Basbeball has been very good to me

Last night I found myself watching a baseball game. This makes sense because this is just where I left me. Anyway, the MLB app on my television takes the local feeds from each market's "sports channel" and bundles them for subscribers. For those of us freeloaders, the app offers one free game each day. Yesterday, it was the St. Louis Cardinals against the Miami Marlins so I sat myself down for that game. I get to see and hear stadiums that I would otherwise not pay attention to, and I can observe the styles of coverage and listen to the play-by-play and color commentary of other broadcasts and cities.

I just heard the guy in the booth say "even though they out hit us." Us. He explicitly aligned and even affiliated himself (and, I would think) the entire broadcast team with the Cardinals. In looser parlance, he would be called a "homer", but I have always envisioned a "homer" as someone whose energy and excitement (henceforth, "rooting") is in favor of the home team and while there might be some slight slant in discussion, with a bias towards one team and its player and efforts, that would be the limit.  There would be nothing so gauche and obvious as speaking of the self and the team is a partnership or an identical association. That casts a huge pall over the entirety of the coverage and sullies the reputation and tradition of honest booth observers, that 4th estate of sports who explain the game in objective terms.

He continued to do this, using three or four more first person pronouns to include himself and the team in the same category. How can I trust the commentary on the game if I know so explicitly that his emotional agenda is blatantly biased?

I did get to see an amazing moment, though. I was watching as a batter hit a sharp line drive over the shortstop's head and into left center. A single. Then there was the replay and slo-mo. Wonderful. Now a different angle, close up and slo. This shot was from the camera on the first base side, showing the batter's front as he swung. The angle, though, also included the fans over the batter's shoulder: a father an what seems to be his son. The father is turned to his son and is clearly hectoring him about some aspect of baseball. His hands are raised as he explains the physics of something or other. The child is smiling widely, his eyes glued to the game. He sees the hit and ignores his father and the father turns too late from his lecture and misses the entire play, in fact, missing everything that is really important about going to a game with your son.

Later, I ended up in the kitchen as I had to make sure that I ate some dessert and thus balance out the main course I had just crimed against huge-Dan-ity. I had the exhaust fan on in order to appease the local, overly sensitive drama queen of a smoke detector. She makes such a scene over, like, no smoke! She is SO annoying like that. Gawd!

The TV was still on, insisting louder from the other room that I should really be abandoning dessert and staring at the rich men play a game. From that distance and with the intervening noise, I lost many of the subtleties of intonation and meaning coming from the guys in the booth. I heard that a new pitcher was being announced in, "Sixto Sanchez." Except that I heard it through a wind tunnel and it came through as "Six-Toe Sanchez." "Oh, cool!" I thought to myself, "A real old school nickname which makes me emotionally connect with the mass market nostalgia machine we call the MLB." Then I realized my mistake and that I was a horrible "ist" of some sort and I was denying the player free agency by assuming pretty much anything about him other than some near-Cartesian acceptance that he exists therefore he exists.

And later, I found out that the guy in the booth, the horrible homer, is Al Hrabosky!

I TAKE IT ALL BACK. I'm sorry! I take everything back. Please don't kill me Mr. The Hungarian!

I was also thinking about the various labels and hierarchies in sports. Baseball teams are managed while other sports are coached. Baseball has a manager, helped by coaches. Other sports have Coaches who run things (basketball, hockey) assisted by assistant coaches. Football has a Head Coach and other coaches -- the manager isn't on the field at all.

Then my dessert was ready.