The games change, the cultures change, the people change. But the pendulum never stops swinging.
The pendulum might not get Derek Dietrich. It might not get the next Dietrich, either. But it'll swing back soon enough.
Believe it or not, I'm not referencing this:
That was Dietrich purposely pushing the Pirates' faces in the dirt Monday night in Cincinnati after a home run. And I say purposely not because he stood and admired the ball but because of the even-by-his-standard extra pause in the box, then an interminable 27-second round stroll around the bases.
As if to prove that, when he ripped three more last night ...
... he didn't ham it up nearly as much. Drop of the bat. Opening stutter-step. Playful shrug toward the Reds' dugout after the third one. But nothing close to Monday, which now clearly represented Dietrich's perceived revenge for the Pirates' perceived overreaction when Chris Archer threw at him.
But again, that's not the pendulum in play here.
Rather, it's this: Pitchers will bite back when it comes to regaining the fear factor.
Baseball's been around for a century and a half and, in all that time, pitchers backing a batter off the plate has been part of it. That might be because they see or sense something soft in the batter's demeanor. Or because they're trying to set up their next pitch. Or to slash the plate in half horizontally. Or, most commonly, to scare the bejeezus out of the opponent:
ROB ULLMAN / DKPSTo take charge. To show who's holding the ball.
Such pitchers are scarce in the modern game. But they won't be. There might never be another Dock Ellis or another Bob Feller, Nolan Ryan or Pedro Martinez. But the pendulum will swing back, and the next will belong to the pitcher. Maybe that personality will be as obnoxious as Dietrich's, maybe it won't. But it'll come. And that pitcher will be debated as much as Dietrich and his bat-flipping, posing, preening ilk are right now.
Ideally, that pitcher would come along in Pittsburgh. But I'll celebrate it wherever it happens. I might even admire it for a couple seconds.
• Dietrich's right to whoop it up as he pleases gets painted as a generational debate. It might be that, but I also detect more beneath that element. Ask me, and younger fans are fine with it primarily because they're not that into baseball in the first place and, thus, frame it within the context of the sports they actually do watch with a passion.
If that's accurate, it's exposing a far more pressing problem for Major League Baseball than anything Dietrich's doing.
• I really hate this, though ...
For those who are mad at Derek Dietrich, your hot takes have been duly noted and ignored. #LetTheKidsPlay pic.twitter.com/5DlPrTkeKE
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) May 28, 2019
"Kids?" Really? Dietrich's turning 30 in two months. He's been in professional baseball for a full decade.
He's not a kid. He's immature and chooses to behave like an idiot.
• Try to picture being one of those people pleading for the Pirates to pony up $18 million for Dallas Keuchel in the same week they stretched the budget for some career 6.07 ERA dude just cut by the Orioles.
For that matter, picture being cut by the Orioles.
• Phil Kessel won't accept a trade to Minnesota because he's worried the Wild won't be a contender.
That's the latest reporting from Mike Russo, the Athletic's St. Paul-based beat writer, and it follows up his reporting a week earlier that the Wild were interested in trading Jason Zucker, an over-priced, under-performing winger, to get Kessel. In this update, Kessel has declined to add the Wild to his list of teams to which he can be traded, of which his contract allows him to choose eight.
That's a little ominous for Jim Rutherford, I've got to say.
Not that Kessel can't -- or won't -- be traded. As I reported 27 days ago, he's the Penguins' No. 1 priority to move this summer. But if Kessel's going to be that picky, to the point he won't waive his clause to go to a state he knows well, where the team just went a not-all-bad 37-36-9 and where he has a good buddy in Ryan Suter ... what might that mean?
Don't misunderstand. I don't see Rutherford facing some Antonio Brown-sized challenge in moving Kessel. But there also isn't going to be some overwhelming market for a 33-year-old winger with a sizable contract and significant baggage. Expectations probably should be managed.
• Continuing to head off the palpable panic over the Penguins' aging core: Patrice Bergeron is 33, Brad Marchand 31, Tuukka Rask 32 and Zdeno Chara, of course, is 42. The Bruins have other quality players, but those four remain their core. It's how you support the core that counts. That was proven in these parts in 2016 and 2017, and it can apply again.
• I'm heading back to the Steelers' OTAs this afternoon, hoping to complete a Bud Dupree piece I've been compiling. No doubt, that'll be well received.
In the interim, here's a slice of a conversation I had with Donte Moncrief, who's been described as a stretch-the-field guy since his acquisition ... but that hasn't really held since his arrival. It's mostly been about his overall skill set, not just his 4.40 to blow by corners in a straight line.
I asked about that:
This is at least a little worrisome. With more than two-thirds of JuJu Smith-Schuster's catches in 2018 having come from the slot, and with everyone else in the receiving corps other than James Washington also being best suited for the slot, it'll behoove the Steelers and Moncrief to make it happen wide. But, as our Chris Carter broke down beautifully a couple weeks ago, those routes haven't always been fruitful for Moncrief. And statistically, in his five-year NFL career, 31 of his 200 catches have gone for 20-plus yards, seven of those for 40-plus yards. Some of that's due to the less-than-spectacular quarterbacks with whom he's worked -- hello, Blake Bortles -- but it's also not exactly encouraging history.
If nothing else, it'd be helpful for Ben Roethlisberger and Moncrief to try an awful lot of this in Latrobe.
• Heading into the NFL Draft, Mike Mayock and Jon Gruden spoke openly of the Raiders coveting the players with "the highest character," to quote Mayock directly. This shortly after acquiring AB, and now after adding Vontaze Burfict and, just yesterday, Richie Incognito.
Anyone seen if O.J.'s getting into shape, too?
If that goes better than 4-12 in 2018, I'll walk all the way home from Oakland. (Our Oakland, not the one in California. Come on.)
• Away from the play: Anyone else bothered by the strange sale of Sports Illustrated to some nebulous branding company that plans to benefit primarily by applying its renowned name to things like clinics?
I'm still a subscriber to SI. I appreciate better than most why print is being dumped for online. But SI ... that's iconic. That's part of the fabric of American sports culture. Sometimes we don't realize these things until it's too late.
• Let's do this again tomorrow.