The changing of the guard of baseball is happening right now

[Snake Eyes]

... or however that saying goes.

But I think it is. It really started happening a couple years ago but it is really noticeable this year. What do I mean by "The Changing of the Guard of Baseball is Happening Right Now?" By that I mean the classic players or the greats that we grew up watching and have gotten to know in our (my) teen years are winding down and people who I haven't heard of really are starting to become stars.

I just realized this when I was watching the Tampa Bay Rays play against the Boston Red Sox in Tampa and isntead of only a few thousand fans being there, it looked as if there wasn't one seat that was empty. Then I started thinking about popular players on the Rays and it progressed to that of around the league. Then it hit me, the popular players are not as familiar to me as the only good players. I mean lets take a closer look at this.

If you look at some of the leaders in baseballs stats, the greats are not there! For average you have Kinsler, Matsui, Mauer, Jones, Berkman, and Pujols. Now 3 of them are greats of my time (Chipper Jones, Lance Berkman and Albert Pujols). However Kinsler, Mauer, and sort of Hideki Matsui are relativley new players. Two of them I have barley watched. They are not the everyday names that I knew in the previous era of baseball.

Home Runs leaders show the same respect. The HR leaders as of right now are Grady Sizemore, Carlos Quentin, Josh Hamilton, Dan Uggla, Chase Utley, and Lance Berkman. WOW! Now I know most of these players really well. But I am a big baseball fan. With the exception to one player in Berkman the casual fan wouldn't know 5/6 of these players. Again this shows the changing of the guard. These guys are going to become household names pretty soon. I'll do two more examples.

The Current RBI leaders are Josh Hamilton, Justin Morenau, Jose Guillen, Adrian Gonzalez, Ryan Howard, and Lance Berkman. Again as a big baseball fan I have had ample opportunities to watch most of these players so I know who they are. Again, to the casual fan they may not know half of these guys or more.

So what do I make of this? What happened to the days of Ken Griffey Jr., David Ortiz, Vlad Guerrero, Miguel Tejada and other house hold names used to dominate these stat markers.

Same thing can be seen with pitching too! Lets look at the Wins leaders. They are Joe Saunders, Cliff Lee, Vincente Padilla, Brandon Webb, Aaron Cook, and Edinson Volquez. What happened to the great pitchers of the former era of Pedro Martinez, Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, Roy Oswalt, and Andy Pettite?

The only answer I can come up is that the game of baseball is changing guard or in other words, we are entering a new era of baseball. It is time for fans to get to know names like Hamilton, Quentin, and Kazmir! I just hope the new era of baseball is untainted as it can be, unlike the last. As long as the integrity of the game can be upheld then I think this era of baseball will be really good just different.

What do you think?
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[Hammerofthegods32]

Hell yeah Snake. I hate talking about baseball with people I know and no one knows half of the guys I mention.
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