Category Archives: Media Morons

Up the Middle with Skitch Hanson: All Hail the Hall!

Scratchbomb hands over the reins to nationally syndicated sports columnist Skitch Hanson, as we’ve done many times before. It’s great to hear from him, because the last time I spoke to Skitch, he was getting lost and possibly assaulted at Yankee Stadium.

You may know Skitch as the author of the highly popular syndicated column “Up The Middle.” You may have read his best-selling book Playing Stickball with Mickey Mantle, and Other Weird Dreams I Had. He’s also a frequent guest on ESPN’s sportswriters panel show Mouth-Talkers! You can follow Skitch on Twitter here. Without further ado, here’s Skitch.

Each winter, I have a great responsibility. And no, it’s not shoveling the driveway! And no, it’s not picking up my wife from the drunk tank after the office Christmas party!

No, I’m talking about my Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. It is quite an honor to participate in the voting every year and help decide who will be immortalized in Cooperstown. There are no halls in the history of halls that are more hallowed than the Baseball Hall of Fame. Perhaps The Halls of Medicine in the old Halls cough drop commercials, but those ads haven’t been on the air in several years. Or perhaps the Halls of Justice, but that’s more of a concept than an actual place.

No, for an actual, physical set of halls, the ones in Cooperstown are the best. But those halls would mean nothing without the people who inhabit them. Not literally, of course. I mean the legends immortalized there in plaque form, or in a video loop on a TV in the lobby. That’s why I take my voting very seriously. I think long and hard about who gets my vote and who does not, because I know I have a hand in solidifying baseball history.

Unfortunately, this year I was less serious about mailing my ballot in, since I accidentally dropped it behind the Xerox machine some time last month. I would have dug out my ballot, but me and electronic equipment do not get along! Like the time I dropped my laptop in a koi pond and electrocuted several hundred fish! Boy, the people at Benihana’s were not happy about that!

andredawson.jpgI did intend to vote for Andre Dawson, and I’m very glad that he made it in. You could argue there were more deserving candidates than him, and his career was hampered by injuries, and I never got to see him play too often, now that I think about it. But I do remember “Hawk” having one unbelievably awesome year where he won the MVP. You certainly can’t argue with that! At least not until I remember exactly what year that was.

I’m very disappointed that Jack Morris still has not made it to Cooperstown. Because when you talk dominant starting pitchers of the 1980s, you have to talk about Jack Morris. Sure, you have to talk some about other guys first, like Fernando Valenzuela. And Doc Gooden. And Roger Clemens. And Jimmy Key and Frank Viola and Nolan Ryan and Orel Hershiser and Bret Saberhagen and Steve Carlton and Bruce Hurst and Dave Stieb and John Tudor and Mike Scott. But eventually, you have to talk about Jack Morris.

Morris may not have had the gaudy stats that some of those other guys did. But he did have that wonderful 10-inning duel against John Smoltz in game 7 of the 1991 World Series. That’s one of the most famous pitching performances of all time. Plus there were three or four other really great games he pitched whose details escape me right now. That’s good enough for the Hall in my book.

Remember, we’re talking about The Hall of Fame, not The Hall of Obscure Statistics. Bert Blyleven had a great career, but I can’t think of a famous moment involving him. Same goes for Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, and Barry Larkin. Until those guys have a transcendent moment, I can’t in good conscience vote to enshrine them. Unless somebody reminds me of a moment I couldn’t recall. In which case, welcome aboard, fellas!

How do you define a moment? I can’t say. Can you define a beautiful sunrise? The wonder in a child’s eyes? The magic of Christmas? (I hope the folks at Hallmark won’t mind; I adapted those last few lines from a “To a wonderful great-aunt” birthday card.) A moment is a lot like pornography: you know it when you see it. Most moments don’t involve hardcore nudity, of course. At least not in baseball. But I think you get my point.

alomar.jpgAs for Roberto Alomar, who missed The Hall by a few votes, I think that is fair punishment for spitting on an umpire many years ago. I’m aware that the umpire, John Hirschbeck, forgave Alomar publicly for his actions. But to simply let him into Cooperstown on the first ballot would be a slap in the face to all those other players who did not spit on umpires. I’ll be perfectly happy to vote for Alomar on the next ballot, after he’s had a full year to think about what he did.

What kind of message would it send to our kids to let Alomar into the Hall right away? Spitting is never okay. Unless you’ve ingested poison or sour milk, in which case you should expectorate discreetly into a napkin or paper towel.

It’s hard enough to get kids to stop spitting without seeing major league baseball players doing it. My son has been spitting at me ever since Alomar attacked Hirschbeck with his saliva. And he’s 32! He’s still mad at me for missing several birthdays in a row to cover the XFL championship game. I told him that as a reporter, I have a responsibility to cover my beat, and that responsibility doesn’t disappear just because the league hasn’t existed in several years.

