My problem is this (and I admit it's a kind of a pet peeve, that minds can see differently):
I think the webgems has become kind of cultural thing, in the sense that even players watch and pick up on. So it fosters, I think, hot dogging, which I define to include unnecessary falling/diving/tumbling, the kind of extra stuff that most players 30 or more years ago would never or rarely have done. I mean catches where guys run to a ball until they're sure they have it, the go into a slide and a sort of controlled dive, where they could have just "run through" the ball and caught it without leaving their feet. Watch. You'll see guys catch balls while they are leaning, then catch it, then go into a full tumble. It's milking. But the ESPN thing has guys ooh and ahh and equate those kinds of catches with something more like some of the truly great plays. Simply put, I just don't think a lot of "gems" are really anything more special than a good, major league play. But guys milk them and ESPN laps it up and contrives it into a feature.
I remember reading that Joe DiMaggio never left his feet but that he almost never missed a ball he should have caught. That's kind of what I mean. A lot of these guys never miss a chance to leave their feet.
I say this having watched a lot, and played my share, of baseball. Anyway, it's a pet peeve.