Skip to content

Correa: Baseball is 'stuck in the past'

Dave Einsel / Major League Baseball / Getty

Bryce Harper isn't alone in his pursuit to modernize the game of baseball.

Reigning American League Rookie of the Year Carlos Correa is backing Harper's stance on making the game more fun by allowing players to express themselves.

Correa expressed his opinions on the unwritten rules of baseball in an essay titled "Baseball Is Not Dying" on Monday:

The game of baseball is beautiful, classic, traditional and ... stuck in the past.

We've romanticized the game's past so much that we've forgotten about its future. Since its beginnings, baseball has been guided by an invisible hand. A set of unwritten rules that all players are expected to adhere to. These unwritten rules are responsible for trying to kill our fans' favorable perception of the game that we love. They strangle the passion and creativity of some of our sports most exciting athletes, all for the fear of breaking those unwritten rules.

We are so enamored by the idea of what we think the game should look like that we fail to see how it could be seen. The past has been glorified so much that we resist any change at all for fear that it will degrade traditions but in doing so we have stopped the game from progressing forward. We are surprised or offended when we hear someone say the game is boring or dying, but we don't take action to fix it.

The Houston Astros rookie, just 21 years old, was one of the first players to support Harper's fun mantra.

"I just think that the priority should be on the team and not what we can do on the field," Correa said in March. "I have fun playing baseball the way I play it; I'm not going to change the way I play. If (Harper) has fun playing the way he plays like that, I'm fine with it."

Born in Puerto Rico, Correa admits he plays with a certain degree of flair, and notes several players in generations before him also played the game with an edge.

Daily Newsletter

Get the latest trending sports news daily in your inbox