Loud idiot vehemently defends megalomaniac

Watched Indiana/Georegtown tonight.  Reminded me of how boring I find college basketball--these are two great teams, playing a hotly contested game, and I still wasn't feeling it at all.  (When I say "watched" I mean it was on in the background as I ate, did shit on my laptop, etc.)  Anyways, DICKIE V BABY was calling the game and he only brought up how great his friend Bob Knight is about 25 times.  Most of it was just stupid bluster.  "Indiana in a zone... you know, Bobby Knight would have never gone to the zone!"  "This point guard is a Bobby Knight kind of player!  He'd be perfect in a Bobby Knight system!"  HOLY SHIT HE GOT FIRED 12 YEARS AGO WHO GIVES A FUCK.  Anyways, I said most of it was just harmless bluster.  Then there was this, which was thoroughly embarrassing.  (I no longer have DVR, #firstworldproblems, so this is not word for word but it's close.)

You know, this has to be said... there is no reason Bobby Knight should have been fired.  It's a shame he's not still there.  Some coaches just belong at certain schools.  Bobby Knight belonged at Indiana and he should have retired there.  When they wanted to fire him, there should have been a meeting of the minds, and they should have been able to work out any differences that may have existed at that time.

Dick, it's bad enough that Knight was physically attacking his own players.  But I think it's pretty safe to say the school's administration made the right move to remove him once he moved on from that to attacking students who weren't even involved with the fucking team.  I'm not Warren Buffet, but from a business perspective, I think it's generally a bad idea to have a high level employee who likes hitting your customers.  Furthermore, if you absolutely have to defend Knight, which no one should, at least say he was misunderstood, or was really a nice guy deep down who had learned his lesson, or some other nonsense like that which is definitely not true but if true would constitute grounds for keeping him around.  Simply going with "he deserved to retire at Indiana" is a horrible sales pitch when your goal is to convince an audience that a guy who hits and chokes people should definitely have a job.  Bonus stupidity points for going with the legalese "any differences that may have existed" (that part I remember verbatim, or close), and refusing to acknowledge that there actually was a problem when Knight got shitcanned.

Only four and a half months until the season is over and Vitale mercifully disappears for the summer.

This is the state of sports broadcasting in 2012

Brian Wilson hasn't pitched since April, and of course will not pitch again until 2013.  Did that stop FOX from showing him cheering in the dugout 50 goddamn times per game, and even having Erin Andrews do a little piece about him tonight?  Of course not.  Focus group data undoubtedly said PEOPLE LOVE HIM, HIS BEARD IS CRAZY AND HE IS SILLY and so he got like 25 minutes of screen time throughout this series.  I'm not some kind of purist who hates anything done to help drive interest among casual fans.  The 2nd wild card exists for that exact purpose and I'm cool with it.  But Jesus--come on, FOX.  There are like 100 other things you could be showing/talking about.

I hate the Giants and I hate all of you.

Buck Martinez says something that is untrue

Re: Verlander.

Sometimes, when you have four great pitches, it creates problems.

No.

(And he didn't mean that in a silly way, like "You have to choose which awesome pitch to use to get all your strikeouts!" He meant that somehow, you could maybe get hung up on using one pitch and forget about your other pitches, and hitters could take advantage of that.  Which, like I said: no.)

He orates about as well as he writes

Rick Reilly, on the MNF set, talking about the crazy final play of the game:

B.J. Raji told me he was shocked to look up and see one ref signaling touchdown, and another signaling touchback!  To me, this is... the whole... era of replacement refs... one touchdown, one says touchback... (trails off) So fellas, is this the straw that broke Goodell's back?

/death stare from Steve Young

Throw in a few terrible puns and something about how great golf is and you've got yourself an article.

You can't take a $1,000 pair of Italian loafers and step in poop, over and over again!

You certainly can't!  Fucking idiot.

Knowing me I won't post again until Sunday, so here are three posts in one, I hope all eight of you out there are happy

First of all: thanks, Chris Berman (and pretty much every other NFL announcer this weekend), but I truly could not give any less of a hairy, sputtering shit what these replacement refs do for a living when they're not refereeing.  I don't care if any of them are teachers, I don't care if any of them are in sales, I don't care if any of them are cocksucking nuclear physicists.  I flat out don't, and I think I'm probably in the majority.  1) Like I already said, NO ONE GIVES A SHIT, IT'S JUST NOT INTERESTING OR RELEVANT IN THE LEAST.  2) The regular unionized refs have other full time jobs, too, and there's a good reason we don't have to hear about those jobs twenty times a game (see #1).

