Buck Showalter Completely Misses the Point of Home Run Derby By Whining About Juiced Balls

Few serious baseball fans are really into the Home Run Derby. It’s not appointment television, and if offered tickets to the event, it’s fair to guess a lot of fans would make sure there wasn’t a new episode of Dancing With The Stars on that night before accepting.

It’s hard to work up a lather to criticize the derby, though. After all, it’s a mecca for kids and souvenir hounds with death wishes. Those are the target audiences. It’s not for you, me or Peter Gammons to analyze and deconstruct. At least Major League Baseball doesn’t do something foolish like try to make it determine home-field advantage in the World Series.

Still, leave it to Buck Showalter, who hates everything that brings joy and happiness to the universe, to completely rip the derby.

“I was looking at some of those places they were hitting those balls and I was going, ‘No, I don’t think so,'” Showalter said in a video on baltimoresun.com. “But it was entertaining, I hear. Did anybody watch it from start to finish? I didn’t think so. It’s unwatchable.”

Showalter claimed not to watch the derby, so it’s puzzling as to how he saw where the balls landed. More to the point, he also said the derby balls “aren’t normal baseballs,” to which the response is: “Who cares?”

The derby doesn’t matter any more than the All-Star Game should. It’s a meaningless exhibition of raw power with sons smashing batting practice pitches from their fathers.

What does it matter if the balls are juiced, filled with helium or made out of pure Flubber? Who cares if the bats are corked or even if they are made out of aluminum? (Which would be awesome, by the way. Chris Berman‘s head might explode the first time Prince Fielder hit a ball 750 feet.)

Nobody erased the memory of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron at Chase Field on Monday. Order has not been disrupted in the baseball world.

Maybe Showalter should just enjoy the home run derby as some of us did, by using it as an excuse to go grab a beer and eat some wings on a night there otherwise was no sporting event to watch. Now there’s an activity that has value.

Check out Showalter’s comments in the Baltimore Sun video below. (Thanks to Larry Brown Sports for first bringing Showalter’s remarks to our attention.)