The Incredibles

            It was fitting this week that the Baseball Writers’ Association of America released its Hall of Fame voting results just one day before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their Oscar nominations. If baseball looks closely enough, it may find a solution to its most weighty problem on that Oscar ballot.

            In 1994, a vicious labor dispute led to the cancellation of the entire baseball postseason, embarrassing the sport to such an extent that many wondered if fan interest would ever resurface. However, once the games resumed in 1995, America’s pastime stormed back with a vengeance, just as it did after the Chicago White Sox scandal of 1919, when several players “threw” the World Series by taking money from gamblers.

            In the 1920s, baseball was saved in large part by a portly man whose mammoth home runs brought fans to the ballpark in droves. In 1998, baseball was saved in large part by two muscular men whose mammoth home runs electrified the nation. But there was a difference between the way in which Babe Ruth saved baseball in the 1920s, and the way in which Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa saved baseball in the late ‘90s. Babe Ruth, according to writers and historians, was known to enjoy many a good drink; he succeeded despite taking a performance-inhibiting drug. McGwire and Sosa, on the other hand, seem to have succeeded due to performance-enhancing drugs. And with their success, baseball fully entered its Steroid Era.

            Home run records fell by the dozens in those late ‘90s and early 2000s. Barry Bonds hit so many home runs so often that he was walked a record 232 times in the 2004 season. There has never been anything like this, as home runs soared over fences with a frequency you had to see to believe. But then again, you had to see these ballplayers’ muscles to believe them, too. During that 2004 season, Bonds turned 40 years old. Yet, he looked more like the lead character from Pixar’s ’04 film hit The Incredibles than a typical 40-year-old athlete. The bulked-up ballplayers, who were free from any kind of steroid testing, flexed super-sized biceps, pecs and quads that brought to mind Mr. Incredible and his giant, muscular body.

            A lot has gone down since 2004 in Major League Baseball, as we’ve learned that so much of that excitement from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s was created by performance-enhancing drugs. Who took what, and when, and how much is impossible to know for sure, as there was no steroid testing until 2006. There was no agreement on in-season testing for human growth hormone until yesterday. Athletes in search of an edge turned to syringes to enhance their own skills, and they got rich doing so.

            And so, when several of the most celebrated players of the past 15 years became eligible for Hall of Fame candidacy this year, the baseball writers sent a powerful message by electing no one to receive baseball’s highest honor in 2013. Not the guy with seven MVP awards. Not the guy with seven Cy Young awards. Not the guys with 3,000 hits, 500 or more home runs, or 3,000 or more strikeouts. Nobody.

            Some of these eligible players did not take steroids or human growth hormone, but through its massive cover-up baseball did not allow us to know who was cheating and who was playing fair. So, this year, every player suffered the consequences.

            It was an era of irresponsible, unhealthy, and deceitful behavior. But it is also true that during this time, baseball fans devoured the record-breaking offense with much enthusiasm and not much questioning. It is, therefore, rather difficult for us to point fingers at these players without pointing fingers at ourselves as well. They were, after all, giving us what we wanted. We cheered and clapped for the guys who looked like Pixar characters, so the sport created more and more of them.

            So that brings us to the Oscars. Back in 1995, Pixar introduced a revolutionary form of digital animation with the now-classic film Toy Story. Half a decade later, after the success of A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, it was clear that this company had changed the way movies were made. Thus, in 2001 the Academy began awarding an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. In the first 11 years of that award, a Pixar film was nominated eight times. This week, the company picked up nomination number nine.

            Baseball can look at this Oscar category and follow suit with its Hall of Fame dilemma: Simply take the players from the Steroid Era and vote them in under “Best Animated Players.” Some of them were on the juice and some weren’t, but baseball gave us no way of knowing. So we’ll treat them all like we do Buzz Lightyear, Wall-E and Mr. Incredible – we’ll give them their own category. And if the dust ever clears and we get full disclosure, we’ll consider nominating them for the regular Hall as well, just as Pixar movies like Up and Toy Story 3 have also been nominated for Best Picture.

            It’s fitting that this year’s Pixar nominee is a film titled Brave. If only Major League Baseball had shown some degree of courage during the Steroid Era, we might be looking at our recent sports history through a different lens. But brave they weren’t. So the baseball writers called them out on that this week. Even Mr. Incredible can’t save the day with this one.

Sammy Sou-sa

Throughout their lives, my mother’s parents shared a deep love for baseball with my brother and me. Warm, compassionate grandparents, they often expressed their love to us through animated conversations about the Yankees, Mets, or our own Little League and high school teams. One of the most enjoyable aspects of these baseball talks was my grandparents’ incredible ability to destroy the pronunciation of players’ names. This side of Babe Ruth, there wasn’t a player whose name they didn’t butcher.

That new outfielder the Yankees had just signed from Japan? Mat-soon-i. The home-run-hitting outfielder for the Cubs? Sammy Sou-sa. The clutch lefty pitcher in pinstripes? Penn-itte.

My brother and I would joke good-naturedly with my grandparents about this, and they’d laugh along with us. I wondered to myself whether these mispronunciations were due more to their education level (one had graduated from high school, while the other had left high school before earning a diploma), or whether it was due more to geography and ethnicity (a combination of Irish-German-English descent placed on the North Shore of Staten Island – a place where you’d hear many a native ask for earl and vinegar in a restaurant, and where you’d hear them say the gas was cheaper in Joisey). When I heard them say the words “Derek Jeey-ta,” I wondered whether this mispronunciation was due to a real deficiency in literacy or to a simple combination of genetics and learned behavior. Whatever the reason, I felt sure that my brother and I – writers both – would not have such struggles.

My grandparents have both passed away in recent years, leaving us with just memories of hearing about “Joe Gir-al-di” or “Jorge Po-san-a.” Until …

My mother. She was talking to me the other day on the phone. She wanted to know if I thought the Yankees would trade for that Cleveland pitcher.

“Which one, Mom?”

“Sa-na-thee-a.”

Silence.

“Mom, do you mean C.C. Sa-bath-i-a?”

“Yes, him.”

More silence.

“Mom, you’ve inherited it.”

“What?”

“The name gene.”

She is almost 62, and I see now that she is well on her way. My mom is fast becoming a major-leaguer at mispronouncing names. We shared a laugh over this realization, and then moved on to other things. But as I hung up the phone, I thought about it some more, and started to get nervous.

When will I start doing it?

I pore over the names in box scores, and say them over in my head. “Fukudome. Pierzynski. Francoeur. Gallardo.” I will not succumb, I say. Genetics or not, I can stave off this grammatical glitch.

From their lofty perch, my grandparents smile. “Just you wait,” they surely say. Just you wait.