Second of all: there are Bill Simmons fans out there.  Tens of thousands of them.  If you know one, link them to this (they'll already have read it, and possibly already linked YOU to it, but I'm presenting a "just in case" scenario).  Once you know they've read it, as calmly as you can (suggestion: assuming you do the asking via GChat or email, don't use all caps), ask them how they sleep at night.  That article is supposed to be about last Wednesday's Giants/Cowboys season opener.  It is 1261 words long.  The first 647 are a story about his dog.  There is no sports context, not even a hint of one.  Just a drawn out, snooze-inducing story about his dog pooping in his house that can be best summarized as GUH HURRR DOGS ARE A REAL HANDFUL DERP DERP DERP.  So that's just over 50% of the article, toast.  Then we get the following:

What does this have to do with tonight's Giants-Cowboys game? 

GODDAMN NOTHING. You just wanted to tell a story about your dog because you're a navel-gazing self-obsessed cuntswabber.

There's an exceedingly good chance that Jerry Jones, as an NFL owner, has turned into a post-ribs Rufus. Year after year, he ruins at least one rug as Cowboys fans shrug their shoulders and say the football equivalent of things like, "Well, we're stuck with him, it's not like we can just drop him off at the pound and start over, right?"

Your dog pooped on a rug.  Jerry Jones, like every owner in the history of modern professional sports, occasionally makes a dumb move.  I get that Jones is more hands on that pretty much any other owner, so it's easier to pin the Cowboys' failures on him than it is to blame the failures of the average team on that team's owner, but this is still incredibly pathetic.

The Cowboys do everything in the flashiest way possible, obscuring their staggering lack of success in recent years. 

Their lack of recent success is not obscured in any way.  EVERYONE knows they've only won one playoff game since their last Super Bowl victory and have had some very shitty seasons.  Everyone.  Only someone completely out of touch with the NFL would think the "the Cowboys actually haven't been that good for the last 15 years!" is some kind of insightful angle.

When a franchise worries about the perception of what it's doing instead of what it's actually doing, trouble usually ensues. We just watched this happen to the Red Sox. 

Oh good, finally, some Red Sox analysis!  That's what the readers came for!

When a franchise underestimates its fans and assumes they're not smart enough to value things like patience and planning, and that it needs to keep them interested with splashy moves the same way a parent would hand a screaming kid an ice cream cone, trouble usually ensues. Again, we just watched this happen to the Red Sox. 

/wanking motion

Which makes me think the Cowboys will be our next big-market flame-out. 

They already have flamed out, dumbass.  They're one of the biggest failures in the league since 1996 if you measure dollars per win or dollars per postseason win.  You pointed it out yourself like 150 words ago.  

Just ask Knicks fans and Redskins fans. When your fans fully expect you to crap on the carpet before it even happens, that's officially the point of no return. 

That sentence is meaningless.  It carries no meaning, it adds nothing to anything.  It is a waste of time, pixels, bandwidth, and anything else of which it could possibly be a waste.

Anyway, I'm laying 3.5 points with the Giants over Dallas tonight. 

Of course the Cowboys handled the Giants and cruised to victory.

Finally of all: managers don't do that much.  They just don't.  But some of them are media darlings, and that means that when those managers' teams succeed, the media is going to trip all over itself to find a way to give those managers as much credit as possible for success that is 95% due to the actions of players.  Here, some doofus gives Buck Showalter big time props for doing stuff that holy sweet Jesus, I certainly hope every single manager in the league does.  (This article contains another article.  Stay with me now, don't get confused.  INCEPTION.)  

What's his secret? As with any manager, it's putting his players in position to succeed. That can take the form of sniffing out the platoon advantage, keeping peace in the clubhouse, having a deft touch with the bullpen, balancing hunches with data-driven decisions, and so on. 

Like you just said, "as with any manager."

One of the ways managers can distinguish themselves is by juggling lineups and rotations based on non-traditional "platoon points" -- e.g., ground ball-fly ball tendencies, park effects, and strengths/weaknesses of the opposing defense.

They can only distinguish themselves by paying attention to these things if other managers around the league don't pay attention to them, and the odds of that being the case are like nothing percent.

