Saturday, October 6, 2018

And if He Were a Woman?


The White Sox want you to know they’re not at all worried about outfielder Louis Robert, their #4 prospect and, according to MLB Pipeline, the 44th best in all of baseball.  Just because the 21-year old didn’t hit a homerun this past season doesn’t mean he won’t in the future.  Team officials are sure the lack of power was due to a nagging thumb injury.

Well, let’s hope so.  The international signing of this young Cuban star is going to cost the Sox an estimated $50 million.  No Sox fan wants this to be another waste of money a la Adam Dunn, but still, I have to wonder.  What would happen if Robert were a girl, and one signed for that much money?  I doubt fans would be so forgiving.

Fear of (yet more) flops may be one of the motivations that keeps teams from signing female ballplayers.  If, God forbid, Robert were to go the way of Dunn and Adam LaRoche, do you think they’d want to stick their necks out on someone named Clare or Liz?  Virtually every team in major-league baseball has a Dunn and LaRoche in its front-office closet, which is to say virtually every team has an incentive to ignore women players.
If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, I can only hope that Branch Rickey comes back as another Branch Rickey and he likes “A League of Their Own.”

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