Stupid Logic

The world and all it's goings on would be a whole lot simpler if only logic were not involved. For example, I owe the good folks at Citi Bank a fair amount of money since they were kind enough to lend it to me so I could pay for and there by attend college. I would love for nothing more than to be free of this debt, but it being fairly sizable and me not being that wealthy it's going to take a while. Now of course, there are ways for me to make money quickly and in large sums to help pay down the debt. Say a series of robberies or maybe I could dabble in peddling controlled substances to make a lot of money quick. But then there's that part of my brain that says "Hold on, there are consequences for your actions and the ones of these actions are generally bad." Now that's a pretty simple example of logic bear in mind, but really I wanted to set a point to bring up a couple of examples where the logic, is well, flawed.

Example #1 - Former Patriots Video Assistant Matt Walsh's Attorney

OK, if you're familiar with the whole Patriots spygate thing, you know who Matt Walsh is, but if you don't here' the cliff notes version. He was a former Pats video assistant who claims to have tapes and knowledge of more of the Pats illegally taping opposing teams signals.

Alright, so the NFL wants to talk to this guy and see what he may have or may not have as the case may be. His lawyer, a fellow by the name of Michael Levy is seeking to get his client protection from being sued. OK, I guess that makes sense, looking to protect your guy so he doesn't get hung out to dry, cool people get that. But see, here's the thing, Esquire Levy wants protection for his client even if his client lies through his teeth about what he may know.

Pardon, come again? This is where things go askew. See the whole idea of immunity is to get protection from prosecution yourself in exchange for truthful testimony, that makes sense. But why in name of all that is holy should you get protection for lying? Isn't that like rewarding bad behavior. Plus, if this guy wants nothing more than the truth to come out, then why must he worry about consequences if he lies, which he apparently does not want to do. As his lawyer says, "Under our proposal, Mr. Walsh will only be protected if he is in good faith truthful and he will be."

Alright, so where's the issue here, he wants to be truthful, you say he will be truthful and the NFL has said if he is truthful then no harm shall come of him, so what's the problem? It appears that Walsh wants not only to have his cake and eat it too, but he wants some ice cream on the side and maybe a glass of milk to wash it all down. Basically he's looking for carte blanche to tell the truth and whatever the hell else he wants and not get in trouble for it.

How does that make any sense? It defies any and all logic to get protection against prosecution for being truthful and maybe lying. All that does is make your man look like he's dirty. If he's been assured that nothing bad will come to him if he tells the truth, then why does he need further protection? Now, this man is a lawyer, which makes me pretty confident he went to law school and passed the bar exam, which would again lead me to believe that he's a fairly intelligent fellow, but he sure doesn't seem to be showing it here.

Example #2 - Memphis Coach John Calipari

A wise man once told me and he was told from a wise man himself, that winning and losing a basketball game more often than not boils down to making lay-ups and foul shots. This isn't world bending philosophy and it won't be knocking Socrates or Locke or hell even John Maynard Keynes, but more often than not it is true.

There was a great college basketball game on the other night between then undefeated and number one ranked Memphis and second ranked Tennessee. Memphis is a great basketball team. They are athletic, physical, can score in transition and in even the half court some. But they are Achilles like in the regard that they have a weakness, that may seem minor, but could at some point cause them to crumble.

That weakness is foul shooting. Memphis as a team is currently shooting 58.5% from the charity stripe as a team. In case you're not familiar with basketball, that's god awful and at some point it will come to bight you in the ass or so many people have thought. Memphis head coach John Calipari would not be one of those people.

During the week he proclaimed that he wasn't worried about his team's foul shooting. That if he listed 25 things he looked for in a player that free throw shooting would be 26th. He also said that his team made the "when they count" (ie - down the stretch of games) and that they shot over 80% in the last four minutes of ballgames.

Let's tackle the last thing first and the first thing last. OK, so you make 80% in the last four minutes of games, great. But that in all honesty is a bloated and useless stat. If you say could tell me how you shot in last four minutes of a game with a margin of victory of less than ten points and then maybe it's meaningful. But the ones you made in the last four minutes in all those blowout wins you had? Well that kind of makes that stat useless.

OK, now on to the first part, the whole "We make them when they count." Apparently I missed some sort of memo on this one. You see I was under the impression that free throw, regardless of when you took them. Of course if your team is down by one and you go to the line for a pair and lets say you miss both, those are going to stick out like a sore thumb. But if someone else hadn't bricked a pair back in the second quarter, you're not down by one when you head the stripe, instead you're up by a point. So please save the, we make them when they matter deal. They always matter and they always count. Every free throw is big whether it's a minuted into to the game or there's a minute left. The next time you see a close basketball game, check out the stats at the end and look at the free throws made and more often than not, had a team been just that much better at the line, they could have pulled it out.

Another thing, drop the whole bravado thing about not being concerned with how poorly you shoot free throws. It's OK to say you have a weakness that you need to work on, nothing wrong with that. If you're truly not worried about it, then I guess it's no bravado then, maybe just hubris and well more often than not that will trip you up.

So yeah, the other night it was Tennessee that came out on top of Memphis 66-62. It was a great game, Memphis led for much of it, it was back and fourth. Tennessee to the lead for good at 62-61 inside half a minute to go. Then after a Memphis possession the resulted in a turnover, J.P. Prince (who was shooting around 47% from the line on the season) canned a pair of free throws for Tennessee to make it a three point game. No big deal, still a chance for Memphis to get off a three point shot. That is of course unless your team is terrible at shooting free throws so you're opponent would rather foul you and let you have your shot at the line to score with the clock not moving than let you get off a three. Surprise, what did Tennessee do, but foul to prevent the three point shot. Memphis' Derrick Rose made the first and then intentionally missed the second, but the rebound came to Tennessee and Chris Lofton knocked down both to put the lead to four with just over two seconds to play, ball game over.

So the Tigers fell by four points, close game. How'd they do from the line you wonder? The finished 8-of-17 (47.1%) on free throws for the game and the whole making them when they matter? Well, they went 1-of-6 down the stretch of the game. Good stuff. Perhaps my favorite part of all of this would be this tid bit. Memphis had their 8-of-17 from the line and Tennessee didn't exactly light the world on fire with the freebies, but they hit 12 of the 18 that they took.

Look at those numbers of made free throws again and look at the final score. Now I know there were other factors, like the fact Tennessee owned the rebounding edge and Memphis got cold shooting the three, but look at the numbers again. Tennessee made four more free throws in the game and the final margin of victory was four.....hmmmmmm.....could the two possibly be related? Just maybe? Methinks so, but then again, that's just what methinks and I have to wonder if maybe Coach Cal maybe is thinking a bit of the same thing after that game.