Additionally, as Jonathan Pitts of the Baltimore Sun explains in an outstanding piece on the peculiar phenomenon of the strike zone, Showalter also lets the umpiring drive his tactical decisions. Pitts writes:

The skipper, now in his 14th big league season, points to a spreadsheet on a wall in his office. It ranks all big league umpires by how greatly they favor pitchers or hitters.

The top name on the list is Brian Runge, an ump known for calling a big zone; lower down is veteran Joe West, whose zone is seen as smaller, his ball-strike distribution more even.

When Runge's behind the plate, Showalter says, he might tell hitters to "go up there swinging." When West is back there, "we know we'll have to throw the ball over the plate."

Holy.  Shit.  It's like he's Rain Man or something.  What a savant.

Showalter is known to tweak his pitching rotation when he sees the umpiring schedule for the week.

I live within the TV broadcasting area of the Orioles and watch a couple games a week.  I have not once heard my main man Gary Thorne or any of his revolving cast of color commentators mention that a starter was moved up or back a day to correspond to the umpiring schedule.  If it's true, that's actually a somewhat unorthodox thing for a manager to do, but I kind of doubt it's true.  Now back to the original CBSSports article.

It stands to reason, right? 

Wrong?  Teams are definitely not going to go out of their way to start pitchers on three days' rest because they might get some kind of nebulous benefit from the plate umpire that night.  I just looked through the game logs of all eight Orioles pitchers who have started at least ten games this season.  Not one of them has made a start on three days's rest, something they'd pretty much have to do by definition if Buck was fucking around with the rotation to get favorable umpire matchups.  Granted, because they've started so many different guys, it's possible that Buck has moved some of them in and out of the rotation at times advantageous to those matchups.  But it's certainly not a primary strategy of his; the most I'll allows is the possibility that at times he's had to say "Shit, Arrieta can't fucking get anyone out anymore.  I guess we'll bring up Tillman to take his spot in the rotation next Thursday, and hey, whaddaya know, that's also an umpire whose tendencies will help Tillman!"  Again, I sincerely doubt that even this much has happened, but I'll grant that it's possible.

After all, the discrepancies among umpires have a bearing on the game itself, so it only follows that those discrepancies also have a bearing on how managers approach the game. 

If you're desperately trying to give Showalter the credit that should go to Baltimore's bullpen and timely hitting, then yeah, you might make that argument.

Maybe Showalter's ahead of the curve in this approach, 

If by "this approach" you mean telling hitters to swing more often when an ump with a big zone is calling the game, there's not a fucking chance.  If by "this approach" you mean juggling your rotation to somehow generate umpire/SP matchups favorable to your team, there's almost no fucking chance he's actually doing this.

or maybe he's the only one talking about it. In either case, it's interesting to know he's thinking about the umpires as he fills out his lineup card.

Buck Showalter is an MLB manager.  There are 29 other guys who have more or less his exact same skillset out there.  His has a career managing record that is mildly successful at best.  He's not made out of magic and candy and lollipops.  Can the baseball media please just get the fuck over the guy?  That's rhetorical, I know the answer is no.  I'm hoping the O's make the playoffs because their fans deserve it. But if and when they do, holy fried shitballs, it's going to be an insufferable week of hearing about how Buck himself made 50 starts on the mound and hit cleanup and 7th every day to propel them there.  

Note to pretty much every football commentator on every network

"Dynamic" does not mean talented, skilled, or awesome. In fact, saying someone is a DYNAMIC FOOTBALL PLAYER OUT THERE ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD isn't really much of a compliment at all. Now of course it's not an insult either. But just because it has three syllables and sounds cool when you say it doesn't mean you blithering idiots need to use it forty times a game. Thanks.

Also, was subjected to an avalanche of FOX promos while watching the Pac 12 Championship Game tonight. Turns out they're debuting a Napolean Dynamite cartoon in January. Big ups to whoever greenlit that project; it's a mere six years too late to piggyback on the moderate success of the movie. Can't wait for them to roll out a Wedding Crashers single camera reboot next fall.

The only people I hate more than sportswriters are TV and movie executives. MOAR REMAKES AND SEQUELS PLZ

This is why he makes the big bucks

This source is extremely old, but apparently Boomer Esiason was making $1.6 million per year to be a color commentator back in 1998. Let's assume he's still making that same amount today (no, I will not adjust for inflation, because I want to spend fewer than 45 seconds on this post). Why shouldn't he when he offers insights like he did yesterday?

