Player interviews are dumb
Lookout Landing readers probably don't need to be told that MLB.com is dumb, but I'd like to make the case that player interviews in general are dumb. MLB.com is dumb because it is written like the most fawning possible celebrity magazine which puts the salivating blather in People to shame, and to generate content, MLB and its affiliates interview players and ask the dumbest possible questions.
A few days ago the site ran an article devoted to the fact that Mike Trout just hit his first homerun at Fenway Park. The writer points out that it is surprising that Mike Trout had never before hit a homerun at Fenway Park, and puts this observation to Trout himself. The article includes this quote:
"I don't think about it, I think I get reminded by people," Trout said with a laugh.
Trout said with a laugh. This is just weird. This article is written by a grown man who apparently thinks about Mike Trout the way that thirteen year-old girls used to think about Justin Bieber. This is not to insult thirteen year-old girls, but to insult the culture of the organization which requires its contracted employees to mutter inanities so it can publish this kind of drivel.
What is the purpose of this interview? Why would MLB send people to interview players about such incidental and trivial crap? Everyone knows that the players are never going to say anything interesting. Their professional training includes a lot of guided practice in answering all questions with the driest possible platitudes. Just looking for a pitch to hit. Just want to help the team. We'll get ‘em tomorrow. They've got a good ballclub. I just go out there every day and compete.
Even when they do get colorful and say substantive things, it's usually about bullshit. There's MLB.com making a big fucking deal about some Dodger's player yelling "Go get it out of the ocean" to Madison Bumgarner after hitting his pitch into the bay adjacent to the stadium. MLB.com ran with it as big news and referred to it regularly in other articles, as if it is a standard by which other hitters' comments to pitchers could be judged. (To be fair, it's not just MLB.com that plays up such crap.)
Pointless platitudes and shit-tossing. This is what players say, or at least this is what players say that MLB thinks is worth conveying to the world. It's their organization. Their reporting operation functions as a self-aggrandizing promotional infomercial. They make the rules, and they have decided that players will be sanitized, personality-free automatons who answer questions by giving isolated pieces of a stump speech, or they will be apes throwing shit at each other, but just for a brief, anecdotal moment.
My point is not that MLB should encourage players to discuss their fly-fishing hobby in the post-game interview. My point is that interviewing MLB players is dumb. I am not, however, advocating that MLB stop interviewing players, for two reasons:
1. Despite themselves, and sometimes because of themselves, players sometimes do say something worthwhile.
2. I clicked on the article about Mike Trout hitting his first home run at Fenway Park because I read the headline and thought "Wow, really? No way!" Therefore I am a consumer of the self-aggrandizing promotional infomercial. I tune in regularly. I usually don't stay tuned in for more than a few minutes, but I'm never gone long.
So there you go. MLB.com is dumb, but so am I. Oh well. Sometimes being dumb feels right. Fortunately that encourage fans to indulge in the substantive aspects of fandom as well.