During the regular season, the ceremonial first pitch of a baseball game is a largely dull affair. With 81 home games to fill, teams trot out corporate sponsors and community leaders for the vast majority. Every so often, though, on a major occasion like opening day or an important anniversary, the stars come out. The Giants get to watch Willie Mays once a year, Yankees fans can expect a beloved great from their storied history, and the Arizona Diamondbacks look forward to the annual celebration of the man who devised their 54 different hat/shirt/pants combinations.
The playoffs are a different time, though, one when teams should pull out all the stops and have real franchise celebrities throw out the first pitches. With the Texas Rangers in the World Series for the second-consecutive season, they understandably wanted to make some connections to the Mavericks, the most recent champion in the Dallas metro area. Not surprisingly, that meant asking star forward Dirk Nowitzki(notes) to throw out the first pitch at one of their three scheduled home games.
That's a no-brainer, right? Well, not quite, because Major League Baseball nixed the choice for reasons that make no sense to anyone. Marc Stein reported the story for ESPN.com:
>>>>Sources told ESPNDallas.com that -- with the NBA in the midst of a lockout that has spanned 111 days -- at least some hesitation stems from the idea that MLB executives want to stand behind their basketball counterparts and have notified the Rangers that they can't bestow first-pitch honors on an NBA player.
Major League Baseball insists that the NBA's labor unrest had no impact on Nowitzki not being selected to throw out the first pitch.
"MLB absolutely denies that any part in selecting the first ball pitcher had anything to do with the current labor situation in the NBA," MLB spokesman Pat Courtney said. "You want the club's input in what makes sense for them and then we talk about what makes sense for the team and a good broad-base national appeal.
"It's a nice problem to have that you get a list of 10 or 15 names and you work your way through them. We know Nowitzki's been at the games, and that's wonderful. We're glad he's there."<<<<
Way to be not condescending whatsoever, Pat Courtney. I'm sorry that the most popular athlete in Dallas doesn't fit your high standards. He certainly doesn't have the broad-base national appeal of the random "Glee" star who will sing "God Bless America" during Game 4. America loves that guy!......
