Adam Wainwright should probably stop his whining

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s and Cardinals’ pitcher Adam Wainwright’s reaction to the Holliday drop:

The Dodgers stretched the inning improbably after left fielder Matt Holliday lost first baseman James Loney’s line drive in the glare of late-afternoon lights and a backdrop of towel-waving fans.

The ball caught Holliday in the stomach, knocking the wind out of everyone wearing road gray.

“He lost the ball in the 50,000 white towels shaking in front of his face,” starting pitcher and would-be hero Adam Wainwright said. “It doesn’t seem really fair that an opposing team should be allowed to shake white towels when there’s a white baseball flying through the air. Dodger blue towels -- how about that?”

Except that’s not how it happened. As Dodger Thoughts’ Jon Weisman points out -- and as the video from MLB.com appears to show -- the towels didn’t seem to be waving until after the drop. Indeed, the Dodgers fans were pretty bummed at that point because they were one out away from a loss and, until the exact moment of the error, assumed that out number three was in the air. I know the natural reaction is to stand up for your teammate when things are tough, but Wainwright is plain wrong to blame the towels.

But even if they were waving, so what? It’s called home field advantage. If the Cardinals don’t want to deal with hostiles waving white towels, they should have won a couple of extra games in September and finished with a better record than L.A.

Thinking more about it, does anyone remember back in the mid-to-late 80s when NFL quarterbacks used to be able to step out from behind center and get an official time out if the crowd was too loud? I have this image of Steve Fuller doing this, like, ten times in a row when he played for the Bears. QBs would even get the ref to warn the crowd to be quiet, and if they didn’t, the defense was assessed with a delay of game penalty. It was probably the stupidest rule to ever exist in professional sports.

Thankfully, football players put on their big boy pants and learned to deal and the rule was changed. As a result homefield advantage meant something once again (at least until all the new sound-killing stadiums came online). Baseball players should probably learn to suck it up and deal too.