/Tom Brady, under pressure, completes a screen pass to Rob Gronkowski which goes for 15ish yards

You know... the Patriots lead the league in plays where they just get it done.

Beat that, Aikman. The gauntlet is thrown.

I'm not just a complainer- I'm an INTERNET-BASED complainer

Big Simmons post coming later this week, hopefully later Monday. In the meantime let's all sadly shake our heads at Doris Burke. Burke is employed by ESPN as a sideline reporter and sometimes commentator for NCAA basketball. She only works behind the mic for a handful of NBA games every year- not because (sexist joke here), but because she says ridiculous, meaningless bullshit like this.

The scene: Friday night's Nuggets/Blazers game. New Nugget Danilo Gallinari has just completed a nice sequence of offensive possessions that included a couple assists and a huge dunk. Burke's response to the dunk (not exact words, didn't DVR, but it certainly stuck in my head when I saw it live).

WOW! This is like the scene in Remember the Titans, where the quarterback gets hurt, and the new quarterback comes in and he looks timid at first, but then he makes some big plays, and the one coach says to the other, "We didn't just get a player- we got a FOOTBALL player!" Well the Nuggets should be looking at Gallinari and realizing they just got a BASKETBALL player.

Words fail me. Maybe Trent Dilfer and Mark Schlereth know what the fuck that means, but I doubt anyone else in the world does.

Long Post? Nope, Short Post

I was going to cover the latest pile of shit to stumble off of Simmons's unfunny fingertips, but it's so long-winded and terrible that I couldn't finish the post tonight. So instead I thought you might find it hilarious that FOX hired Kevin Millar to call baseball games. And similarly hilarious that he said this on Saturday during the Reds/Braves game:

Drew Stubbs has great speed. I was watching him during spring training, and he beat out a routine ground ball to the shortstop. Literally beat it out.

Did he kick the ball out of the stadium? Did he masturbate on it? I'm not sure how you literally beat out a grounder to short, and sadly, Kevin probably doesn't either. But hey, at least he doesn't look like a complete dumbass, right?




Oh. Frowny emoticon.

You are not Clever. Shut Up and Go Away

Mark Jackson, talking over a replay of a Kobe Bryant fadeaway during tonight's game:

And the question is, Ko-be or not Ko-be?

No. That's not the question. It has nothing to do with the basket Bryant just scored. That wouldn't even "be the question" if Bryant were onstage somewhere, performing Shakespeare. Go into a cave somewhere and don't come out.


Since this is a super lazy and short post, let's add some variety! This is an incredibly badass article. No sarcasm. Read it. It totally doesn't suck. Long story short, the commissioner of the Big 10 is an evil genius and the commissioner of the Big 12 is a complete fucking moron. Spicy stuff.

And.... I Already Remember Why ESPN's Baseball Coverage is Often Painful

I've been out of the country for a few weeks, thus my lack of posting. I'll try to get back on track (and probably fail) with a substantial post later this week. In the meantime, I hope you watched the two most important teams in the history of teams, or perhaps the history of history, play a baseball game earlier tonight. There were 100 things wrong about the broadcast, but I only have time right now to write about one of them. Are you ready to nitpick? I thought you might be. Let's nitpick. During the game, play-by-play savant Jon Miller kept referring to Boston's newly acquired third baseman as:

Adrian Bel-TRE (with the emphasis on the "tre" syllable)

If you've paid attention to baseball at all during the last ten years, you know who Beltre is. Started with the Dodgers, had a near-MVP season in his contract year there, signed a big deal with the Mariners, didn't really hit all that well in Seattle, now with the Red Sox. Great glove guy. Not a lot of plate discipline. Decent power. Loves Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Reese's Puffs. More important than all of those things, though, is that if you've paid attention to baseball during the last ten you know how to pronounce the guy's name. It's BEL-tre. Adrian BEL-tre. With the emphasis on BEL. Since 1997, Jon Miller has been the radio guy for the Giants. Who play in the same division as the Dodgers. Where BELtre played for the first seven seasons of his career. Holy crap, Jon. You've probably said this guy's name like 7,000 times in your life. Why are you saying it like that? I'm sure at least one person over the years has corrected you. Heck, you could always just look it up yourself. Look, it took me 15 seconds to find this. But there it was, all night long. BelTRE. BelTRE with the catch, and the throw to first! BelTRE watches that one, strike two. BelTRE BelTRE BelTRE. Shoot me in the fucking eardrum. How do you screw that up?

