Still, Bench was glad to get the message out there, working with a charcoal briquette company to spread the word that television money should not override decades of tradition.
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“When they approached me, it was pretty simple,” Bench said. “I think Cincinnati got the raw end of the deal, many years ago, when they changed the tradition. Opening day was a one-day thing and you knew the Cincinnati Reds were going to start the season for everybody. We looked forward to it, and we were proud of the fact that the oldest team in baseball was getting the chance to say ‘Here we go, this is opening day, and this is tradition.’”
Just another Hall of Famer pining for the way things used to be? Not quite. In an interview with Sporting News, Bench talked about the past, present and future of baseball.
Sporting News: A couple of years ago, when the Dodgers and Diamondbacks opened in Australia, I wrote something suggesting that they take opening day worldwide, staggering start times so you could have 24 straight hours of baseball, with Cincinnati as part of it for tradition’s sake, and working your way around the globe. What would you think of something like that, spreading baseball everywhere and growing the game?
Johnny Bench: The game is growing because of the World Classic and baseball doing that. It would be very difficult, logistically, to get teams to Paris and play or London to play. Mexico City would be cool, and everything else. It seems like the tradition is basically — I liked the idea that all we knew was opening day was one thing, and that was Cincinnati baseball. After getting out of baseball, it was really cool because I had to figure out what I was going to do on opening day now. I think it’s a one-time deal that has such a great tradition for all of us, and we’d like to keep that in some respects.
Everybody knows that there’s TV and people across the country have different time slots and stuff like that, but I’d still like Cincinnati to be the opening game, and have all the people across America basically enjoy opening day in their cities all at the same time.
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SN: Since we’re talking about tradition, you’re a Hall of Famer, and there’s been a couple of Hall of Famers recently who have spoken out about bat flips and such. What I want to know is not only where you stand on that, but what the conversation was when you were a young player, what the Hall of Famers were saying then, if it’s just a generational thing that there’s always going to be criticism.
JB: Well, in the old days, if you showed up a pitcher, you showed up the other team, the next time you went to the plate, you were going to be drilled, you were going to be knocked down. So, you just didn’t show up the other team. That was the deal. I hit a home run, I’d put my head down and run. There were situations a couple of times, when I hit my home run to break Yogi’s record, or I hit a home run to win a game, and I threw my hands in the air. It was cool to end the game that way.
It’s part of, now, the process of “How are you going to be on SportsCenter?” You’ve got to do something now to be unique to do it. When Bryce (Harper) came out and was talking about it, I said, “You know what? OK, fine. Flip the bat, do whatever, but understand that the next time up, you probably will get a ball up near your head. That’s the consequence.” But baseball really has changed throwing inside and people getting comfortable at the plate. These young kids, they’re excitable. It’s fun and everything else, but you have to understand that the other guy out there, he wears his heart on his sleeve, too. He’s not going to like being shown up.
Major home runs, you react. That’s what you do. But you understand that, OK, fine, if I show up the other team, there’s a chance I could get drilled. At that time, the umpires have to step in, because of the rules, and they have to warn or eject. So, that’s part of it.
It was understood that if you were having a good day, or the guy in front of you hit a home run, you probably had one coming up and in on you, so there was less of a chance to dig in. Those are the things that they’ve never had to experience.
When Bryce talks about having more excitement in the game, I’m totally with him. I think there’s kids out there, and there’s other sports now — it’s hard for Little Leaguers now to get a chance (to excel), because everybody has to participate. They get a team trophy at the end of the year for participating, and the only way we can (develop talent) is with traveling teams getting the best people.
My son, he’s 26 now, but when he was growing up, there were three teams at school, and the next year there was only one. Baseball, it’s hard to play. It’s hard to get a kid to play. Balls are in the dirt and they bounce up, and they hit you. You’re not a good catcher, and it’ll hit you in the head. Or you’ll go up and strike out and not make contact. Then they’ve got other sports — soccer became the rage, or lacrosse, where they tell the kid, “OK, here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to put all these pads on you, we’re going to give you a stick, we’re going to let you run and we’re going to let you hit people.” It seems like a lot more fun and a lot more activity than standing out in the outfield and having nobody hit the ball to you. It’s hard to maintain the interest and enthusiasm.
