Someone give Jose Reyes a raise, or a plaque, or some sort of medal. Finally, a notable athlete slogging around the cesspool that is Major League Baseball is taking a stand against the displays of moronic machismo that are all too common in today’s sports landscape. In an article published in today’s edition of New York Newsday, the Mets’ superstar shortstop, one of the most exciting players in the game today, pledged to eliminate handshake celebrations – those epileptic chest-bumping gyrations that seem to happen every time a player doesn’t pull up lame – from his on-field repetoire. “No more handshakes,” said Reyes. “People kept saying we got teams fired up when we did those handshakes, so now I want to focus more on baseball.” If only more players would follow in young Reyes’ footsteps.

Now some might say that since sport itself is a celebration of physical gifts (regardless of how ill-gotten these gifts might be), why shouldn’t these gifted athletes celebrate their feats? I agree, to a point. There’s a huge difference between taking pride in your accomplishments and strutting around the field like Jonathan Papelbon in scuba gear. As Reyes noted, such disrespectful shows only serve to inspire the other team, and (as in the Mets’ sad case last year) can distract players from the job at hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are countless examples in all sorts of dugouts where some younger players spent more time studying these absurd hand gestures than their opponent, and end up costing their teams some runs or, even worse, a win.

MLB should take a page out of the NFL’s playbook. With the proliferation of egotistical clowns like Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and Chad Johnson treating every reception like their own Soul Train spotlight, the league decided to come down hard and penalize their teams whenever these morons behaved to type. Lo and behold, the number of celebrations decreased, and while some members of the MTV generation might miss their favorite linebackers shooting air balls after every tackle, true fans of the sport are grateful for such advances. If MLB was serious about improving the quality of their product, they’d take similar action.

If David Ortiz or Manny Ramirez spend too much time admiring one of their meaningless Green Monster shots? Turn the homer into a ground-rule double (if they haven’t done so themselve). If Derek Lowe grabs his crotch after a strikeout, as he did during the 2003 ALDS? Replay the pitch, or even the entire at-bat. Some hothead redneck like Josh Beckett starts mouthing off at a hitter that dared to hit one of his flat fastballs out of the yard? Award the opposing team an extra run, forfeit the pitching team’s next inning, toss the pitcher out. Just do something, baseball, besides letting this nonsense rule the school.

it’s not just the game on the field that would improve. There’d be a beneficial trickle-down effect. Time not spent playing Twister between at-bats means more time spent playing the game, meaning quicker game times. Baseball, free of this unnecessary bling-bling, would return to its wholesome family-friendly roots, which could lead to larger revenues. That would mean more revenue for small-market teams, which would mean that franchises hamstrung by financial constraints – the Royals, the Blue Jays, the Twins – would finally be able to compete with the big boys. No more would the Donald Trumps of baseball, like the World Champion Red Sox, dominate the standings and the limelight.

In addition, sports networks like ESPN, now unable to fill their airtime with endless replays of these grandstanding antics, would have to resort to drastic measures, like broadcasting news about the actual games. That would invariably lead to replacing know-nothing chatterboxes like Stuart Scott and Stephen A. Smith with actual, honest-to-goodness, intelligent sports broadcasters and analysts. There would also be a decrease in the amount of damage inflicted by these fly-by-night “blogs” on the psyche of the sports world, and who wouldn’t be appreciative of that?

With the spectre of the Mitchell Report casting a long and dark shadow into baseball’s sordid past, and fans now forced to wonder whether their favorite player is using illegal substances, and salaries soaring into numerical stratospheres too high to imagine for Joe Lunchbox, baseball needs to do something to, as some hip-hop artists might say, come correct. As he’s done for the Mets many a time, Jose Reyes lead off with a solid, professional single up the middle. Will MLB bring him home with a towering (and, again, professional) home run, or leave him stranded?

Phil Mushnick is a sports media columnist for the New York Post, and webmaster of a Tay Zonday fan site, hersheykissesandgodivadreams.net