And that will wrap up this round of me sounding like a bitter old man. Hope you enjoyed, maybe some lighter fare next time around, but until then...

And You Are?

  Well It's been quite a long while since I wrote anything in this space...not that I was writing all that much beforehand or that it was anything of great intelligence or relevance, but hey I've got nothing else to do right now, so why not rail in something I feel like railing on?

  A while back I think wrote something about facebook and how there are things I like about it and things, that well, I just don't. Well it's time for one of those things I don't deals.

  OK, so here we go backward before we go forward. Back in the early to mid 90s when Saturday Night Live was funny there was this sketch with David Spade that I loved. He played a snarky receptionist for Dick Clark's office and all these famous or infamous people would come to the desk asking to see his boss and he would often reply "And you are?" followed with a "Do you have an appointment?" no matter how famous the person was. Perhaps the greatest moment of it was when Phil Hartman appeared from a cloud of smoke as Jesus and he gets the whole "And you are?" routine. It was quite funny, still as in fact.

  Well I told you that to tell you this. I go to check the e-mail the other do like I do and like how I would imagine you do too. I see there is a message in the inbox from that social monster known as facebook. It's a friend request, which usually I find kind of exciting. In the past couple of moths I've actually been able to connect with some people I hadn't heard from in a damn long while and it was quite fun to hear from them and find out what was going on with them.

  As things would have it though, this would not be one of those fun requests. This was one of those headscratcher requests. Upon opening the e-mail to see who sent the request all I could think of when I saw the name was "And you are?". I just stared at the monitor, confused and a little bewildered. I had just gotten home from work and usually that leaves me kind of burned out, so I decided I would get up, grab a drink of water go downstairs get a cookie and return to the computer to see what if was on the monitor would magically make sense to me. So with my whistle whetted and half a chocolate chip cookie in my left hand I planted myself back down in front of the computator and fixed my eyes on the monitor.

  Well everything was as it was left, the name requesting to be a friend was still the same and for the life of me I still had no idea who the hell they were. I figured at the very least they were some acquaintance from college. So I decided to go facebook log in and do the only responsible thing there was to do. Facebook stalk them until I could figure out who they hell they were. 

  Now for those of you that don't know what Facebook stalking is, it may sound sketchy, but don't worry, it is. Basically you go on Facebook, try and find someone and then try to view their profile or pictures or other pictures with them in them all to piece together an idea of who in the hell this person just may be. Well since this person had requested me as a friend, that meant I had access to view their profile so I figured this would be an easy an boring venture. I would log in, check their profile and then I would say to myself "Oh, that's who this is. Wow, I really am getting stupider by the day."

  I confidently plugged in my username and password as my head bobbed to Scenario by A Tribe Called Quest. I logged in with no problem and I went to my home page to check out the friend request. Found it, clicked it and right around when Q-Tip told me he never uses his left cuz his right's his good ear the requester's page loaded and there was some good and some not so good. 

  First, the good. As was suspected this was someone who knew me from college (they were a couple of years behind me). Second, the bad. I still had no clue who this person was. I examined her profile picture and she had a familiar look to her, but I still didn't really know. Well lucky for me there were over 400 pictures of this person so I figured I would peruse through them and see if I could figure out who the hell this person was.

  The perusing began and nothing from the first page and not really anything from the second and so on and so on. I saw other people in the pictures with this person that I recognized, but still nothing on them really. Sometimes I'm not that great with names but generally I don't forget faces. When I used to work at the campus convenience store in college I used to give different customers I saw all the time names like "Cookie and Water girl" because she always bought a cookie and a water. Or 25 cent gum guy because this guy only ever came in for a quarter pack of Winterfresh. There was no real reason for me to do this, but that way if I ever saw these people outside the store I could identify them to myself quickly so I didn't go through that whole "That person looks familiar to me but I can't figure out from where." thing. 

  So the whole point of that thing was to emphasize the remembering faces of folks. Now this person was in the communication school at college, as I was as well; and in looking at some of their pictures I concluded we had to have been involved in some of the same shows in our TV dealings, but still I had no clue about this person. I mean did we ever have a conversation, did we ever say hello? Did we ever actually say anything to one another? Did I do something that a profound impact on you in some way? Did I accidently run over your dog? See there's a reason I'm asking all this questions, it's because I want to know one thing. Why are you requesting to be my "friend" on Facebook?

  See this where these social networking things annoy the hell out of me. You want to be listed as a friend of mine, someone who knows me and I know you, well in theory. But here's the thing. We never hung out, didn't really know each other and to the best of my recollection we never spoke at great length, or for that matter I don't think we really spoke at all. So why the need to have me as a friend? I don't get it. Now am I incredibly close to everyone on my Facebook friend list? No, but are they all people that I have spoken to an know a little something about in my lifetime? Yes. Accumulating people as your friends for the sake of having them as your friend just seems like a waste to me, something there is no point to....kind of like me spending the last 40 or so minutes writing about it, but hey, what else am I going to do with my free time?

  So there's some junk thrown up here for the first time in a long time, but for now until next time...

tid bits from the summer

The summer of announcing baseball games seems sooooooo long ago, yet there is so much from that remains fresh in my mind. Now just because I'm going to be griping and complaining about things and people does not mean I didn't enjoy it, in fact I had a great time. It's just easier to be sarcastic and somewhat funny about stupid things then it is to be about nice things. So here are some other fun tid-bits and odd details from broadcasting this summer.

Know the Rules of the Game:
Now when you broadcast anything sports wise you should know the rules of the event you are covering. That way if something happens within said rules you can correctly describe what is going on, explain it and clarify if the point is fuzzy. Actually this should be a rule for life, if you're going to be talking about something, you should know what the hell you are talking about so the amount of miscues that you make are minuscule at best because bobodys neferfect.

Now with all that in mind I came across a couple of times this summer when my partners for the evening had no idea what the hell they were talking about. To illustrate I will be giving you examples 1, 2 and 3; The Incredibly Inexcusable, The Inexcusable and the What the F$#k?

1. The Incredibly Inexcusable: In baseball if you draw a walk (the pitcher throws four pitches out of the strike zone called "balls" before you bat the ball into play or get three strike against you) it does not count as an at bat. Same thing if you are hit by a pitch. Lets say for example in the course of a game a batter gets a hit, walks once and grounds out. For that game he would be 1-for-2 with a walk. The one being his hit, the two being the two at bats (the hit and the ground out) and the walk being, well the walk. If you were to say he went 1-for-3 in the game well that would just be silly and incorrect. Now this might not be something a casual, very casual fan would know, but it's general baseball knowledge and it should be absolute baseball knowledge for someone being paid to talk about the game. Well believe it or not but there was a gentlemen I broadcast with this year who seemed not to be aware of this little proviso within the realm of baseball. He remarked when a batter came to the plate "...is 0-for-1 tonight, walking in his only appearance at the plate" You see that is very incorrect, the batter has not at bats on the night and has walked in his only plate appearance. This is a very basic rule in baseball one that any person who talks about the game should know, especially those whose job it is to talk about the game. It'd be like if Betty Crocker told you three teaspoons was a equal to a table spoon, she'd be close but she'd still be wrong.

