Carlos Correa: Baseball is “stuck in the past”

Astros shortstop Carlos Correa has quickly become one of Major League Baseball’s select stars, winning the American League Rookie of the Year Award last season with a .279/.345/.512 triple-slash line, 22 home runs, 68 RBI, 52 runs scored, and 14 stolen bases after making his debut in June.

Correa had, to this point, not been involved in baseball’s ongoing culture war between old and young players, pitchers and hitters, white and non-white players. He penned a column for Sole Collector in which he says the sport of baseball is “stuck in the past”. He continues, “We’ve romanticized the game’s past so much that we’ve forgotten about its future.”

Perhaps most poignantly, Correa writes:

The past has been glorified so much that we resist any change at all for fear that it will degrade traditions but in doing so we have stopped the game from progressing forward. We are surprised and offended when we hear someone say the game is boring or dying, but we don’t take action to fix it.

Correa joins Bryce Harper in criticizing the culture of baseball. In an ESPN feature last month, Harper said, “Baseball is a tired sport because you can’t express yourself.”

As Correa noted, even commissioner Rob Manfred thinks bat flips -- a common form of expression and flair among younger players -- are “good for the game”. Now, we just need to make older players (mostly pitchers) stop throwing baseballs at hitters’ heads in retaliation for flipping a bat.

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