Thursday, October 30, 2014

A weird shill for Selig,

Gimme a freaking break with this:

"That is why there has never been a better ending to the World Series than we got Wednesday night in Kansas City, an ending and a World Series to make fools out of all the critics who keep suggesting that the sport is dying or has been passed by, the people who don’t love baseball or follow it and somehow think they have a right to tell you how to fix it or change it."

So Mike Lupica was riveted to the 7th inning of Game Six, at 1:00 am, to see if Tim Lincecum (or a differnt Giants mop up guy) was going to come in out of the bullpen?

Was Lupica keeping score at home?


I don't even know how to begin attacking this one sentence:

1) The World Series was terrible. You already know why, I don't have to explain again.

If you can name more than five players on either team, then you get a cookie.

If any of these players end up in the top five in MVP/Cy Young for the 2014 season, I have no idea who that would be (on second thought, maybe Posey can pull it off).


Five out of seven games were blowouts.


2) Some of us actually prefer to see the best teams and the best players in the finals.

Not some of us, a lot of us.

That explains why the ratings were the worst ever.


3) Of course a one-run Game Seven is terrifically exciting.

Now imagine if if happened with two good teams: Anaheim vs. LA.

Mike Trout or Yasiel Puig at the plate instead of an anonymous Royal.


4) The best ending ever to a World Series?

Bill Mazeroski, Bobby Richardson, Joe Carter, Jack Morris, and Luis Gonzalez might have something to say about that ... and there are many others.

Lupica even goes on to list the superior WS endings, inadvertently subverting his own argument. Context is key, and every other WS in memory involved superior teams.

Randy Johnson and Luis Gonzalez slayed the beast. Bumgarner beat the KC Royals, an 88-win team with no power who had not made the playoffs in three decades. You can't separate the story from the context.



5) Guess who has every "right" to explain what is wrong with baseball? The people who don't watch it or follow it.

That's exactly who needs to be convinced to watch baseball.

MLB should beg these point-missers to complain about the game rather than ignore it entirely. If I were Microsoft, I'd beg the consumers to explain why the Windows Phone only has 2.5% market share.


6) All of this nonsense is Lupica's weird defense of Selig. Probably hoping to gain endless access, a la Torre and Showalter. Not a journalist, a butt-kisser.

Selig makes 20 million steroid dollars per year and makes his final official appearance in an off-the-rack Sears suit.

Cool, man. We get it. You ooze "aw shucks" authenticity. It's your brand, you big phony.

Selig passes the commissioner baton to another old white lawyer, or whatever. A real out-of-the-box choice whose name I can't remember.

None of them get it. Lupica doesn't get it. Stop blaming the customer.


"This was the ending that this Series deserved, and that baseball needed, at this time when point-missers keep telling us that the only way to measure the sport is by network television ratings in October, as if that is the only way to measure the enduring beauty and greatness of the sport. This was a Series to make the people who think that baseball needs home runs to flourish look like the worst point-missers of them all."

Again with the ratings.

Lupica has forfeited the ratings argument forever, but I know for a fact he's going to waste no time mocking the 2015 post-Jeter YES Network ratings.

I mean, ratings no longer matter! The Astros are a huge success ... critics who panned "Manhattan Love Story" were missing the point ... the XFL lives!


Lupica has the nerve to explain to fans why they are incorrect when they tune out the Wild Card World Series.

Sorry, pal. The fans vote with their eyes, and they can never be wrong in that regard.

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