2. The Inexcusable: In baseball there's something call the dropped third strike rule. Quite simply if you swing and miss at strike three or look at it and the catcher either, drops it, it gets by him or he traps or blocks a pitch in the dirt you can attempt to run to first base, provided a couple of important details. Now if the catcher tags the runner before they reach first or throw the ball to first before the runner gets there, he is out. The details of this can be a little tricky, so bear with me here. If there is a runner on first base and the third strike is dropped, then the batter is out and can not run to first base, that's a big thing, first base must be unoccupied, unless....ah yes this is the tricky part. Unless there are two outs in the inning, then it doesn't matter if first base in unoccupied or not the runner can go for first and he must either be tagged or thrown out. Again, a little tricky of a rule, but if you are being paid to talk about baseball then you had better damn well know it. Well, as chance would have it one of my broadcasting brethren was unaware of this. After a batter swung a pitch in the dirt with two out and a runner on first he said "...strikes out to end the inning, there's some confusion [the catcher] throws to first, but that's unnecessary and the strikeout ended the inning..." Well when we went to break I tried to be a nice guy and say, "You know, when there are two out, it doesn't matter if there's a runner on first, they have to throw down," to which I received the response "Are you sure, I've never heard of that before, I don't think that's right." During the following forty second of our break I tried to convince him that I was indeed correct while he tried to tell me he thought I indeed was not. I still haven't figured out if this was genuine stupidity or just ego telling this guy not to admit he was wrong. Again, if you're talking about baseball this is a rule you should know, hands down. In fact before being hired for any type of sports announcing job they should force potential candidates to take a quiz on the rules of the game they will be talking about, that way they can avoid moments like this and the next one.

3. What the F$#k?: This one isn't so much about a rule as it is general broadcasting. To describe this guy as a piece of work is kind of like saying the grand canyon is a big hole in the ground. Both could be described as accurate statements but neither would truly get the point across about either. To describe the way this guy did games as a train wreck would unkind to train wrecks. Think of a train wreck mixed in with a 30 car pile up and an entire flock of birds (seagulls perhaps?) perishing in the air and falling onto the crash site. Think of listening to someone who was constantly mispronouncing names, misidentifying the pitch count and players, yelling when something exciting happens, that yelling often leading them not to pay attention to what's going on so they describe something that isn't actually happening and telling jokes that your grandfather would rolls his eyes at. Also imagine if you will, someone constantly guzzling something when they weren't talking. This I don't have a problem with as long as they moved the microphone away from their mouth or turned it down so it didn't pick up the sound. But guess what, they didn't ever and it sounds kind bad when you say "here's the 1-2 pitch..." and there's a large slurping noise after the word pitch. Makes things sound kind of, well, bad. On the plus side, after having a bad game then working with this individual you feel like you the best broadcaster in the world.

Know How to Read...or maybe you can read, you're just an idiot:
Every stadium had a PA announcer and before every game they would go over how to say the opposing players names, hometowns, etc. Makes sense, I did the same thing. Generally speaking I was able to get down most names and whatnot without a hitch and if I messed it up it was at least close. Well there was one PA announcer who, lets just say had a rough go of it. I'm convinced this guy could mispronounce the word "the" or even "I". No matter how explicitly I went over pronunciations of of players and their info he would screw it up. Even if I wrote it out for him phonetically he would still screw it up. It was like his eyes couldn't sync up with the part of his brain where the correct pronunciations were stored and his mouth was too impatient to wait for it to be found so it just spouted out whatever it wanted to. Did I forget to mention they tried to add tone and inflection to some of the names to sound like some super cool announcer guy? Yeah, that never works out well. You either were given a voice that could level a room that's good for announcing or weren't. If you weren't don't pretend you were it just sounds stupid. So stick with the voice you got or drink and ass load of whiskey until you have the raspy boom you desire. In fact as a PA announce your first job shouldn't be to sound cool, it should be to read things right, so until you can get that part down don't bother trying to do anything else.

This is Creeping Me Out:
There was this one guy I worked with who for long periods of time wouldn't talk when he wasn't doing the play by play. Now I'm not saying you should be talking all the time, in fact most times it's better not to say something, you know that whole less is more thing. But if it's been like a 10-15 minute inning it would be OK to chime in every now and again, especially if it's your team that's batting and you could fill in with some interesting details and whatnot. Alright, maybe I'm being a little over the top here, you don't want to talk that's fine, but why are you looking at me every time I turn my head around? Why do you nod in agreement with things I say but not actually say anything? Why do you smile and bounce your shoulders when I say something funny but you don't laugh. Are you going to wait for me in the parking lot after the game and come after me with a lead pipe, because that's the vibe I'm kind of getting.

Can You Pronounce this Word?:
The team I announced for this summer had the following word in it's name - quarry. Do you know how to say that word? I would hope so, it's quite simple, if not here it is. KW followed by OR and ended with EEE. Yet somehow this simple word was beyond the grasp of some this summer. They somehow got KWAIR - EEE, which I guess I can kind of see. But here's the funny thing, after hearing the guy you're working with say it the correct way, a lot wouldn't you shift the way you say it over the course of the game? Or ask the guy, is that how you really say it? See I would answer yes to both of those, but that's just me. I guess some people would just rather sound silly then correct or sound like they have a speech impediment. I mean it was only radio what does it matter what you sound like?

Well methinks that's enough ranting for one night. I apologize if I come across as a bit mean in this whole thing, it's meant to be more sarcastic then mean. I also suppose I could be a bigger man and not write about this stuff, but the whole reason I do this thing is so I can get out all that I want to ramble about without making people's ears bleed, just their eyes. So yeah, that's all until next time....

I sold my soul to the Devil....and damn did he win quick;y

Lets get the first thing across here, I like the internet. It's a good thing. It allows people to communicate quickly and cheaply across all corners of the world. It supplies us with a seemingly never ending cache of information. In short, it's pretty damn neat. Now that being said I was never a big fan of social networking sites. I could never really put my finger on it there was just something about them that rubbed me the wrong way. I wasn't going to deride people for using them it just never seemed to be my thing.

Well silly old me I decided to cave in just a short while ago and get myself a facebook page. I caved because there was a big group made up of people who I went to/worked with at a summer camp and I decided it would be a much easier way to keep in touch with those people. So I made a page and whatnot and was able to connect with some people I hadn't talked to in quite some time which was a nice thing. Then a couple of days later I remembered why I didn't like these things in the first place.

