"Age is just one of many ways players, teams, managers, scouts -- everyone involved in baseball -- try to get that little extra edge that will help them succeed and win, even though the rationale behind these decisions doesn't always make sense. Let's face it, a great player who comes up to the majors at twenty-five will produce more in a shorter time than a mediocre player who makes his big-league debut at nineteen or twenty."
True. I'd say that a great player who comes up at any age will produce more in a shorter time than a mediocre player who comes up at any age. (By the way, this excerpt is from Chapter One. So, this is his opening "grab the audience" salvo. Pretty compelling stuff.)
"While it doesn't take a genius to understand that, most teams still look for youth. That's why so many Latin American players coming in have changed their ages over the years. It's much easier to change or create a new birth certificate in a third world country, where records are not kept so closely. However, 9/11 has changed all that."
First of all, Kevin, how did you sit down and write a book about your life in baseball, and find yourself droning on about birth certificates in the very first chapter? And, moreover, though this has nothing to do with baseball: how in the world do you just drop a "9/11" reference like that and then just drop the subject completely? (He doesn't go back to it in the rest of the excerpt, at least.)
I am now officially excited to read this book, which I imagine to be 288 pages of the most boring and wrong-headed dreck ever bound in cloth.
I am going away until Sunday, FJM. Keep the homefires burning.
Labels: kevin kennedy
