play at the plate

I've been putting off writing about the horrific injury to San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey on Wednesday night, listening to various thoughts about what happened and what can be done (if anything) to prevent such awful outcomes in the future. And there have been lots of opinions thrown around.

There is the school of thought that says it's just an unfortunate part of the game, but it's always been a hazard and nothing should or can be done to change it (that is, crashing shoulder first into the catcher while trying to score). That way of thinking swirled in my mind for a little awhile, but then I learned on the radio that such crashes have somehow been regulated at the high school and collegiate levels of baseball, so as to prevent injuries. Just because collisions at the plate have been done since the beginning of major league baseball doesn't mean changes can't be made now.

Others are saying it's only an issue this time around because the injury happened to one of the game's biggest stars. Well, yes, greater publicity is allotted to the biggest celebrities, so there's really no argument there. What if it was a backup catcher that was injured? I would hope that the issue would still be important enough to seriously weigh the different options, because this kind of incident can certainly happen to any baseball player... although I'm sure people would probably think to themselves that it could be put off until later when it happens to 'somebody important.' But if something good can come out of Posey's injury, maybe it will be to prevent it from happening again to another athlete.

What if there is an instance where the catcher dwarfs the runner? The catcher is blocking the plate and the runner decides that the best option is to try to knock the ball loose and go in hard, shoulder first? It's likely the runner would be the one seriously injured and out for part of the season. That's not baseball to me. I don't watch for the specter of such violence. The league changed the rules so big collisions were less likely to occur at the other bases; there must be a way to stop them from happening at home plate.

It's all too easy to vilify the player that crashed into Posey, but it could have been any hard-nosed player that crashed and injured an opponent's catcher. It could have been a Giant that was trying to score. If Posey had simply absorbed the force and been thrown backwards, instead of having his left foot planted and caught in the ground, he wouldn't have been so hurt and probably not broken anything. In any case, in the rules and spirit of the game, the Marlins player was not conducting himself in a 'dirty' manner - from what I've read, he is a real stand-up guy. Moreover, if he didn't crash into Posey, he may have been painted as a wimp and perhaps even put his spot on the roster in jeopardy (he is a backup outfielder).

Buster Posey is one of the absolutely most popular players on the Giants, the reigning National League Rookie of the Year, and one of baseball's brightest young stars. It is bad for the sport to lose someone like him for the better part of the 2011 season, if not all of it, and it's been particularly difficult to hear how young children have reacted to his injury. Many even dressed as him for their Halloween costumes last year. Enjoying the game of baseball doesn't require collisions at the plate - that's not what the game is about. And to reiterate, if such violence has somehow been regulated at other levels of the game, then there must be a way to do the same at the Major League level.