We all need to teach our kids–to show our kids–that responsibility is important. We must meet our responsibilities head on, whether they involve voting for the Hall of Fame, or keeping nasty spitters out of that Hall of Fame, or filing stories on sports leagues that have folded, or making sure my wife doesn’t jump bail again. And we must not foist these responsibilities on others, like when I begged the cleaning lady to get my Hall of Fame ballot from behind the copier with her broom.

Being responsible may not get you into Cooperstown. But it will earn you a trip to the Hall of Respect of Your Fellow Humans. That may be an even greater place to be. Except for the fact that you don’t get a plaque and it doesn’t literally exist.

The Steve Phillips Press Conference to End All Steve Phillips Press Conferences

phillips2.jpgI’m going to make this press conference brief. As you all know by now, I had an affair with a 22-year-old ESPN employee. Because of that, I have been suspended indefinitely from my duties as an analyst for postseason games and ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. This woman has stalked and harassed my wife and children, so I ask that you please respect my privacy at this difficult time for me and my family. However, I will take a few brief questions. Yes, Buster Olney?
olney2.jpgIs this for real? Or are you just pretending to be a lecherous douchebag, like you pretended to be a GM in those “press conferences” you made us do a few years back? You know, those “press conferences” that robbed all of us of our professional dignity and integrity?
phillips2.jpgThis is totally real. Believe me, I wish it wasn’t…
olney2.jpgOh, so it’s like when you pretended to be GM of the Mets!
phillips2.jpgNo, Buster, I was an actual GM. You know, I’m pretty proud of what I…
jeremyschaap.jpgHey, Steve, Jeremy Schaap here. Are you attracted to the criminally insane? Or are those the only women you can convince to sleep with you?
phillips2.jpgOn the advice of my attorney, I’m going to have to…
gammons3.jpgSteve, Peter Gammons here. In the litany of bad decisions you’ve made in your life, which is worse: having sex with some random kookadook who ruined your life, or trading Melvin Mora for Mike Bordick?
phillips2.jpgMike Bordick had some pretty big hits for us down the stretch in…

gammons3.jpgHow about Jason Isringhausen for Billy Taylor?

phillips2.jpgBilly Taylor was a fine closer who…

gammons3.jpgHow about you trying to trade both Jose Reyes and David Wright while they were still prospects?

phillips2.jpgPeter, those deals didn’t go through, so…

olney2.jpgSteve, you nearly ruined the Mets, you were universally hated as a talking head, and now your personal life is in shambles and you’ve got zero credibility because you couldn’t keep it in your pants. All because you got off on a power trip to bedding a subordinate less than half your age.
phillips2.jpgDo you have a question, Buster?
olney2.jpgNo, I don’t, Steve. I just wanted to remind you how totally fucked you are right now.
phillips2.jpgThanks, Buster. Okay, thank you all for your time. I have to go now…
olney2.jpgOh no, Steve, you’re not going anywhere. This is where you stay now.
phillips2.jpgThis is where I stay now? I don’t understand.
olney2.jpgESPN has an Ironic Punishment room for all of its employees who commit sexual harassment.
gammons3.jpgYeah. This is where they’ve been keeping Sean Salisbury for the past two years. His cell phone constantly rings, but it’s always other dudes texting him pictures of their junk.
salisbury.jpg
IT’S TORTURE! DELICIOUS TUMESCENT TORTURE!

The Play-by-Play of the Living Dead

If nothing else good comes out of these MLB playoffs (and nothing probably will, as a Phillies-Yankees World Series leaves me rooting for the meteor), they may force the league to correct two glaring deficiencies. The first is, obviously, the umpiring. I am 100 percent convinced one huge game this year will be definitively and adversely affected by a terrible call. There will be no room for debate as to whether this call cost a team the game, as there was with Phil Cuzzi’s brainlock in the ALDS. No, I’m talking about a blatant blown call at a critical moment in a deciding game of a series that shifts victory from one side to the other. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

Then, hopefully, Bud Selig will be forced to reverse his idiotic anti-replay-expansion stance. We have the technology to make replay review work efficiently, it wouldn’t appreciably lengthen games (if anything, it’d shorten them, since it would prevent managers stomping out onto the field to scream about blown calls), and we could even use umpires to man the review booth/room/quonset hut. Selig is like an astronomer who refuses to use a telescope. “No way! Looking at the spheres too closely ruins their mystique! I’ll just keep using my magnifying glass to view Jupiter, thank you very much!”

The second one is less essential, but just as important to fans, in my mind. Hopefully, this postseason will force MLB to get new announcers for the biggest games of the year. Because right now, the play-by-play guys they’ve chosen are across the board terrible.