I received a friend request from someone I hadn't talked to in eons and I mean eons. In fact when we knew each other we never really spoke. In fact it was pretty much dumb coincidence that we knew one another to begin with. So despite the fact we never really spoke before and despite the fact we hadn't spoken at all in any way for the the better part of a decade here was the request from this person to be a "friend" on facebook.

And see this gets to the heart of the matter here, why did this person request me as a friend? We haven't talked in forever nor do I envision talking to them at all so what was the point of the request? Is it so they can add another friend to their tally, because I can't really think of another reason aside from that. See I never understood people on MySpace or Facebook that have like over 500 friends. Really you friended that girl you met a party three years ago or you friended some one because they're a friend of a friend of a friend? What's the effing point? Why do you bother? This is something that just makes no sense to me, but remember that I'm not that bright.

Believe me, after a few years of avoiding it, I'm enjoying the Facebook thing. I've been able to touch base with some people I had lost contact with and keep some dialogs running with others that I otherwise wouldn't be talking to on such a regular basis. But what's this incessant need to friend the hell out of people? Why am I being poked by people I haven't talked to in a number of years? Why the hell has someone thrown a sheep at me? If you want to throw a sheep at me that's fine, just throw and actual sheep, not a cyber one.

It's quite possible that I am getting wayyyyyyy tooooo much into this. OK scratch that, I am getting way too much into this, but this particular thing annoys me and one of the great qualities of the internet is it allows any moron (yours truly) to have the ability to say pretty much anything they want to say whenever they want to say it. So this is my rant for today, if you've read this far I apologize for wasting your time.

But please if you're a facebooker (?....that can be a word right) or myspacer or friendsterer (what's this thing do? it keeps things fresh. it's a fresher, I'm going on break) please before you make a friend request or whatever think about what you are doing. Do you really want to be friends with this person? Would it kill you to have 208 friends instead of 209? If someone was holding a gun to your head could you say you know more about this person that what their first or last name is? The message as always is be responsible, don't go friending people willy nilly, otherwise you could get the clap.

OK, you won't get the clap, but just try not to act like a 7th grader and friend everyone and their mother because it's cool to have soooooo many friends. Here's a cray thought, friend your friends or people you will actually talk to more than once in a blue moon and use these sites for what they were meant for. I'm done sounding like an old man now. Next time I will try to be funnier and more amusing, but until then...

Oh the places you'll broadcast from

Tis been a good summer so far and the first one in a long time where I was busy nearly every day and it didn't involve camp. Over the past two months I was doing play by play on the radio for a baseball team. Again, I shall not be naming specific names and names so as to protect the innocent or some such shenanigans and what have you. Well I figured I would throw down some stuff I found interesting or amusing in a bullet point style thing, that way I don't have to worry about writing good transitions in between paragraphs.

Other Broadcasters: So one of things I was little leery about heading into this deal was working with other broadcasters. The way the league has things set up is as follows. Each team has a broadcaster that travels with it. At home game, the home broadcaster does play by play for the first and final three innings and color in the middle three, while the visiting broadcaster takes over on play by play. Now usually it's a plus to know the people who you're going to be working with. Also, working with a revolving door of people can be tricky in regards to developing chemistry learning strengths and weaknesses etc. Plus there's always the chance you could end up working with a complete dud or some overly pretentious jack ass. Well I had to say I was pleasantly surprised by the true great quality of broadcasters, for the most part. Lets just say when they were good, they were quite good and when they weren't well it was not so pretty. I'll digress on this more sometime, but onto something else right now

Obstructed View: Being able to see everything in the filed of play is kind of important to a broadcaster. Most places you were able to see most everything, but not everything entirely. Now don't get me wrong, you can wriggle and crane your neck and eventually see what you want, but trying to a view of what is going down shouldn't be an aerobic exercise. In most places there is a pretty good view of what's going on, but not always a great one. In a couple of places there were large posts covering up areas around bases or parts of the outfield. Again you can see things well enough, but if on had their druthers they would prefer to have a clear view. Yes the job can be done but it makes it that much harder. It'd kind of be like if a surgeon had to cut somebody open and there wasn't anybody to do the suction part (I watch a lot of ER and Scrubs). Will the surgeon still do the job? Most likely, but they might accidentally cut something clearly because they couldn't see everything quite clearly enough.

Just Plain Terrible View: In baseball announcing the best place to call a game from is behind home plate, preferably from an elevated position as well. That way everything happens in front of you and you can observe everything without having to whip your head from side to side. It's also very helpful in terms of identifying pitch location. Remember radio is like TV minus the pictures so the more detail of scene you can provide to the listener the better off everyone is. Also it gives you and idea of how the pitcher is throwing that day. Is he getting calls on the corners? Is he getting squeezed? Is he missing a lot on certain pitches or just by small margins. Well as luck would have it there are not one, but two parks in league where you don't get to call the game from behind the plate. Nope, in these parks on press box is on the first base side and the other is on the third base side. Neither place was a particularly fun one to call a game from, especially the one on the first base side and that's for several reason, which I shall now list.

1. The Giant set of bleachers in front of you - Yup there are a big mess of bleachers in front of you, we're talking they extend forwards about 100 feet or so at least. That's kind of a lengthy distance to be away from the action when you are facing the field sideways. Also the danger of work a game sideways is there's the risk that a corer of the park will be obscured from your view. Sure enough, it was hard to see down into the rightfield corner and there was a large tree that wasn't helping matters by covering up most of the part or the rightfield corner that one could see.

2. The Sun - Normally, when playing baseball the sun is a good thing. If it's out that means there's not much by way of clouds in the sky which means there's no chance of rain which is always bad for baseball (well not always, but that's for another day). Well this press box happens to be situated directly across from where the sun sets. Games in this league typically start around 6:30 or 7pm, so in other words, right around the time the sun goes down. So while already down with the bad angle to call games from you have to do it for a couple of innings while staring directly into Mother Nature's universal light bulb and and heat lamp. The sun was so intense coming down into the press box that even aviator shades that would make Maverick from Top Gun look ridiculous do little to quell the sun's effects.

3 The Wind Tunnel Effect - So the wind at this park usually blows from left to right which is no good while being in the press box. You see that's how the box runs, from let to right with open doors at both ends and the wind whips through there like it's running late for an important engagement. Even a gentle breeze causes things to blow around like a tornado is coming through. So you'd better have everything anchored down or it's going to blow out the door as I found out the hard way one evening. Right as I was preparing to come back on the air a gust of wind lifted three of my sheets filled with info right on out the door, which caused me to do the only rational thing I could. Throw down my head set and run after those papers like a kid chasing down the guy in the Good Humor truck. Thankfully it only took a few second to track down the papers and I was back lickety split. What's broadcasting with out some adventure anyway?

