Dumb In Dallas

I'm not quite sure which comment (stereotype?) applies more, "men are stupid" or "Dallas sucks." (Okay, "Dallas sucks" is not a stereotype, at least when it comes to the Cowboys.) A blogger for a weekly paper called the Dallas Observer took Texas Rangers pitcher Colby Lewis to task for leaving the team to be with his wife, who gave birth to the couple's second child. Lewis missed a start. The Observer writer, Richie Whitt, wrote:

Don’t have kids of my own but I raised a step-son for eight years. I know all about sacrifice and love and how great children are.

But a pitcher missing one of maybe 30 starts? And it’s all kosher because of Major League Baseball’s new paternity leave rule?

Follow me this way to some confusion.

Imagine if Jason Witten missed a game to attend the birth of a child. It’s just, I dunno, weird. Wrong even.

The blog Hay Ladies! did an excellent job in responding to Whitt's ridiculous commentary. There's only one thing I feel the need to add: many, many baseball players have missed games when their wives had a baby. It's been going on for a long time, especially since a flight can get a player home in hours. It's not like the old days when teams traveled by train. The only new angle to this particular story is that Major League Baseball now has a paternity leave rule that allows teams to add a player to the roster for a 24-72 hour period. The Rangers wanted an extra pitcher, so they used the rule to call up an pitcher from the minors. Lewis became the first player to be placed on the new paternity leave list. (There's been a bereavement list for a few years now, for serious illnesses or deaths of immediate family members.)

This shouldn't have been a big deal. Actually, it isn't a big deal, except to this Dallas neanderthal and those who "think" like him.

Hat tip to one of my Twitter followers, @jboschan, who posted the link to the Hay Ladies! blog.