Just A Game

I don't really write about sports that much. Mostly it's because I disdain sports in general. And also because I hate jocks of all shapes and sizes. Probably has something to do with high school, which, at the age of 36, I should probably get over already.

But no matter how much I try to hate all sports, I can't help that I love baseball. I just love it. I've tried to not love it so much, what with my opinion that sports is for stupid people. One look at the average knuckle dragger known as the American football fan is all the evidence you need. I have struggled for years to reconcile my hatred for all things competitive-athletic with my love for baseball. I finally just reasoned that if Studs Terkel loves it, then it must be OK.

I just try not to think about the fact that a huge number of the guys that play it are right-wing, Bush supporting, gun-toting, Bambi hunting, Skoal dipping, bible loving, homophobic ass holes.

It is playoff time after all.

And what great playoffs so far. The underdog Tigers wipe the floor with the dreaded Yankees asses (hee-hee). And Alex Rodriquez, the most overpaid of the hundreds of overpaid players, had one hit in 14 at bats (double hee-hee). On the down side, baseball on TV requires that you put up with annoying announcers, especially on FOX.

The announcing business is weird. The stupid jock might be a broad stereotype, but the broadcast booth is where the ex-jocks go to prove it. And there are none stupider than Steve Lyons.

Along with his booth partner, the annoying-voiced Thom Brennaman, who, as Richard Sandomir wrote in the New York Times, sounds "like a parody of what a sportscaster is supposed to sound like," Lyons takes you right back to the days of the 10th grade gym class locker room.

The highlight of their juvenile behavior was a Dodgers-Mets game last week. The cameraman found a guy in the stands wearing a large, odd-looking contraption with a lens over his eyes. Brennaman and Lyons did the only thing sophomoric jocks (redundant phrase I know) can do when faced with the unknown.

They mocked it.

For almost a full minute these two dunderheads made fun of the guy with remarks like, "psycho-meter," saying the guy was in virtual reality and "should stay there" according to Lyons, and proclaiming that he got a digital camera stuck to his face, among other unfunny and juvenile remarks. It was a wonder that Lyons didn't just jump down in to the stands and start whipping the guy with a wet towel. They gave themselves, but I doubt anyone else, quite a chuckle. (Side note: this was during an at-bat, they basically ignored the game so they could make fun of somebody).

I remember thinking to myself during this little figurative swirly they were giving the guy that it would probably turn out to be a contraption that helps blind people see.

Guess what? It was a contraption to help blind people see. Which led to a required apology during the next game. Dumb asses.

Bob Costas would never be so stupid.

Of course the on-field reporters have their own brand of idiocy. Like over-dramatics.

In case you don't know what "hitting for the cycle" is, here is a short run-down. A player get a single, double, triple and home run all in the same game. It is the most over-hyped and meaningless stat in the game. Really, it is just a statistical anomaly. Lots of things are better. Like hitting three home runs, or three triples and a double, or three doubles and, well you get the point.

A guy on the Tigers last night hit a single, a double, and a home run. A great game to be sure, he was the star of the game, in fact. But at the the end of the interview, when sending it "back to the booth," the reporter said, "Brandon Inge, who came just a triple away from being the first player in playoff history to hit for the cycle."

Oh really? He came just the hardest hit to get in baseball away from hitting for the cycle? In other words, he didn't hit for the cycle and no history was made at all. What a stupid thing to say. Seriously, what a dumb stat. It's not even a stat, it's a non-stat. And being a triple away? That's like saying a runner came just ten miles from finishing a marathon. Or that Tiger Woods came just fifteen strokes away from par.

Hell, get away from sports even. You could say, "Hey I missed winning the lottery by just three numbers!" With that reporters way of looking at things, I'm not broke, I'm just $999,970 away from being a millionaire.

I'll have to watch an episode of Ken Burns' Baseball to see the likes of Studs Terkel, Bob Costas, Shelby Foote and the wonderful Buck O'Neill wax poetically and intelligently about the game, so as to cleanse myself of the stink of stupidity from watching the games on FOX this week.