Hello faithful readers of the 38th most successful Fire(Blank)(Blank) blog with a blogspot address! The big man upstairs, Larry B, thought this blog could use some fresh thoughts so he offered me a spot in the lineup. This was before Eriz came back with a vengeance today, so now it’s like you’re getting two new bloggers in one! It should be noted that LarryB and I go way back (hence my eagerness to make fun of his articles)-- he’s not just picking up riff-raff off the street to write here. I earned this spot through years of half-heartedly participating in his fantasy leagues and complaining about local sports teams with him. For those of you who follow the blog regularly, I’m also known as Chris Hart. Yes, I still hate this blog as much as I used to, but now I get to combine it with the rest of my self-hatred, so it works out.
I don’t consider myself to be a “stat” guy at all, probably just barely above the average fan’s knowledge of the game. So the things that jump out at me are usually going to be particularly annoying/egregious/lazy on the part of the journalist. Luckily for me, I have a job that allows me to listen to mlb.tv while working. It lets me listen in on April afternoon games between the Yankees and Royals, and catch a whiff of this type of thing: from Royals color man Paul Splittorff when the subject of A-Rod’s postseason struggles comes up--
“That goes back to his days with the Seattle Mariners.”
Ugh, come on man. You’re paid to pay attention to baseball. A-Fraud’s stats in three postseason series with the Mariners:
’97 ALDS: .313/.313/.563
’00 ALDS: .308/.308/.308
’00 ALCS: .409/.480/.773
As someone who watches about 10 total AL games a season (Bill Simmons League Bias Alert!) I even knew about Fillet-Rod’s success in Seattle and NY pre Game 4 ’04 ALCS. You’ve been the Royals color commentator since 1987 (according to wikipedia), you should know better than this.
I hope my posts don't become a running string of horrible announcing from local broadcast teams, but the first week of the season hasn't led me to think otherwise.
you're just jealous of Royals color man Paul Splittorff!
ReplyDeleteYou missed when Ken Singleton, Yankee commentator extraordinare was talking about the "old Royals" and how much they stole bases. "George Brett and Willie Wilson, those were two of the best in the game at stealing bases." Now Willie Wilson is one of the best basestealers of all time... George Brett - 201 steals in 21 seasons, never more than 23 in a season, and a 67% success rate. The YES network rules.
ReplyDeleteBetween the addition of Sage Rosenfels over at Kissing Suzy Kolber and now this, it's clearly "Bring in a Seventh Contributor" week in the blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteBut the real question, as far as I'm concerned, is who is next to join the FireJay team: anonymous or Anonymous?
Archie- don't rule out (comment deleted). And in all seriousness, we may very well add one more guy. He's a huge soccer fan so he would probably cover that like Jarrett covers hockey. Insert soccer joke here! (Those foreign pussies!)
ReplyDeleteI could insert a soccer joke, but I think I'll just link to this. Says it more eloquently than I ever could.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, has anyone ever done some sort of "America's Next Top Blogger" thing where they have a bizarre reality show type-thing for a new writer? (Other than when Simmons did that with his intern about five years ago.) That seems like the last great gimmick out there before blogs truly become just as hacky and foolish as everything else. Dare to dream, I guess.
(And for the record, no, that was not in any way meant to be some veiled suggestion. Just seemed like an amusing notion.)
Fuckin Fire Joe Morgan beat me to Richard Griffin's Griffbag this week.
ReplyDeleteI've made it my policy to avoid writing up stuff they've already done.....clearly they don't have the same rule, those phonies have ripped me off 3 times so far this year.
Holy shit, pnoles, I was going to mention that, but then I did not want to seem as if I was ripping them for no good reason. I am not ripping them anyway, I just happened to notice they post a lot of stuff a bit after you have. I have noticed they post things waaaaay later than when the article actually appeared sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI think you should start writing Pro-Simmons posts. Instead of criticizing Simmons, you should post a sentence he writes and then tell why it is exactly correct. I would read that...
Larry b, when are you going to start having someone come on and discuss women's basketball and Arena Football League articles?
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ReplyDeleteHold your horses there Ben. Those are lower on the priority list than boxing and poker.
ReplyDeleteBen, we need our UFC and cricket reps in here before we add anyone for those.
ReplyDelete/pretends not to notice that he's copying pnoles's joke
ben - if it's arena football you want, it's arena football you'll get. It will be all San Jose SaberCats all the time here. It's a real shame that the AFL isn't on TNN anymore. That was some high quality pbp.
ReplyDeletelarry - you don't need to bring in anybody to write about soccer. i'll do it... as long as it's the MISL. Right now the Baltimore Blast are locked up in a tight one against the New Jersey Ironmen and La Raza de Monterrey are playing against the Chicago Storm for a chance to play against the Detroit Ignition or perennial favorite Milwaukee Wave.
The Wave will win this.
I can't possibly be the only one who thinks that chris hart got a spot on the blog so that larry b can start ripping him from the cheap seats, can I?
ReplyDeleteIt's a real shame there is no TNN anymore! CMT is way too country, whenever I saw the TNN channel listing I thought maybe it was a CNN for people from Tennessee.
ReplyDeleteI think it is great that Chris has come along and joined the FJM blog. I am a little nervous though that he does not enjoy ripping Simmons for no apparent reason like I do. Maybe we can convert him.
hahaha glad to see you are watching the yanks! good man! the kc royals annoucers are just terrible. If you listen closely they will actually give there txt msg number during the game in case you wanted to give them direct feedback!
ReplyDelete