Oh, and don't forget, Miller's regular partner in the booth probably can't recite the alphabet, tie his own shoes, or tell you how many teams there are in MLB currently. He also pontificates about clogging up the bases and wants every single guy who ever played a single game for the Big Red Machine in the HOF. He thinks Barry Bonds didn't use steroids and that Gary Sheffield is a great teammate. But he also has something like 12 Emmys for sports broadcasting.

Ah, big time sports media- it's the blind leading the blind. At least we don't have to listen to Billy Packer during March Madness anymore I guess.

Mike Tirico: Awful in the MNF Booth, Awful Everywhere Else

Mike, what say you re: mercurial Denver Nuggets shooting guard J.R. Smith?

He can really provide a boost of your bench, but he can also take some misguided shots. He can shoot you into a game, from both directions!

So he can shoot you into a game, and shoot you out of it. See how that works so much better? I mean, what you said makes sense too. As long as you're either trying to sound vaguely sexual, or describe how to fully marinate a roast. Tirico is terrible; why he is allowed to announce live sports in any capacity is beyond me. Might as well put Kornheiser and Rush Limbaugh in the NBA booth with him. I think they'd all compliment each other very nicely.

Full Simmons post coming tomorrow morning.

And I Can Make a Free Throw at 4:30 AM- So What?

Watching the NFL's RedZone channel, which is so worth the $50 it cost me for the season. So worth it. It's highly recommended. Anyways, at one point they cut to the Cardinals/Lions game, where the announcers had this to say about Daunte Culpepper:

I mean, the Cardinals have been saying all week that Culpepper is a guy who can make every throw. I mean, he can wake up at 3 AM and throw a spiral.

The fuck does that mean? Is it a figure of speech anyone uses to describe a talented QB? ("Talented" being used loosely in the case of Culpepper, of course.) I sure hope not.

Hey, Anonymous Commenter Who Defended Ron Darling Earlier Today, Check this Out:

After being asked during the Yankees/Twins game to pick a winner in the Cardinals/Dodgers series, Ron said the Dodgers had a lot of question marks. Among them:

Clayton Kershaw, a guy at 22 years old, I believe,

He's 21, not that it matters.

you've got to find out if he's a guy who's ready to... to...

Ready to what? OUT WITH IT, BUMBLEFUCK.

take the antlers, and go, and have a great series!

Watch out Vin Scully, you've got competition in the "best in the announcing business" category. Take those antlers, Clayton. Take those antlers, and go, and have a great series. If I'm a Dodger fan I'm thinking it's more important that Randy Wolf grabs the bull by the horns, but that's just me.

Fuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I wish I could have liveblogged this entire game.

Scene: Tigers/Twins, Bottom of the 10th, Tigers lead 5-4. One out. Runners on first and third. Your hitter is Matt Tolbert. Yes, that's right, a player as bad as Matt Tolbert is going to decide the fate of the single biggest game of regular season baseball. Chip Caray and "Color Guy" have the call.

Pitch 1: Rodney throws a hard breaking ball down. Tolbert waves at it with his bat about 2 feet over where the ball crosses the plate with all the velocity of an old Asian woman driving on the expressway.

Pitch 2: Called fastball strike at the knees.

Pitch 3: Tolbert hits a weak bouncer up the middle. Within inches of Polanco's glove and a likely game-ending double-play (despite Tolbert's speed), the ball sneaks past the infield up the middle for a hit.

Color Guy: "What an at-bat by Tolbert!"

That's the formula for hitting success folks. It's simpler than we thought.

Step 1: Swing at awful pitch
Step 2: Take called strike
Step 3: Weakly hit bouncer
Step 4: ....
Step 5: Win!

__________________________________________________

And to conclude the game:

Chip Caray: You have to tip your cap to the Jim Leyland and the Detroit Tigers. They could not hold a 7 game lead at the beginning of September.

Gee there Chip, that sure was a thoughtful thing to say! You gotta hand it to the Chicago Cubs. They did not come close to living up to their talent this year.

How Did You Get This Job?

Before hiring someone to announce sports on TV, you'd think an employer would make sure their future employees knew something about the league the employees were about to cover. But evidently TNT doesn't subscribe to that school of thought. During today's 76ers/Magic game, one of their F team announcers (Googled around for a while, couldn't figure out who they were... I watched a lot of NBA this season, and their voices didn't sound familiar) had this to say about Saturday's stars:

You know, sometimes in the playoffs you get big contributions from unlikely sources. Derrick Rose, for the Bulls... Jose Juan Barea... Yao Ming...

