(UPDATE: USA Today reported late Thursday that Cowherd’s comments — and the lack of a response by ESPN and Fox, Cowherd’s soon-to-be employer — angered the MLB Players Association. A source close to the union told writer Jorge L. Ortiz it may stop cooperating with ESPN and Fox in response. An ESPN spokesman said the network any statement would come Friday at the earliest.)
On Thursday morning, ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd discussed the criticism Marlins manager Dan Jennings has received because of his inexperience at the coaching level. Cowherd believes Jennings’ lack of experience is not an issue, because baseball is not a complex sport.
In defending his point that baseball isn’t a complex sport, he brought up the fact that a third of the players in Major League Baseball are from the Dominican Republic.
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“It’s too complex? he said, transcribed by Hardball Talk. “I’ve never bought into that ‘baseball is too complex.’ Really? A third of the sport is from the Dominican Republic.”
Now, perhaps the one snippet does not fully represent Cowherd’s thoughts and was taken out of context.
Then again, here is the entire passage:
“It’s too complex? I’ve never bought into that ‘baseball is too complex.’ Really? A third of the sport is from the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic has not been known in my lifetime as having world-class academic abilities. A lot of those kids come from rough backgrounds and have not had opportunities academically that other kids from other countries have. Baseball is like any sport. It’s mostly instincts. A sportswriter who covers baseball could go up to Tony La Russa and make an argument and Tony would listen and it would seem reasonable. There’s not a single NFL writer in the country who could diagram a play for Bill Belichick. You know, we get caught up in this whole ‘thinking man’s game.’ Is it in the same family? Most people could do it. It’s not being a concert pianist. It’s in the same family.”
Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista, who was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, caught wind of Cowherd’s comments and was none too pleased.
Dear Mr. @ESPN_Colin before i rip you a new one i would like for you to explain what u meant to say about baseball and dominicans, please
— Jose Bautista (@JoeyBats19) July 23, 2015
Cowherd did back off his comments following the commercial break, saying that only 4 percent of MLB players have college degrees and that roughly a third of the players don’t speak the primary language of the country in which they play.
(UPDATE: MLB announced in April that 83 Dominican-born players were on opening day rosters, disabled lists or restricted lists this year. They represented 9.6 percent of major league players. A total of 230 foreign-born players, or 26.5 percent, were in the majors.)
Cowherd has long stated on his show that he enjoys learning about sociology and demographics, trying to understand why people form a certain place do one thing and a people from another place do something entirely different.
But baseball’s complexity, or Cowherd’s conceived lack of complexity, has nothing to do with the people who currently play the game.
Game theory in baseball, the study of strategic decision-making, is impossibly complex. A langauge barrier is immaterial when a player is trying to figure out what pitch will be thrown from a pitcher with three strong pitch types on a 2-2 count with a man on second base with one out in the seventh inning.
But this is how Colin Cowherd operates. He tries to make up for his lack of understanding of the actual sport by attempting to paint the issue as part of a much bigger topic.
If there is a much bigger topic to be had, it is this: Colin Cowherd doesn’t know what he is talking about.
