If you are one of the lucky folks who get to attend a Major League game this year, you will probably see someone flip their bat, point to a dugout, pour chocolate sauce on one of their teammates, pretend to take a selfie, or, worse, smile. Can you believe the audacity of these overpriced children? Smiling? What’s next, back rubs in the outfield?

Baseball legends Goose Gossage, Johnny Bench, and Mike Schmidt have all railed against overt displays of joy during the off season, reminding fans all across the nation that America’s Pastime is exclusively for the sullen and withdrawn. It’s a job, after all, not unlike answering phones for a dentist’s office or entering sales figures into a spreadsheet at a used car dealership. You don’t see those people running around playing grab-ass when they’re on the clock, do you? So why should Jose Bautista or Bryce Harper act like their lives are so damn great? It’s an affront to tradition when a player celebrates on the field, as historically, baseball has been played exclusively by elderly morticians or large bags of dry cement wearing hats. In the future, will all baseball players be replaced by emotionless robots like the ones from the Hugh Jackman movie Real Steel?

If you don’t remember this movie – and why would you? – it’s about a near-future world where the sport of boxing has been mechanized, because human fighting has been deemed too barbaric for popular consumption. This is as ludicrous as fantasy cinema gets, as there’s no way the entire planet would agree to outlaw real boxing. We can’t even get the NFL to admit that their sport conclusively causes severe brain damage. There’s definitely not a cultural consensus against brutality in sports, so why would anyone agree to this outrageous robo-fighting nonsense? The movie accepts this unlikely premise and places anthropomorphic hunks of metal in place of flesh-and-blood people in the standard sports movie story of the underdog persevering in the face of adversity.

Though, it should be said that the robots in Real Steel had more personality than the average baseball player. The robots dance and showboat, which is not true of Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner. I assume that Gossage, Bench, and Schmidt’s ideal player is someone like Bumgarner, whose dominant performance on the mound in the 2014 World Series brought a third championship in five years to San Francisco. He pitches every day like his life depends on it and looks like he shucks corn for fun when he’s not slaughtering cattle. His post-game interviews consist of a few cliches about working hard, followed by a down-home chuckle or two to break the monotony.

When not reciting memorized passages from whatever public relations handbook the Giants gave him his rookie season, he carves out time to scream at anyone who he thinks has “disrespected” him, like this clip from last July, when Texas Rangers rookie Delino DeShields popped up to the second baseman to end the fourth inning of a game the Rangers had comfortably in hand. DeShields flipped his bat – apparently the universal symbol of disrespect in baseball, both when used in celebration and disgust – which made Bumgarner livid. He jawed at DeShields as he jogged to first base and after the third out was recorded. Benches cleared and tensions ran high.

Madison Bumgarner: a real fun guy. Photograph: Jeff Roberson/AP

Bumgarner must be a really fun guy, probably the sort to get mad if the mashed potatoes and the peas on his dinner plate touch. It remains to be seen what all of this talk of respect accomplishes. Is baseball destined to become a significantly less exciting version of a Communist party parade in Yugoslavia? Is a grown man named “Goose” really chastising people for being immature? Maybe that attitude reflects the spirit of the game itself. Baseball is a mercurial, peculiar sport governed by superstition that’s only recently been co-opted by hard data in the form of analytics. It’s a long, grinding season jam-packed with drudgery. It might have more in common with the life of the receptionist at the dentist’s office than my sarcasm let on. The season spans 162 games and six months of cross-country travel. It’s a test of physical stamina and emotional endurance. Even if these guys make millions of dollars, the aura around their job is one of the working man shoveling dirt on their own grave.

Baseball players don’t show up in hip-hop videos or go to the Oscars. The MVP of the World Series gets a pick-up truck. The best player in the game looks like the kid from Jerry Maguire poured creatine on his corn flakes every morning. Baseball gladly embraces its image as a blue-collar game, but has it really always been this puritanical? In the 1970s, a guy threw a no-hitter while on LSD. Relievers John Rocker and Mitch Williams were controversial, larger-than-life characters. Barry Bonds’ home run celebration was all subtle, yet appreciable contempt for his opponent and admiration for his own prowess with a baseball bat. Sammy Sosa used to skip down the first base line after smashing a home run.

Of course, the men I mentioned played during an era MLB’s power structure would prefer to forget. Baseball’s steroid years were insanely popular and featured memorable figures like Sosa, Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Roger Clemens, and others who livened up the game through behavior that was stubbornly iconoclastic. This is not to say that baseball players should be allowed to juice freely and without consequences. Staking your moral stance on athletes doping is akin to advocating for “Hot Contents” warning labels coming off coffee cups. Is that really a cause worth your time? It’s more that this new emphasis on respectability seems tied to baseball’s obsession with atoning for its tainted prosperity.

Is baseball destined to become a significantly less exciting version of a Communist party parade in Yugoslavia?

In a New York Times article from the weekend (ominously titled ‘The Endangered Species of Baseball’), Royals GM Dayton Moore is quoted as saying “We all know there was a period of time in our game that we’re not proud of: there were PEDs, and the style of play has changed because of it.” He said this in response to a question about the decline in stolen bases. He continues: “We’re going to get more and more athletes playing our game because of the commitment of Major League Baseball to grow the game at the grassroots level. It’s going to take time, but I really believe we’re going to get a lot of our better athletes in this country playing baseball again. The game’s going to change. It’s going to be more of a speed game.”

This implies that “athletes” (those who did not succumb to the temptation to take PEDs) abandoned baseball and must be wooed back. The thinking is that once MLB cleans out all the brigands and scofflaws from the sport, it will be fun to watch again, even if it was far more enjoyable for the average fan when the cream and the clear was rampant in clubhouses, when the personalities were as big as the biceps.

Baseball can still be a thrilling sport when it wants to be. There are few sensations as hair-raising as a 3-2 count with runners in scoring position in a close play-off game. A masterful pitching performance, a perfectly timed home run, or a rally-ending strikeout can electrify a stadium. But what it often lacks are the human moments that makes the other major sports compelling on television. The legends who bemoan the displays of hubris from today’s players are free to say what they please, but the governing body that runs the sport has a responsibility, and a need, to keep the life from being strangled out of the game. The future of baseball depends on the aforementioned “athletes” thinking the game is fun to play rather than a funeral procession on grass. At this rate, MLB will never need to replace their players with robots. By not speaking out as an organization against the repression of emotion, they already have.