Barea, sure. Ming and Rose? They were their teams' LEADING and #3 scorers during the regular season, respectively. Whoever you are, unknown announcer man, you're a fucking clown.

In semi-related news, the NBA playoffs have started! Chris W, your thoughts? (Warning: link goes to best post in FireJay history)

Tim McCarver Has Been a Complete Fucking Moron for at Least Fifteen Years

ESPN Classic was showing game 6 of the 1993 World Series (the Joe Carter game) earlier today. Our main man Timmy was in the booth. Now, when I first recognized that velvety tone, I thought to myself "Maybe he wasn't so stupid back then. This could even be enjoyable." Turns out... not so much. A couple choice pieces of dumbfuckery he managed to spew in the hour I watched:

Most people think "PM" is an abbreviation for "prime minister." But Paul Molitor (who had just hit a home run) is changing that, at least here in Canada.

1. A brief Google search reveals Molitor's nickname was "the Ignitor."
2. You can't just say that when someone does something cool, their initials replace a pre-existing abbreviation that is part of common knowledge.
3. Thanks for specifying that Americans probably don't think "prime minister" when they hear "PM."

During the climactic bottom of the 9th, after Rickey Henderson leads off the inning with a walk:

It is said that television is a visual medium. But that's not the case tonight in Philadelphia, because no one is watching.

Did he mean that no one was watching because they were covering their eyes, or because they had turned off their TVs? Either way, what a fucking dunce. This guy is still paid (presumably) huge sums of money to announce baseball games- and he was saying this kind of shit back in the early 90s. Imagine how much worse his brain works now as compared to then.

The sports media world is obviously not a meritocracy.

Dear Phil Simms, You Should Probably Just Stop Talking Now

Jets/Dolphins. Mid 2nd quarter. Brett Gunslinger drops back to pass, stands in the pocket, sees no receivers open, and heaves the ball down the field to an open area at least 25 yards from the nearest player in an attempt to avoid being sacked. The refs call intentional grounding. The following takes place:

Phil: And on the field, we have intentional grounding. Now that's a tough call. You know, what are you supposed to do? The receivers are covered! (incredulously) So now you've got to throw it "close" to the receiver? (screen cuts to replay) Nobody's open... here comes the receiver across the field who he wants to throw it to... so yes, he's avoiding the sack... but... everybody's covered!

Jim Nantz: Well, that's the rule about that, when you're between the tackles.

Phil: When you're between the tackles and throw the football away to avoid the sack, it is intentional grounding. I understand. But again... hey... (trails off)

Jim: Loss of down and 10 yards on top of it. Second and 20.

I know you said "I understand," Phil, but I think it's pretty obvious that you don't.

I Hope Steve Young Dared Stu Scott to Do This

Working on a TMQR. In the meantime...

Because otherwise, Scott and his producer should be placed in a crate and mailed to Mongolia. After Houston's 30-17 win over Jacksonville last night, Sportscenter had a "transition shot" (or whatever you want to call it; a "fun" little cut scene they shoot somewhere in the city that's hosting MNF, and then show before or after commercial breaks during and after the game) coming back from break featuring a dude in SCUBA gear in the shark tank of Houston's city aquarium. Said dude was wearing a Santa outfit over the gear, and holding a Texans helmet. Take it away, Stu:

(singing)
Saaaaaaaaaanta Claus is comin' to town!
Saaaaaaaaaanta Claus is swimmin' to town!
San-ta Claus was swimmin' (shoehorn this last part in to fit the rhythm of the song) intheTexans'win!

Douchechills. Nothing but douchechills.

Like I said, I really hope this idea originated with Scott's fellow MNF pregame commentator Steve Young. That's the only way it wouldn't automatically become the worst moment in the history of televised sports commentary.

I Watched the First Six Innings of the Game Last Night

And in doing so, I picked up the following eight pieces of garbage which Tim McCarver's mouth littered out of my TV set. (Despite my lack of DVR, all are printed here verbatim or very close.) Chris W and I had a discussion about Timmy- we agree that unlike, say, Joseph Q. McBrainless Morgansheffield, McCarver actually has a pretty decent head/brain on his shoulders. His problem is that the connection between said head/brain and his mouth is tenuous at best. He's got a lot to contribute... but he's unable to do so because he's inarticulate. He's like a less excitable version of Shannon Sharpe.

