Category Archives: Sports

Schadenfreuders Unanimous

Schadenfreuders Unanimous, Engage!

So this looks like it might be fun! As I’m sure you know, the MLB playoffs are starting very soon. According to my calculations (mashes hand against keyboard), on Friday, in fact. I love watching playoff baseball, even in those years when my favorite team is not participating. Which is good, because they so seldom make the cut. I love the drama, the idea that a team’s every hope can come down to one solitary pitch. I love the idea that a player who barely anyone had heard of yesterday can become a celebrated hero today.

But more than anything else, I love mocking announcers, umpires, players, and managers whose idiocy demands such treatment. Because baseball, more than any other sport, has a postseason in which all of these people bring The Stupid in great, heaping bushels. I don’t know why this is, to be honest, but I do know that it is true and that I love it, and because it is bitter and because it is my heart.

So then, I’ve decided to do some features on this here site involving them there playoffs under the umbrella title of Schadenfreuders Unanimous. What, you can come up with a better title? Oh, that is pretty good, actually. Dammit, I should have asked you first.

No matter! We shall proceed. And what we shall proceed with is a series of recaps and live chats of as many of these games as I can humanly manage, with some of the more cringe-worthy moments and quotes from each broadcast. I imagine I will lean heavily on the broadcasting foibles, as those are the kind of things that tend to get under my skin this time of year (even in non-Buck/McCarver games).

Live chattery will probably wait until the LCSes, unless we get to some thrilling elimination games in the division series. I wouldn’t rule out that possibility, but if recent history is any indication, I wouldn’t hold my breath for it either. I did these way back during the 2009 World Series and found them an excellent way to stave off the dull, throbbing pain caused by watching the Yankees play the Phillies for a championship.

So keep watching this space! More details as they develop! Buy war bonds!

Baseball

Bart Giamatti Said It Best, 2011 Edition

From “The Green Fields of the Mind”

It breaks your heart.

It is designed to break your heart.

The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again,

and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings,

and then as soon as the chill rains come,

it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time,

to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive,

and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most,

it stops.

* * *

Behold, the past! 2009 and 2010

Baseball

Mets Block Yankees, Crush City’s Dreams

DOWN-TRODDEN NEWARK, NJ–It was revealed on Monday night that the Mets, an alleged major league franchise, had blocked the Yankees’ efforts to temporarily relocate their triple-A franchise to Newark. Critics have already labeled it the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of baseball.

Supporters of the move say the arrival of the team from Scranton-Wilkes Barre could have rejuvenated this benighted urban area and brought a brief glimmer of hope to the many forlorn widows and orphans of this fair metropolis fallen on hard times. Instead, their dreams are snuffed, as they are denied the only thing that could brighten a crime-ridden, drug-addled, gang-ruled hellhole: minor league baseball.

“I tried everything with those cold-hearted Mets,” said a Yankees official, who could not be identified as his face was too obscured by large, bitter tears. “I promised we wouldn’t make the move permanent. I promised we would okay any move they wanted to make with their own minor league teams. Wilpon was unmoved by my pleas. First he asked for my watch, which was a graduation gift from my mother. I gladly gave it over, thinking only of the poor children of Newark. Then he asked me to get on my knees and pay homage to The Dark Lord. That I simply could not do. So he threw me out on the curb. And he kept the watch.”

Newark has a grand tradition of Yankee minor league affiliates. However, the team has not had a farm team in the city since 1949. Some believe that the Mets may have traveled back in time and forced the legendary Newark Bears to go bankrupt, paving way for the regrettable National League expansion of 1962 that gave birth to their hellish form.

Critics of the Mets say that the Yankees never have and never would engage in such churlish, petty behavior. They also point out that the Yankees’ attitude toward their “crosstown rivals” has never been short of cordial, and they have never attempted to interfere with their operations. Unlike the Mets, the Yankees have always conducted themselves with the utmost class and grace. To have the Yankees’ ceaseless kindness to their lesser neighbors repaid in such fashion is the kind of brazen insult that, in times of yore, would have demanded a duel of honor. No jury would convict them of such a “crime,” and yet they will surely take the higher road, as they always have.

“They couldn’t have won all those championships without always being consummate gentlemen,” said some guy I met on line at Starbucks while writing this article. “Only good people win things.”

Fred Wilpon was unapologetic for his act of wanton cruelty. Speaking while seated in a gargoyle-topped throne, each leg of which sat on a freshly killed puppy, Wilpon told the assembled reporters (all of whom were forced to genuflect in his presence), “I hate children.” He then drank from a chalice that may or may not have contained human blood.