I Should Have Been Drunk: Now this place, while interesting and unique was a downright pain in the ass to broadcast from. First off the park is located at the corner of two streets in the downtown portion of the city it's located in. So when a foul ball leaves the yard, it's not kids who go chasing after it to get a souvenir, it's cars who try and dodge it, lest it land on the windshield and shatter it. Anyway, the park itself looks like it was designed by someone who was inebriated at the time. The fence runs 28 feet high in the outfield, except for a portion where a tree is growing behind it and there is a cutout that runs about 10 feet long by 8 feet high. That and the fence runs out to 280 feet down the righfield line then to 340 in right center then comes in to like 310 then shoots out to 395 in deep center and 370 or so in the ally in left and then to about 320ish down the line in left. It was either designed by a blind man or stolen from a piece of paper that a small child doodled upon. But that's not the hard part. In this park I was just to the left of home plate, trying to stare through a thick chain link fence. Then, from my vantage point there is another chain link fence that doubles over with the one in front of me and I can pretty much only see moving shapes through, awesome. It's like trying to announce a moving abstract piece of art. Then to top it all off, there's no real press box. There's a table in front of me in the bleachers behind home plate. Yup there are people in the crowd sitting in front of and directly next to me. In fact, at around the start of the 3rd inning and only woman plops herself down about six inches to my left, knocks into my arm and proceeds to give me a dirty look like I have taken her seat. Nothing like being surrounded by warm and lovely people while a doing a game. Plus whenever the people in front of me decide they want to stand, I stand with them, otherwise I can't see anything. Good times indeed.

It Truly Was a Box: Most press boxes weren't too bad, there was usually a decent amount of space, except for one local. Picture four people sitting on a slightly longer than average couch. Then imagine notebooks and computers and a CD player and other stuff all laid out in front of you and there's a person hovering right behind you. Then imagine a host of people coming in and out over the course of a game, telling loud jokes and basically making noise in your ear while you try and talk like a semi-intelligent and informed individual while trying to listen to your broadcast partner. Then imagine people sitting to your left swearing pretty loudly and consistently over the course of the game and you're praying to god that your microphone isn't picking up their verbal faux pas. Not to mention that so many people cramped into one place has it cooking like an oven. Well I got to live that experience, what a fun time that was. On the plus side they had great food it between the first and second game of the double header. Oh yes, I forgot to mention there were not one but two games call from this magnificent place. I have never been in a clown car, nor do I plan to be, but I figure this had to be pretty close to what it was like.

Well there you have it for today. A few of the unique experiences, in particular the places where I got to call games from this year. Sometime soon I'll dish on announcers and other personnel from other team, but until that time...

That was a good time...now what the hell do I do?

So my summer as a baseball broadcaster has wrapped up. I would love to tell you what the team name was and what league it was in and all that other stuff, but well I don't know who will ever end up reading this all and if I say some means things about some people (not what I'd consider mean, but others might) I want to have full plausible deniability. No specific names mentioned I have that right? I mean any conclusions you make based upon my inferences are your conclusions and not mine so there can be no blame laid upon me, correct? I would like to think so and since this is my space in which to think then that which I think to be correct is correct as it is thought in the space for the things that I think.

Did that make sense? I hope it did, or maybe I hope it didn't. Anyway I plan on throwing some stuff down in the next day or two in regards to how the season went and some of the more interesting things I encountered, the highs and the lows, you know fun stuff. But if you'll excuse me I'm going to work backwards and tell you about something that happened recently, in fact it happened today.

So to move on in the playoffs in the league, you have to finish in the top four in your respective division, of which there are two. Well, it just so happened the team I called games for finished in a three way tie for the fourth and final spot, so yeah that was a bit of an issue. If it were 1995 it would be perfectly acceptable to say "Houston, we have a problem." but it's like a decade and change later and it isn't us that has the problem, it's Houston as they are one of the fattest cities in all the US of A but I digress. So yeah three teams and one slot in which to put them all, I twadn't a math major (but I was a journalism major, not doing myself so proud the with the twadn't there) but I know that doesn't work.

So what goes on in the event of a three way tie you ask, well it looks something like this. There is a semi round robin type mini-tournament for the final spot. The team with the best combined head to head record (we'll call them team A) sits out the first game that is played between the other two teams (B and C). The winner of that game moves on to play team A and the winner of that game gets the 4th and final spot in the playoffs. It was what my fellow broadcasters doing the first game called "the playoff game to get to the playoff game to get to the playoffs" Sounds simple, right? Well I've learned in life things that are simple never turn out to be so simple. In fact we'll be breaking this next part down into segments to tell you how this became complicated.

Where are we playing? - This is kind of a crucial one. Baseball can essentially be played anywhere there are wide open spaces, but usually a field with dugouts, marked base paths, a fence surrounding the field of play, a press box (more so for me and others like me) and maybe even a scoreboard is the preferred playing area. Well believe it or not, all three teams involved had such places to play, now we just had to figure out where. How might you be wondering was the winning location selected? Well it be the scientific method of drawing a name out of a hat. Yup, this is a credible (it's supposed to be anyway) baseball league and that's how they pick the place to play. Not based on which team could do the best job housing and putting on the event or which team would draw the most fans or even who has the best field of the bunch. Yup, close your eyes and pick one. Now lets make this analogy to try and make things make sense. Suppose you have a choice between three similar candy bars. We'll use in this case a 5th Avenue, a Butterfinger and a Clark Bar and rank them in that order (sorry, I really like 5th Ave bars). If each team's field were tied to bar, we ended up at the Clark bar field. It would get the job done, but when it was all over you really wish you hadn't picked it.

Who is the home team? - Yup, we couldn't figure out who the home team would be. Apparently winning the season series awarded you nothing except sitting out the first game and after that it was useless. Before each game t here was a coin toss to decide who would be the home team for the contest. Now this isn't totally ridiculous, but really, you can't give even that little something to a team for winning the season series, really?

When was all of this decided? - In my brief time on this earth I've learned one of the more important things to do is plan ahead. It's much easier to make a contingency plan and it call it off at the last minute then it is to scramble and try and slap something together at the last minute. Apparently the people that run this league do not share in this revelation, if you can even call it a revelation, in fact it is more common sense. Going into the last day of the season, if team A (the team I called games for) had won and team B had lost then it was team A in the playoffs and vice versa. However if both teams lost they would fall into the three way tie for the last spot with team C. Now this wasn't the most foreseeable of events, but it was certainly plausible and what did you have to lose by taking care of things in advance just in case. The answer there in case you're wondering is nothing, but apparently some people don't even like to lose nothing. You see, team A and B both lost their final game and thus the menage-a-trois of a tie was born. Now the reasonable thing to have done here would to have had the plan in place. Everyone would know where the games would be played and when they would start, but that didn't happen.

