With apologies to Thomas Paine, these are the souls who try men’s times.
Game 1 of the World Series, top of the fourth, 5-0 Red Sox, Cardinals’ Jon Jay leads off against Jon Lester. On a 2-2 count Lester throws an 87 mph something or other, low and outside. Full count.
“I question that pitch,” Tim McCarver on FOX said. “A 2-2 breaking ball when you have a five-run lead. That’s the third breaking ball he’s thrown. I think you have to throw the fastball and challenge Jay.”
Sounds good. I’m sold.
Jay walks. The next batter, Matt Holliday, strikes out swinging at a 75 mph curveball — on a 2-2 pitch.
McCarver: “Good breaking ball, used at the right time. And Holliday way out in front.”
Wait a second! Did someone just slip me a PSL? How did McCarver’s position go from bad idea on a 2-2 count with a 5-0 lead to a good idea on a 2-2 pitch to the next batter?
Game 2: Boston’s Jonny Gomes at bat in the second. A graphic shows he’s hitting .179, 5-for-28, in the postseason.
Joe Buck: “The numbers aren’t big — 5-for-28 — but the record is. [Boston’s] 7-0 when he makes a start this postseason.”
McCarver: “There are very few guys in the game without the numbers to back him up, and Jonny Gomes is one of those. Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, Oakland and now Boston. He’s a winner.”
Come on fellas! Is Boston’s 7-0 in Gomes’ starts because he played or in spite of it? You can like Gomes’ game, but please — don’t tell us that .179 has helped the team’s cause or that his name on the lineup card was in any way responsible for the Red Sox winning all seven of those games.
Had Gomes hit .409 but the Red Sox lost all the postseason games in which he played, should we consider him “a loser”?
Meanwhile, if Gomes, even while hitting .179 in the postseason, is a winner, a difference-maker everywhere he’s gone, how come none of his previous three teams made sure to keep him?
But that’s the bag we’re in. An “oddly enough” is presented to a national audience as a matter of great significance.
Anyway, Gomes flew out, and would finish the game 0-for-4, giving him a .156 postseason batting average. Yet, despite all that, the Red Sox still lost. Nurse!”
Among Selig’s great feats: Making Series disappear
If the media took a few minutes off from its hollow praising of Bud Selig for a job well done, they would see how MLB’s TV money addiction has left the World Series devalued.
Consider that Sunday’s Game 4 is scheduled for 8:15 — even later than ESPN’s absurd regular season Sunday night starts. It is the latest scheduled start of any of this year’s World Series games.
Why? Because FOX first had to clear its NFL games that begin at 4:25. So Sunday’s game, on a school/work night, is unlikely to end before 11:30 p.m. EDT.
Now consider that had Game 4 begun at 7 p.m. EDT every person in the country, ages 10 and older, would have had a reasonable shot to watch an entire World Series game.
Yeah, how ’bout that Bud Selig! He’s a wizard! In millions of homes, he made the World Series disappear!
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If the new FOX Sports 1 cable network hopes to distinguish itself from ESPN’s cluttered, mindless football telecasts, its Thursday night Marshall-Middle Tennessee State production looked and sounded more like a copyright infringement.
Three in the booth, talking steady nonsense and genuine, new-age gridiron gibberish — “Marshall’s defense has to get off the field”; “I like the way he runs north and south” (formerly known as straight ahead) — you know the deal.
Even MTSU cooperated in making it seem like an ESPN telecast. Although the Blue Raiders’ colors are blue and white, they wore their new black jerseys.
Over on ESPN, where the traditional Student-Athletics ESPN Thursday Night Game of the Week was Kentucky at Ole Miss, the three-man booth again was devoured by yak box Jesse Palmer, who included a treatise on why it’s important for receivers to catch passes thrown right at them. Aaaaaghh!
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Had a chat last week with a recent graduate from a combination large state university and whatever-it-takes, as-seen-on-TV Division I football mill.
He was an academic tutor for the Athletic Department and was assigned to assist a star football player who was granted a full scholarship then matriculated despite what the tutor said was “a fourth-grade reading level.”
Of course, other than football, this “student-athlete” had no business being in any college. He was dismissed from the team and the school after his second arrest. Next!
It’s not running it up if no intent
Not all extraordinarily ugly final scores are the result of “running it up.” You’ve got to examine the details. That 91-0 high school game in Texas last week, the one that led to a parent’s filing of bullying charges?
Apparently, the winning coach, Aledo High’s Tim Buchanan, was innocent. He pulled his starters early then pulled his second-string for the third-string. As he reasonably explained, you can’t tell kids who practice all week, every week and then finally get in a game, not to run for a TD, to instead “take a knee.”
Had he been a bully, he said, “the score could have been 150-0.”
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Take-Home Assignment: As you watch professionals play football this week, try to gauge the percentage of plays that are followed by self-smitten demonstrations — regardless of anything and everything except themselves.
Regrets to Spencer Ross on the passing of his son, 39-year-old Jon, Wednesday. Jon’s survived by his twin brother, David. Their mother, Spencer’s late wife Bernadette, also died at 39. Service this morning at Manhattan’s Riverside Chapel.
Fascinating on Friday how bully boy Mike Francesa was pummeled in a debate about Alex Rodriguez because his opponent was in the studio, thus “Let’s Be Honest” couldn’t hang up on the guy — then continue hollering at him. Incidentally, Prof. Correct Pronunciation, it’s Muhammad Wilkerson, not Wilkinson.
Ron Artest renaming himself Metta World Peace is like Mahatma Gandhi asking that we call him by his nickname, Spike. … Reader David K. Lee suggests the Redskins should be changed to the Washington Monuments. Not bad. They can run the old Statue of Liberty play!
Good news: The Yankees are holding the line on ticket prices, maintaining them at unaffordable.