HBT: Jim Rice gets hypocritical on today's players

There is nothing sadder ? in any walk of life, not just baseball ? than hearing older people claim that the kids today just don?t do things the right way and how back in my day it was better and all of that jazz.

Such a stance simultaneously suggests?narcissism, arrogance, ignorance and pessimism. ?Only I and my friends did things properly,? such people are saying. They?re also saying, however, that they pay no attention to new developments in the world and that, inevitably, things will always grow worse over time rather than better, which runs directly counter to most developments in human history. ?And more than anything, such statements always ? always ? reflect more poorly on the person uttering them than they reflect on those whom he or she is deriding.

With that in mind, I give you Jim Rice:

?The game is still the same (but) the players have changed. There are no fundamentals in the game anymore. ?That?s why I really enjoyed the game was because of the fundamentals. We had to do fundamentals. If you didn?t know the fundamentals, you weren?t playing ??I don?t want to [get back in the dugout] because guys are not subject to change. ?If you went back to giving guys one- or two-year contracts, it?s a different story. When you give guys five-, six-, seven-, 10-year contracts, they don?t have to change. Their money is in the bank. And if the thing doesn?t go right, who do they blame??

Just so you know, Jim Rice (a) is sixth all-time in grounding into double plays, having led his league four four straight years in his prime; (b) was a poor defensive player; and (c) most damningly to his above comments, once signed a seven-year contract, making him the highest-paid player with the longest contract in all of the game at the time.

Why the interviewer for that article didn?t ask Jim why it was OK for him to have poor fundamentals and receive long-term contracts but it?s not OK for players today to do so is beyond me. For that matter, I?m baffled why he didn?t even ask Rice to offer some evidence regarding how fundamentals are lacking in today?s players. ?To the contrary, I suspect that if we were able to quantify such things, today?s players would be found to be far more athletic and fundamentally-sound than players of the 70s.

Not that I?d expect Rice to realize how foolish he sounds. ?He?s just the latest person to claim that the world is going to Hell in a hand basket. ?Funny how it never seems to actually get there.

Source: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/14/great-moments-in-hypocrisy-jim-rice-edition/related

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