You see the people in charge of all this stuff (league officials) had set up none of this, not a single thing. Teams didn't even know what was supposed to bring the baseballs that would be used to play the game with. In fact one of the higher up league officials (if you want to figure out what his position is click this and scroll down to one of the numbers in the early 20s, you should be able to figure it out) was off celebrating his birthday in a state in which there are no teams in our league. (Side note - this wasn't a too young of a guy either he's had plenty of b-days, so what's going on there? You can't take one off for a critical and crucial night in the league you're a big part of? Honestly, what else do you need on your b-day aside from cake? I say nothing, but that's me). So there was nothing in place. Nobody knew where they would be playing or exactly when they would be playing or the manner in which they would be playing. All they knew was somewhere, somehow they would be playing a baseball game or two. Well thankfully, those wonderful folks at least got their act together enough (relatively speaking) to pick the venue where the games would be played (remember the Clark bar from earlier). That was about it. The other team that had to travel was told to prepare for an 8:30am departure, then when they were all at the bus and ready to go were told they didn't need to leave until 10:30. Better yet the team hosting the game appeared to be the last one made aware of the fact that they would be playing host to a pair of games. Really outstanding work all the way around, nice work people at the top.

Now I do not claim to be the smartest person in the world and but I like to think I have some common sense. I would also like to think had I been confronted with such a situation that I would have had something in place ready to go. Murphy's law is all too prevalent so why not take care of things just in case? Yeah it's extra work at the time, but if what you planned for arises there is no need to panic or scramble or create or cause general confusion. Seeing not so bright people in a position of power both worries and encourages me. It worries me because I wonder how they got there, but it encourages me because if some one like that can rises to something important there's a good chance that I and many just like me and much smarter than me could come to power in something important and actually do some good.

So how did everything end you ask? Well team B won the first game by a run then they did the same in game number two against my team, team A. The season be done for me now and it twas a good time to say the least. The players were good guys and the coaches were as well. It was a great experience and most of the other broadcasters I got to work with were outstanding (especially the two gentlemen with whom I share a first name). Just a shame that the powers that be did just about everything they could to futts up what could have been a really great day of baseball.

Man I suck at this

So I haven't put anything up in like eons and that pretty much confirms my standing as one of the worst bloggers in forever which is quite sad consider blogs have not been around all that long. Regardless it has been a busy summer with little free time to this point so hence there not being anything put up in quite some time. As soon as things slow down I'll try and put up a few posts in regards to what I've been up to for the summer months. Well, a few posts with some of the more interesting and entertaing aspects of all that has gone on for me this summer. So until that time this will be it for the time being so I suppose until later

My opinion? Well it's that I have no opinion

I like baseball. I find the game fascinating. I love all that goes on in a game, the way a pitchers works on a hitter, how all the fielders step to their toes moments before a pitch, the anticipation when a speedy runner is one the basepaths and you know it's only a matter of time before he tries to take off and steal a base. I love and loathe the fact that there is so much importance placed on numbers in the game. I love the fact that there are some achievements that are so grand that numbers strike you with awe and I loathe the fact that so many people try to justify things through numbers all the time when numbers don't always tell the story.

Well there's a bitg number on the horizon for baseball and everyone is talking about it, so I figured what the hell, I'll talk about it too. The number everyone seems to be talking about (aside from $28 million for Roger Clemens....trust me I'll be talking about that soon) is 756, which in case you didn't know is one more than 755 which is the number of home runs that Hank Aaron hit in his career. That number represents the all-time career home run mark and to hear some people speak about it, it's possibly the holiest number since Moses stood on a mountain top with a couple a stone slabs.

Barry Bonds is very close to breaking that number. Through the 33 games in which he has played, encompassing 88 at bats Bonds has hit 11 homers. That's one every eight at bats. Quite simply that's a ridiculous pace. If he were to get around 450 at bats, that would be around 56 homers for the season. That would be Bonds' second highest total of his career, behind the single season record of 73 he hit in 2001. So while not quite as gaudy, it would still be impressive.

So the odds of Bonds breaking this record and soon seems pretty reasonable. Records were made to be broken, we should celebrate new standardss, blah blah blah. The issue with this whole thing is the steroids/performance enhancing drugs that Bonds most likely took.

Bonds has most likely taken performance enhancing drugs that have most likely benefitted and enhnaced his career. If you don't believe me just do a google search about Bonds and the issue. There is a mountain of circumstantial evidence that would make Everest look like a mole hill. Or do an image search from Bonds early in his career and compare it to a picture now. His head has gone from the size of a raisin to a watermelon. His arms and legs were about as big as those of Mr. Fantastic when he stretches his limbs and now he makes the Hulk look like and 85lbs. weakling. OK, so he took some things that made him balloon out muscle, everyone can agree on that.

But here's what people can't agree on, whether or not they should be happy that Bonds is breaking the record. Virtually everyone outside of San Francisco doesn't want Bonds to break it and nearly everyone in the city does. You can't escape the topic. It's on ESPN, it's on sports talk radio, it's even on the news. Everyone is telling us what to think, why to care, what side of the aisle we should be taking. We're being told this an issue with no gray area to which I say, lord no there's a gray area.

The thinking is that you are either happy and in favor of the record being broken or you're sad/angry/disappointed that the record is being broken. Well, if you're like me then this your opinion, you don't have one.

That's right, I don't have any real opinion on the matter. Well, OK maybe I have an opionion and that view point would be that I simply don't care.

Yup, for as much as I love baseball I don't care and maybe you shouldn't care either. I'm not saying I'll be turning a blind eye to all this stuff. Hell, if I'm watching TV and the station cuts to show Bonds' at bats as he gets close to the record I'll watch. And if he hits the one that breaks it I'll nod my head and go about my day. I'm not going to get worked up into a fervor one way or the other. I didn't say it wasn't interesting, hence why I'll watch, but I really won't care.

There are many reasons why I don't care so I won't run through all of them, just a few of them, or most of them. I don't care primarily because this is being treated as some holy pious matter. It's sports, pure and simple. I love sports a great deal, but I also realize there are a far many things that are much more important. To hear some of the sports pundits talk about it Bonds is committing a high crime against humanity. He's cheated all of us and he's cheated this wonderful game that we hold dear. He's despicable, a detriment to society a menace. And you know what, most of those may be true, but I still don't care.

