This has bugged me for years....
I'm not a sports freak. I don't obsess over the box scores; I'll check 'em occasionally, but not very morning. I don't know every batting average in Major League Baseball.
But I do have a little bit of accumulated knowledge of baseball -- enough to know that somebody's last 12 at-bats are an absolutely meaningless criterion in judging his dangerousness at bat. A far better standard is the batter's whole-season record.
So why -- please god, why!?!?!? -- do the television people insist on giving us completely useless information? I don't give a blistering fuck what a guy has done in this series; I want to know what he's done in his last 600 at-bats. That would give me some useful data.
All that said, in the second inning, Boston has this thing sewed up. Varitek just bounced one off the tippy-top of the Green Monster, and Dice-K looks unhittable.
The mortgage-equity money looks safe.
12 comments:
Because Joe Buck and Tim McCarver assume that the viewers are complete dumbasses who never watch baseball.
Also, because the Fox network hates baseball.
Don't you go gettin in my Tim McCarver's grill. Tim talked me off the ledge in the '86 World Serious Game Six. I was drunker'n fuck at the time, during Mookie's legendary at-bat, wound up chasing cars up Eighth Avenue...
assume that the viewers are complete dumbasses who never watch baseball.
Looks like Dice-K might be tiring... There's more ball to be played. Stick around...
Most of the time, you'd be right about this. But conventional statistical analysis, when applied to certain players, doesn't tell the whole story. There are some guys who eat pressure, and this skews the numbers. They may be good at their jobs all season, but with a game (or the season) on the line, they start to perform at a higher level. Reggie Jackson comes to mind. Also Larry Bird. Bill Russell with the Dodgers was a forgettable player, but I watched him come through with 2-out 9th-inning clutch hits over and over during his career. With guys like these you have to look at how hot they are during a series. Of course, when you're talking about journeyman players, this doesn't apply.
Disclaimer: I have pretty much lost all interest in sports over the past decade, so my examples are dated. I'll bet you can think of more current ones.
I'll bet you can think of more current ones.
Not fuckin' likely...
But I still want to know who are the dangerous hitters, and who are the milquetoasts. Not an unreasonable request!
AGHGHGHGHGHG!
As I'm typing this, the Sox hit THE PERFECT HIT-AND-RUN... Bottom of the fourth, runner on first... Why I just LOVE this game...
God, I love baseball...
And immediately after I hit "Post," they tried it again, and the Indians' second baseman was able to turn a perfect double play.
Still love the game!
I can't believe that guy didn't send Kenny home. I can't watch this. Can't watch it. Dammit. I think I hurt my back. I'm not sure how I hurt my back yelling at the TV, but I think I did...
I cannot but read of the wonderful intricacy of the oft practiced and perfected hit-and-run or double play and see it as a purposeful distraction from the totally amaturish inability of an Iraqi family to avoid having their house and lives become collateral damage of the big sports fan on the hill. Sorry guys, but I see the US as the country with most fucked up priorities imaginable.
Now back to the commercial.
Neddie - I was trying to say that some guys are more dangerous in the post season than their season batting average suggests.
gregra&gar - This is the main reason I have lost interest in sports. Sadly, there are more important things in the world. But it's not a "purposeful" distraction from the harsh reality you describe. It's a game. It comes from our playfulness, our need to have fun.
You need to turn off the sound (or turn off the tube altogether) and listen to the ESPN radio call. Joe Morgan gets crankier by the year and Jon Miller has trouble with names, but they assume a much higher level of knowledge among their listeners than TV is allowed to do.
And hitters CAN be streaky, you know.
For a few innings there this was the best game of the ALCS.
I say the Rox over the Sox in six.
Sorry, Neddie, McCarver and Buck should both be strangled with their own microphones. The only thing Deon Sanders ever did to elicit my admiration was dump a bucket of ice over McCarver in the Braves locker room
the Burns/Smithers post got scrubbed? hope all is well at Jingo Acres and no brigade of Atty's are decending...
Will Neddie's next screed be "Letter from Loudoun County Jail". Updates anxiously awaited....
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