I got it, I got it... Doh!

So my friend Darren riffed on the Beltran/Cameron outfield collision on his blog earlier today. If you haven't seen it, check out his blog at http://darrencarew.blogspot.com/ to see the carnage. While it was indeed a horrific event, I've got a bit of a different take on the whole thing. As the son of a baseball player/coach and being a baseball player myself, I learned the golden rule of "I got it" from an early age. I've (sadly) been a part of too many dorm/company softball teams and seen too many friends and co-workers who did not grow up playing ball bash their faces into the shoulders of other non-athletes pursuing a lazy pop fly to ever forget this lesson. You hit a pop up between me playing short and the kid who would rather be playing Everquest in a blacked out dorm room in left and I'm either going to command him to stay put in a very loud voice or head quickly in the other direction if I see him wandering towards the ball like a drunk towards a pizza joint.

What's my point here? Well, I'm guaranteeing you that both Beltran and Cameron know the "I got it" rule by heart. I bet they've called each other off balls hit to them no fewer than 35-40 times already this season. But when you factor in the TV cameras, Web Gems and the cool factor of diving full out for a ball, they chose to throw one of the cardinal rules of baseball out the window. You can give me all the crap you want to about how bad these guys want to win and that they're two of the better defensive outfielders out there, I'll call bullshit. They knew the cameras were rolling, they knew Ravich, Reynolds and Kruk would be talking about "the catch" they made later that night and they knew chicks would dig it. I've played the outfiled before, I know that you've got that extra two seconds you need to know you've got a shot to make a highlight reel catch. It's not like third base where it's pure reaction. These guys play in the media capital of the world on a struggling team and know they've got to make it exciting. Do you think Mike Cameron thinks it was worthwhile today as he's lying in the hospital pondering his facial recontruction surgery? I'd go with what is no on that one, Alex.

On the brightside, maybe now the Mets will finally give that Diaz kid a chance.