I have two young sons, and I say, “Why do we have kids pitching so early? Why can’t we have a pitching machine or somebody throw?” Let these kids learn success. People quit because they don’t have success, and they’re not willing to go ahead and go out and practice hard enough to do it, especially today with all the mobile devices. Give a kid a chance to learn to catch the ball. Give a kid a chance to learn to hit the ball. When they start hitting the baseball and have success in that, they have a tendency to want to come back. I coached my kids’ Little League team, and four or five of them got hit so bad, they didn’t want to go to the plate, from the wildness of the pitchers. They never expected to have to get out of the way.
So, the excitement needs to come back. We need to have people with flair and everything else. You watch Mike Trout chase balls down in the outfield, you watch (Jose) Fernandez throw, you watch (Aroldis) Chapman, that’s exciting. That’s a great thing about baseball. That’s the challenge that we have to overcome. I admire the talents of Bryce, and he was put in a position to say we do need more excitement, and I agree with it.
The old pitchers, especially from the Hall of Fame, it’s, “Uh-uh, man. You show me up, I’m gonna drill you the next time up,” because that was their mentality. With the restrictions in baseball now, that’s not gonna happen.
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SN: You talked about kids and getting them involved in the game, and this morning, as I was getting ready to talk to you, I was trying to explain who you were to my 3-year-old daughter, and I called up “The Baseball Bunch” on YouTube. I still have the VHS tapes, but I don’t have a VCR anymore. So, she was watching the Ozzie Smith one, and she just goes, “I like this!”
JB: Exactly.
SN: How much fun was that, and are we missing something like that now?
JB: They approached me a couple of years ago about bringing it back, but it never got off the ground because animation is so much easier to do. I approached baseball at one time, when I was being interviewed to be a national broadcaster, and I said what I’d like to do is have a little sequence — two or three or four or five-minute thing — before the game where some of the best players show how to turn a double play, show how to slide, show how to do these things.
You emulate the great players. Why are shortstops the way they are today? You had Luis Aparicio, then Dave Concepcion, then Ozzie came along. You’ve got Mike Trout jumping over buildings with a single bound, and you have all these kids now who have learned by watching and emulate him. So, “The Baseball Bunch” was absolutely perfect. We had Ted Williams, we had Ozzie Smith, we had Pete Rose, we had Mike Schmidt, Dan Quisenberry, Frank Robinson. All these guys were able to be real-life people.
It wasn’t that they had to go so technical, but they would train and show kids how to do this. So, kids were having fun, and when they have fun, they say, “Oh, great, I can do this.” That’s what I’d really like to see come back.
SN: If it was going to come back with someone in your role as host, who would you want to see do it?
JB: Oh, I’m sure Derek (Jeter). He’s got his own vehicle to do this, and Derek is so popular, he’d be able to get all the great players and bring them in — they’d do it as a favor to him, and they’d have the fun part of it. Whether you could have the San Diego Chicken, and the Swami, who was Tommy Lasorda, I’m not sure how you would play it, but I’m sure Derek would be able to do a lot of that. He’s got the personality to do it.
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SN: Maybe Joe Maddon in the Lasorda role?
JB: Joe would be fun. He’s one of those — he’s a little like Casey Stengel and Sparky Anderson, maybe Leo Durocher, all the guys that have a personality. We lose those personalities because we’ve got a camera put on all the players and isolated on them, so anytime you smirk or smile or get disgusted, it shows up on the TV.
SN: When you see the Reds now and what they’re doing, how does that strike you?
