Brains Over Beef: A Salute to Cerebral Ballplayers

Varsity Jackets collide with Pocket Protectors in hallways across America—it’s a high school symbol of a societal pecking order.

Perhaps, it is an ingrained ideal from before we evolved from cavemen; a time when the fastest and most powerful were more likely to survive.

No matter what the cause, people worship physical prowess. 

To quench a desire to be faster than a speeding bullet, adults sport the red and yellow "S" on their shoulders and children have the same on t-shirts. Just think of how shocking it would be to see "E = MC^2" on such things. 

With people feeling betrayed by the brutes whom were mashing homeruns and blazing fastballs, it is time to look at this era of baseball with optimism—it is time to celebrate the cerebral. 

The general public may never know who was clean, but we can see how the best players of that era dominated. 

There were those who sent baseballs over the fence and into the $5 student section. There were others who would poke the ball through the infield to set up the bombers. 

There were those who lit up the radar gun with numbers that would make impressive test scores. There were others who relied on a flight path that resembled a snake’s body. 

With the belly of a beer drinker, Tony Gwynn dominated in his own way. In 20 seasons, Gwynn only deposited 135 balls over the fence. Despite hitting an average of seven dingers a year, he is a first ballot Hall-of-Famer mainly because he hit .338 over his career. 

With the looks of an accountant and a fastball that comes in as fast as some of his peers’ off-speed pitches, the San Diego Padres' Greg Maddux managed to put together some of the finest pitching seasons in the finest offensive period.

Over a span of seven seasons, Maddux’s ERA never topped 2.72. Twice in that time, seasons where long-standing offensive records were being challenged or broken, his ERA stood below 1.65. 

Not to take away from the athletic abilities of these two men, but these players—along with a select few others—relied on their brains, a relentless passion for learning about the game, and a meticulous nature to outperform the injectors and pill poppers. 

With most people not stepping onto an athletic field beyond high school and where a college degree is becoming the norm, these are the players we should be cheering for. These are the players that show us physical deficiencies are not a measure of who we are. 

Some say that Barry Bonds’ homerun records should stand with an asterisk. With an uncertain percentage of players using PEDs, I propose that we mark the accomplishments of our cerebral heroes with a picture of Albert Einstein. 

In a society that loves the story of David vs. Goliath, we should remember this drugged out era as the time when the physically less imposing left the opposition in the dust—a time where we choose to move from the ideals of cavemen to the ideals of civilized man.