Image credit: © Peter Aiken-Imagn Images
The modern baseball fan generally holds the rookie in fond esteem. They’re a symbol of renewal, the medium through which old teams become new again; they offer vigor and clumsy puppylike athleticism, unguarded charm, and the civility to be grossly underpaid. But even as their major-league story begins, they already offer a lengthy preamble of toil and success, each of them earning their way to the bigs, receiving those very realistic, not-at-all staged viral manager congratulation videos. But this was not always the case. For much of the game’s history, rookies have been interlopers, greenhorns looking to pilfer the jobs of honest and familiar veterans, having honed their skills and won their cheers in remote towns, not as part of some organizational developmental strategy. For a couple decades, at the nadir of rookie appreciation, even the most promising of young stars were bonus babies, meaning that they got handed six figures to spend their teen years riding the edge of the bench, helping no one, thanks to MLB’s foolish pre-draft system.
There isn’t a clear line where the public sentiment toward rookies began to change, but it might be the mid-70s. Fred Lynn became the first rookie to win MVP; Mark Fidrych and later Fernando Valenzuela dazzled from the first moment they took the mound. The arrival of free agency, and the inability of these young kids to take part in it, probably helped their reputations as well. The rookie card around that time became the issue that collectors prized most, and not those that represented the peak of their skill. Meanwhile, the rest of the world still treats most professions with some light ageism toward the inexperienced, virile as they might be.
