Baseball players should wear caps, not earrings

With the San Francisco Giants losing horribly to the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight, I must vent my frustrations. I haven’t posted in a while, but here goes: baseball players shouldn’t wear jewelry.

Oh, it’s fine if they wear their diamonds off the diamond. But when they go to work between the foul lines, they should take off the bling. Having played a lot of shortstop as a kid and a teenager, I always cringed whenever I’d see Barry Bonds heading for second with that cross dangling from his left ear. He’s gonna get his ear lobe ripped out one of these days, I’d think.

I’ve seen a number of pitchers leaning in to get the sign from the catcher, and it always bugs me to see chains hanging off their necks.

My aversion to jewelry on ball players probably speaks to some deep inner insecurity of mine. Or maybe it goes back to the last couple of years I played as a teenager, during the disco era of the late 70s. I can’t pin it down, but I’m guessing I wasn’t crazy about a couple of teammates who wore those ivory horns or gold medallions strung from chains around their necks. (I actually had a pewter screaming eagle on a chain, but I’d never admit that publicly on my blog.)

There’s probably another reason I dislike bejeweled ballplayers. Prior to the free-agent era, most players didn’t get paid the stratospheric salaries today’s players receive. In the old days, most players didn’t have enough money to toss off a few grand or even a couple hundred dollars on a flashy necklace or earring, let alone wear it on the field. Even if they could afford it, can you imagine Joe DiMaggio or Stan Musial wearing an earring?

Not a chance.