Bonds is dirty, there's no question. He's also an egomanical jackass. And you know what, I still don't care. I don't like having moral life lessons being stuffed down my throat, by sportswriters no less. Where are the cries for ethics from them when the drum up non-controversies or twist and mis-construe quotes? I'm sorry, but I can't handle being told what's moral by a body of people who in large part deal in shady ethics on a daily basis. Also by a body of people who blast a man for his massive ego and over valued sense of self worth and when a great many of them have massive egos and over valued senses of self worth.

Another reason I don't care is because we're in an era of baseball where everything is pretty much tainted. Steroids and whatever else everyone is taking will be hanging over the game for a long time. And while Bonds sure is dirty and thus are his home runs, what about all the pitchers who have been on the juice. If Bonds has homered off of pitchers who were juiced up, does that constitute some kind of double negative and make those homers clean? Sure Bonds was dirty, but so were a lot of others and while it's easy to throw Bonds under bus, it doesn't make it right.

Plus, what kind of hypocrisy is it we can give an award to a guy who was on the juice and basically won the reward as a result of his past transgressions. Confused? OK I'll put it simply. Jason Giambi won the Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2005. Giambi hit .271 that season wtih 32 home runs and 87 RBI. Impressive for a guy who in the previous had played in only 80 games and hit .208 with 12 homers (and yet he was still an All-Star). On the surface, seems legit. Well lets get past the surface here. Giambi missed most the year with a host of mystery ailments, one of which was later revealed to be a benign tumor on his pituitary gland, a side effect of steroid use. Giambi was also noticeably less hulking when the year began and eventually held a press conference (I can't quite remember if it was at the end of the 04 season or the beginning of the 05) where he apologized to his teammates and to fans and to the Yankees organization, but no one ever knew for what because he never told us what he was apologizing for. Safe bet it was most likely in regards to his steroid use.

Anyway, so Giambi was on the juice too. Too his credit, he got off the juice or at least it so appears. Well the juice withdrawl seemed to be the cause of his bad 2004 campaign, so does anyone else see a problem with he being given an award from Major League Baseball celebrating his comeback from a self induced injury, particularly one that most likely came from performance enhancing drugs? I would hope so, but it seems that no one has done so yet and that is sad. I really can't care about something (Bonds stuff) when it seems that nobody else cares about something (the Giambi thing) that at least has some correlation to the current issue. I don't get how major league baseball and sportwriters can say they care about this issue, when they overlook somewhat major things that relate to.

I could go on, but it's late and I need to go to bed. So I'll leave you with this. If for some reason you care about all of this stop. It'll make you're life a lot easier, less stress you don't need to have. Bonds will hit a home run, people will scream with outrage, cry foul, weep in sadness, water will turn to blood, locusts will block out the sun, the four horsemen will ride and then the sun will rise again. This isn't some holy event, it's not going to change the world. Just let it happen, I promise it won't hurt. Trust me apathy is the way to go on this one, it reall is. But that's enough from me because it doesn't really bother me that you care one way or the other, quite simply because I don't care.

Just stop

Wow, has it really been a month since I last wrote something? All three of you who read this must be disappointed....damn good thing I don't get paid to do this. Anyway I was watching some TV last night when I heard some one say something stupid, and you know me when it comes to stupid I simply can't resist.

First the background of everything. For those of you who don't follow sports, this past weekend was the NFL Draft. It's basically a giant get together where NFL teams pluck eligible college players to help build their team. The New England Patriots (the team I happen to follow) picked a safety out of the University of Miami with their pick in the first round, his name is Brandon Meriweather.

OK, some more background time, but back during the college football season, the University of Miami and Florida International got into something of a brou-ha-ha during their game this season. By something of a brou-ha-ha I mean it was pretty much a giant brawl with both benches emptying, punches being thrown, helmets being swung as weapons and players kicking and stomping other players that were already on the ground. It wasn't pretty, we'll just leave it at that.

Well Meriweather happened to make the highlight reel from the brawl for all the wrong reasons. He was shown, quite a few times stomping and kick Florida International players who were defenseless and on the ground. Seems to call to question his character a little bit doesn't it.

This unfortunately was not the only incident involving Meriweather. Back in July Meriweather fired a gun a man outside his home in Miami after the man had fired at he and his roommate (and actually hit his roommate, read about it here).

So why am I bringing all this up? Well on top of drafting Meriweather, the Patriots have traded for wide receiver Randy Moss who has his whole own litany of character issues. It's been something of a frenzy here in New England (at least amongst the media) over the Meriweather and Moss (more so Moss) because New England has always valued players of character or talent laden yet trouble finding players, blah, blah, blah whatever.

Real quickly, is this something of a change from New England has done in the past? Sure. In fact the Pats released a draft pick (Christian Peter) a while back before he ever set foot in New England after learning he had some domestic violence charges on his rap sheet. But this is not the same place it was then. They have a lot of high character guys and a lot of leaders, so it enables them to take a risk on some guys with unquestionable talent and perhaps questionable character.

But since this is the all in the realm of the Boston sports media, it's been made to feel like some kind of crime against humanity has been committed and that the Patriots are just another team looking to win. Hello? Isn't the object of playing sports to win? Didn't then Jets (and now Chiefs) coach Herman Edwards say "You play to win the game?" So the Pats took a couple of chances here, big whoop. Sure they value character and since they've done so for a ling time, it allows them to take a chance and who knows, maybe they can help develop some more character.

OK, but back to the stupid here. In discussing Meriweather's character the brawl incident and the gun incident have been brought up. The brawl incident is fair game to discuss. Did he use good judgement? That would be no. Did he get caught up in the heat of things and get carried away? Most definitely. If you were involved in an incident like that how would you act? My guess is you wouldn't be a saint and neither would be most anyone else.

But that's not the stupid thing here really. It all has to do with the gun incident. OK, I'm not all that enamored with guns, nor people who find the need to carry them. If I could go back in time and fix two things one would be slavery, the other you ask? Rewriting the 2nd amendment to the constitution to be much less ambiguous and much more specific. That all being said, Meriweather owned the gun legally and used it legally.

To run through the incident quickly in case you didn't click the link above. Meriweather and his roommate saw a suspicious car outside their home at 6:30 in the morning and they went outside to investigate, Meriweather with his gun in tow. They saw a man exit the vehicle, there was some yelling back and fourth then the man shot at Meriaweather and his friend, striking Meriweather's friend in the ass. Meriweather then fired back and the assailant fled. Bear in mind, Meriweather legally owned the fire own and used it legally as well.

Now here comes the stupid, this being something I heard on TV the other night and I have heard on the radio and read about since. The question has been posed on more than one occasion in more than one medium, "What would you do if you saw a suspicious looking vehicle outside your home in the early morning hours?" The answer of course has been all week, "call the police." OK, on the surface this doesn't seem stupid at all, quite sensible actually. The stupid comes though with who is leading the discussion and who is being discussed.