Just like bad umpiring, fans’ toleration of announcers’ hideousness is at an all-time low. Read any sports-related site and you will see nothing but contempt for the men who are supposed to be the Voices of Baseball. Spend an evening on Twitter during a game, and it’s hard to miss the embarrassment and anger inspired by bad play-by-play. That contempt is finally starting to find its way into the mainstream media, which gives me hope that some changes will be afoot by this time next year.

Chip Caray’s gotten the worst reviews, even though this is his second year doing the playoffs. The difference this year is that he’s calling Yankee games, thus exposing a large, vocal, passionate fanbase to his hideousness. Although it is somewhat curious that Yankee fans would object to Chip when they’re usually treated to Michael Kay. But when picking the announcer for the tentpole games of the postseason, shouldn’t you have higher criteria than “not much worse than Michael Kay”?

joebuck2.jpgJoe Buck, on the other hand, receives few complaints. I think most fans feel that he’s been around for so long, there’s no point in slagging him. We’ll never be rid of him, we realize now. He’s like some small town mayor voted into office for 17 consecutive terms. No one bothers running against him anymore.

Buck and Caray are Legacy Broadcasters. They’re both the sons of beloved baseball voices. Between them, Skip Caray and Jack Buck had about 700 years of play-by-play experience. Add in Chip’s uncle Harry, and that’s quite a bloodline. One with an unhealthy amount of Budweiser and pork. (“If the moon was made of ribs, would you eat it?”)

So Chip and Joe were just sort of admitted to broadcasting, the way people are admitted to Harvard or Yale because everyone in their families went to Harvard or Yale. Merit had nothing to do with it. And just like the inbred blue-blood alumni of Harvard and Yale tend to grow up to do terrible things to our country, so too have Chip and Joe done terrible things to the game of baseball.

Here’s the thing, though: If you put a gun to my head, I’d take Chip Caray over Buck. Yes, Chip Caray gets things wrong and his knowledge of players is extremely limited and his impoverished vocabulary means he uses certain words constantly (like “fisted” regardless of whether the ball was actually fisted or not and without any seeming awareness of the double meaning). Worst of all, he used to be a Braves broadcaster. But even allowing all of that, I’ll take Chip over Joe, if I have to take either.

Because if Chip Caray has nothing else going for him (and he might not), when he does play-by-play, he sounds as if he likes baseball. He seems to understand that there are exciting moments in a game that should be reacted to with a certain level of enthusiasm. He can at least do this simple, obvious task.

Joe Buck can not. Because Joe Buck fucking hates baseball.

There’s an old saying: The worst day at the ballpark is better than the best day at the office. Joe Buck does not understand this saying. Because every moment spent in the vicinity of the game is a torturous hell to him. He is trapped in a purgatory of his own making, and he does not rage against its walls. He resigns himself to apathy, because caring would be pointless.

When Joe Buck calls a game, he simply tells you what happened. After each pitch, he says “ball one” or “strike two”. Each time the ball is put into play, he says “grounder to short” or “single to left. No embellishment whatsoever. Every second he spends in a broadcast booth is destroying him, and he transmits that horror in every breath of his chilling, soulless play-by-play work.

It’s as if the playoffs are being called by a vampire. And not a sexy Twilight/True Blood vampire, either. A classic vampire, devoid of life, envious of the dead, wanting to take everyone else with him into his cold nether-region of the damned.

But I will thank Joe Buck for one thing. His complete apathy in the face of the year’s most exciting games provided the best moment of the playoffs so far. It came in game 2 of the ALCS on Saturday. You’ll be forgiven for missing it, because it came at a moment that you (unlike Buck) were wrapped up in because you found it exciting.

Top of the ninth, two outs, game tied at 2, Mariano Rivera on the mound in his second inning of relief. Torii Hunter at the plate. Future Hall of Famer versus dangerous hitter. Rivera falls behind 2-0, then gets two swinging strikes. The crowd is on its feet, cheering between the raindrops. Finally, Rivera throws his signature cutter, right on the inside black, and freezes Hunter. Called strike three, inning over. Mariano walks back to the dugout in his typically subdued way, a totally contrast to the fans, who are going ballistic.

This is the kind of moment a broadcaster lives for. Athletic theatre of the highest order. It is a sliver of time screaming out for either profundity or silence. What did Joe Buck say?

“What. A. … Game.”

I absolutely lost it. I laughed harder than I’ve laughed since I heard Tom Scharpling and Paul F. Tompkins discuss the Gathering of the Juggalos. It was so awkward and unsure of itself and tragically incompetent, I almost applauded.

It was delivered in the same tone as Comic Book Guy sneering “Worst. Episode. Ever.” Joe Buck actually paused between “a” and “game”, as if he forgot what he was going to say next, or someone clogged up his robot RAM with too much information and he was slow to process it. FATAL ERROR. SOME DATA MAY BE LOST.

Faced with an epic moment in a thrilling playoff game, this was the best Joe Buck could do. Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecution rests.