JB: Well, the young players that we had from three or four years ago, we had the opportunity to win, and now it’s a situation where it’s almost like a fire sale. I think they would’ve traded Joey (Votto) if they could’ve, would’ve traded (Brandon) Phillips if he agreed to it, and Jay Bruce. You better buy a scorecard to know who else is on the field now.
Now, it’s about development. My push has been, for the Reds, for years, to have a minor league system. We’ve developed some pitchers, but it seems like the trades that we’ve made, we’ve gotten pitchers from other teams, and put them ahead of the ones that we’ve had in the organization. It is, to a great extent, financial.
The Cardinals are a great organization, what the Cubs have done the past few years, bringing up people from their organization, all of these kids have been ready for the major leagues. It’s going to be hard and difficult to compete for another couple of years. But, you know, Jay could have a good year. Joey’s going to have a good year. This is Phillips’ last year on his contract. It’s all pitching. (Devin) Mesoraco, if he can stay healthy, he’s a real stud and can bat in the middle of the lineup, but he’s had problems with his hips and when you’re catching every day, it’s hard.
I don’t expect — I’m hoping, but I don’t expect them to have the best of seasons this year.
SN: As far as catching goes, there’s been a statistical revolution throughout the game, and focusing on catchers, we get numbers now on pitch framing. What do you think of the ability to measure something now that couldn’t be before?
JB: Framing, to me, was always crap anyway, because the umpire was calling the ball as it was crossing the plate. He wasn’t waiting for you to catch it. There are ways that I did it, where I would hold the glove on the plate and try to catch it in the webbing, so it would look like you gave the illusion. On the other side, I would have the glove on the plate and turn it over, try to catch it, and give the illusion that it was on the plate, an inch or two difference.
People say to me, “Where are all the great catchers?” And they’re still here. There’s only 13, 14 catchers in the Hall of Fame, and that’s over 140-something years. We look at it and say, “Where are the great catchers?” but you’ve got a guy who bats fourth in the lineup and does everything in Buster Posey, or Salvador Perez who can really catch, and (Matt) Wieters.
Calling a game, setting up, and trying to command the plate with an umpire — you’ve got to know the umpire, some are low-ball or high-ball umpires, some are wide and call the wider strike zone — you learn what you can get, and when that framing part comes in, it’s about having the glove in position instead of framing.
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SN: You talk about only having that handful of catchers in the Hall of Fame. Who’s missing?
JB: None, that I know of. We look at guys, and I’m not on the committee, but there’s an old-time committee that gets together and looks, and numbers are bantered around, and there’s 16 guys in there and you’ve got to get 12 votes, and you can say “This was there, but that wasn’t. He had a Hall of Fame career for five years, but not 12 or 13.” Right now, the names that have been voted on and everything have not measured up to the committee’s choice.
SN: And as far as the Hall of Fame goes, where do you come down on guys that have been connected to performance enhancers, knowing that there might already be a couple of guys in that used?
JB: There’s shadows going around, and there were shadows on certain people all the time. It seems like there’s a different approach now by some of the writers where we see numbers going up, percentages with people getting more votes than before.
There’s guys like Bonds and Clemens and Mark McGwire, those guys were obviously as big of names as there’s ever been in the history of baseball. The shadow is, here’s McGwire, who took andro that never was on the list and never was proven, but he’s the one guy that everybody’s looking at to begin with, and then Roger came up. I think there’s a leaning toward more votes and the possibility that these guys are going to be in.
There’s going to be a shadow inside or a shadow outside. If they get into it, there’s going to be a shadow. If they don’t, there’s a shadow. I feel bad for these guys, sorry in a lot of ways. I always called it the Blender Era, with the naivete of the fact that these guys wanted to perform and went to trainers and they started the Blender Era, where they started putting everything in the blender, and I don’t think a lot of them ever knew that HGH was in there. We’re at a point now where you’ll see more and higher votes, and the decision will be made at that point, when they get there, that, OK, fine, how’s everybody going to react? There’s going to be a shadow no matter what you do.