Being discussed are young black men who have grown up in poor urban (nice word for ghetto) settings for most of their lives. The people doing the discussing are middle aged, upper-middle class white men. So the question here is being posed by people that have grown up in quiet run of the mill towns or suburbs and now live in comfortable middle class areas with a pretty fair lack of major crime.

See, if you live in a podunk town or a nice area of suburbia, you call the police when things look suspicious. You trust the police, hell chances are you even know some of the police (or if you town is small enough, all of them). But this really isn't the case if you're a minority (specifically black) growing up in an urban background. Chances are you don't trust the police that much and that the police aren't all the quick to jump to your attention when something goes wrong in your neck of the woods.

So taking all that in, where does someone who has never experienced life in a ghetto, surrounded by drugs and violence, living in a constant state of fear even to begin to have the proper perspective to discuss an issue like this. It's simple, they don't. Listen, I'm not condoning Meriweather's actions, in fact I don't think his actions should be condoned. But, if you haven't at least peeked into another person's perspective on life, where do you get off telling him what he should have done instead?

Again, it's more than valid to say that Meriweather's action bring up some questions about character, but if you don't have the proper perspective or understanding then you don't have any real ground to say, he should have done this instead.

The world is not all one color, people don't all react the same the way. What you and I may do, some one else will not, pure and simple. And since when did sports writers and pundits become arbiters of moral authority anyway?

Listen, I'm not saying you can't call into question some one's character. We all do, it's how we evaluate people, it's how we decide who we'll call our friends. Just don't tell people to do something else when it appears you don't understand why they did it in the first place.

At least I'm not as stupid as those people

I am not the brightest individual on the face of the earth, but I am quite certain that I'm pretty far off from the dumbest, which is why I become frustrated when dumb things happen on a large scale that could have easily been prevented. When dumb things happen that could have been prevented it tells me that there are stupid people running things and well, I don't much well like me stupid people. I'm not talking test score stupid, I'm talking general common sense and decency stupid. It makes me wonder how people get to certain places being so dumb.

So what the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about baseball's first ever "Civil Rights Game". OK, couple things to get out before we go farther. I like the idea of baseball game celebrating civil rights. In fact I pretty much for anything that helps to promote the issue of civil right and that causes people to examine the good and bad in regards to civil rights in this country. Anyway, this game was being held in Memphis, Tennessee, in part as remembrance for Martin Luther King Jr. since it was the city in which he was assassinated. OK, so far so good, everything seems fine.

Well I happened to stumble upon this game just as it was starting and well after the premise was presented to me I was a little surprised by one of the teams involved. The game was a match up between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cleveland Indians. Read that last sentence and see if you can figure out the problem with the match up. If you haven't figured it out, or if you didn't feel like reading it again, the problem with that match up would just so happen to be that the second team involved was the Cleveland Indians.

I have nothing against the Indians ball club really, Travis Hafner is one of my favorite players to watch and I enjoy C.C. Sabbathia as well. The issue here is with Major League Baseball choosing the a team named Indians to participate in a game honoring civil rights.

In case you're not aware or have been living in total seclusion for your entire life (which is doubtful if you're reading this because it's pretty hard to stumble out of the woods and right on to the Internet), Indians in this country have kind of been dumped on. By kind of been dumped on I mean they've pretty much been disregarded, disrespected, lied to, exploited, treated with indifference, vitriol and generally a complete lack of humanity ever since folks from Europe stared coming to this continent in mass.

Life is still far from peachy for most American Indians. Go to Google and type in "indian reservations + suicide rates" or "alcoholism" or "poverty" and well you'll be confronted with some reading material that will most certainly not lift your spirits.

So for the life of me I couldn't figure out why the hell MLB would have one of the teams in this game be the Indians. Before I get into why though, let me deviate for just a moment. I'm not trying to be the PC police on the this. I'm just about as annoyed with political correctness as one can be. I'm not saying be PC is bad and that you shouldn't consider the feelings of people when speaking, it's just that I feel sometimes it goes overboard and things get blown out of proportion. Do I find sports teams being named after Indians particularly upsetting or problematic? Not entirely. It's generally the depiction of of the Indians that I take issue with. The easiest example of this is the Cleveland Indians Mascot, Chief Wahoo whose picture is featured below.

It's hard to see how that picture couldn't be viewed as offensive, especially to American Indians. A giant cartoonish, stereotypical depiction of an Indian is quite literally the face of the franchise. Well that face was invited to Memphis to play a baseball game in honoring civil rights.

Now in case you're not aware, Memphis was on of the major cities along the "Trail of Tears," the name given to the route traveled by thousands of Cherokee Indians after they were forcibly and perhaps more importantly, illegally removed from their native lands, which included areas in present day Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama. Nearly 4,000 Cherokee people (or about a quarter of the population was forced to move) died while being shipped to reservations in Arkansas and Oklahoma. This was and is not a bright spot in American Civil right in any way shape or form.

So what better way to celebrate civil rights using a baseball game than to invite the team that proudly and prominently displays a red-faced, feather wearing, stereotypical caricature of a people that have been persecuted pretty much from their first contact with people not from this continent.

I traveled to the computer after I saw who was involved in the game and stumbled across this post on Deadspin, that was thinking what I was thinking, which led me to this article, that pretty much articulates what I'm saying, just much more coherently and with actual reporting.

Simply put, I just don't get it. Major League baseball has screwed up plenty (turning a blind eye to steroids for a long time being the most obvious issue). But steroids are a prickly issue and a complex problem. This game however was something easy and well the good folks at MLB screwed this up. The only way they could have messed this up any worse would to have been have the game feature the Indians against the Red Sox (because of the Red Sox horrendous past in regards to race and integration). Thankfully, that didn't happen, but still this can't count as a high point for MLB. Even when they try to do something good, they find a way to screw it up beyond reproach.

It's too bad that this happened on a weekend, when everyone is focusing on the Final Four and Opening Day and getting geared up for the The Masters next weekend, because this story pretty much got buried. I hope some one grabs a hold of it on Monday and screams about it. I hope they talk about it on sports talk radio, I hope it gets mentioned on PTI, I just hope people pay attention and recognize the sheer stupidity of MLB in this, because they deserve to get taken to the woodshed for this one.

So dear MLB, please continue the tradition you're trying to establish with this game. It's a great idea and could become a wonderful thing. But next time around, if you could use some of that pesky common sense that always seems to be escaping you, that would be great. I know it's asking a lot, to think before making a decision, but if that's something a 7-year old can handle, then I would certainly hope the people that turn the wheels in a billion dollar national entity could do the same.