First Gloves: Clete Boyer
Clete Boyer was a victim of inertia.
It’s all around us, that urgent need to keep things the same. To look at our children as kids long after they’re adults, to eat the same food even when we know it’s not good for us, to drive the same brand of car despite the quality not being what it once was. It’s what makes us watch the same channel to get the news, and buy the same brand of clothes, follow the same sports team even when they no longer seem to be trying to win.
In baseball, inertia is behind the refusal of managers to stop bunting. It’s what causes television partners to show the same boring stats. Announcers will use the same jargon over and over again, partly because it’s familiar to the fans who are listening but also because it’s familiar to them, too. Inertia makes fans hate the idea of an opener, and makes them incapable of abandoning the notion that starting pitchers should throw complete games.
And it’s that mindset, the fear of change and the dead-set commitment to keeping things as they are, that used to cause Gold Gloves to be handed out to the same players, year after year, not matter what evidence pointed in a different direction.
