmets looked dumb and clunky; they were deemed uncomfortable and distracting.
Well, it’s time to bring ’em back. Old-timers can remember back in the ’50s when hitters were mocked and ridiculed
for wearing the first protective headgear, thin inserts inside their caps. Many considered the new gear an affront to the purity of the game.
But now, would you send your son or daughter up to bat in a Little League game without a bubble helmet?
So why do we insist that batters wear helmets when facing 97 mph fastballs, but we let pitchers go defenseless against 107 mph line drives? Does anybody believe that Chris Bassitt is the last pitcher who will be drilled in the noggin this season, or in the near future?
You know who would be grateful if baseball mandates that pitchers wear headgear? Hitters. They don’t like drilling pitchers with line drives, or having to live with the memory of it.
And memo to players and team owners: Can we please not make this a bargaining chip in labor negotiations? While you’re quibbling, someone could get killed.
If we can get that project going, soon, at least something positive will have come out of Bassitt’s near-tragedy. But it would be nice, too, if fate allows the A’s to keep winning ballgames, maybe even deep into the playoffs.
History says the outlook is not good. Buster Posey’s leg injury a third of the way into the 2011 season ruined any chance of the Giants repeating their World Series title. Stephen Curry’s leg injury in the 2016 NBA Finals prevented the Warriors from repeating as NBA champs. The 49ers thought they had a shot at returning to the Super Bowl last season, but early injuries to Jimmy Garoppolo and Nick Bosa ended that dream.
Still, every situation is different. The A’s have had some bad breaks, but this isn’t the kind of team that throws in the towel.
It’s against the rules, but at least some impartial inkstained wretches will be rooting for them.