So why is this a big deal? Isn't it a little nitpicky to go after him when his crime (usually) is not stupidity, but rather struggling to put his thoughts into words? Well, I'm glad you asked. My stance is this: due to the fact that he's employed as a television broadcaster, i.e., he is paid to talk into a microphone and explain things to viewers, we're holding him to a perfectly reasonable standard by criticizing each and every dumb thing he says. So let's get to the head-scratchers.

1. During the pregame scouting report (that term being used loosely here, thanks, FOX) about Andy Sonnanstine:

[He]... might be the best thing a teammate could say about him... is that he's just a winner.

First of all, that sentence is either missing several words or is simply poorly spoken. Second, Sonnanstine's career regular season record: 19-19. Record in last night's game: 0-1. This "He's just a winner!" bullshit is the kind of half-hearted attempt at praise broadcasters give to players who don't actually have much talent, but play for successful teams. See: Young, Vince.

2. After Jimmy Rollins leads off the game with a double and moves to third on a Jayson Werth flyout:

The Phillies once again with a chance to score a cheap run here early.

I don't disagree with Tim that there are such things as "cheap" runs. However, I strongly disagree that a guy who leads off with a double and then comes around on two sac flies/groundouts scored "cheaply." A cheap run is like a HBP, a failed pickoff attempt that goes up the 1st base line and lets the runner get to third, and an error that allows the guy to score. Runs that score because of extra base hits are almost always very, very expensive.

3. Referring to Philadelphia's poor performance in the series thus far in terms of getting hits when runners are on base:

It's almost as if the Phillies can't score a run unless they drive in themselves! With a teammate... uh... (trails off)

Good point in the first sentence there. In the first three games of the series, they'd hit six solo home runs and only scored ten runs total. However, Tim, once you've made that point, maybe it's time to quit while you're ahead, shut up, and let Joe Buck fill up the airwaves with more of his smarmy drivel.

4. After Jimmy Rollins reaches on an Akinora Iwamura error to open the bottom of the 4th-

When Rollins gets on, he prevents the Phillies from becoming a station-to-station team.

Could you possibly do a worse job of phrasing that idea? It would be tough. I might go with "When Rollins gets on, the Phillies can't not be a team that doesn't go station-to-station." But I'm not sure that stacks up to what Tim said. Also: Rollins ended up scoring when Ryan Howard hit the proverbial three-run homer everyone except the Angels seems to be waiting around for these days.

5. With runners on 1st and 2nd, Iwamura snares a Carlos Ruiz ground ball but doesn't have a play on any of the runners. Tim gets excited.

Think about the wisdom of that play! With 2 outs and a runner on second, infielders are taught to dive for a ball even if they don't have a play!

Whereas, if there isn't a runner on second who could potentially score if the ball gets to the outfield, most infielders will just kind of watch a grounder trickle past them and shrug their shoulders. Also- I'm pretty sure the use of "wisdom" there is a little heavy-handed.

6. Noting that Sonnanstine was not exactly pounding the strike zone:

I wouldn't say the layoff (14 days had passed since his last start) has affected his effectiveness, but it has affected his control.

Sonnanstine's fastball tops out at about 89 mph, and one of his biggest strengths is limiting walks (63 in 324 career innings). I'm pretty sure effectiveness and control are one and the same for him. His biggest problem last night was not doing a good enough job controlling his control.

7. Comparing Tropicana Field to Citizens Bank Park:

The dimensions are not as big here.

Again, we have a problematic disconnect between a thought (good, relevant) and a sentence (sounds like it was orinigally written in Japanese, translated to English, then translated back and forth a couple more times).

8. After a Joe Blanton solo shot makes it 6-2 Phils in the bottom of the 5th:

Normally they only score in one or two big innings. They do not have an offense with those tack on runs, but they do tonight.

Re: the first sentence- Wrong. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Re: the second sentence- What? What, what, and what?

Given the way Cole Hamels has been pitching this month, there may be but a scant one game left in the 2008 MLB season. Gosh, seems like just yesterday I was waking up at 5:30 in the morning to watch the A's and Red Sox square off in Tokyo. Good thing the NBA is about to start up! And I mean that non-sarcastically. Check the comments section for Chris W's obligatory complaints thereof.