Sunday, July 6, 2008

The Rules of Baseball Have Been Changed

Breaking news from Bristol, CT. ESPN anchor Tim Kirkjian sings the praises of Phillies 2B Chase Utley:

He plays the game the correct way; he gets hit by a pitch three times in one game, he runs over the catcher on plays at the plate.

Tim then went on to clarify that effective immediately, the winner of any baseball game will be the team that is hit by more pitches and runs over the other team's catcher more times. Actually, he didn't. He just wanted to point out that Utley is a gritty, hustlerific, catcher-plowing pitch magnet. That's what makes him so great.

(Edit: I should have clarified, this was particularly offensive because it was the very first thing Kirkjian talked about after introducing Utley as the NL's leading All-Star vote getter. Not Utley's power numbers, or BA, or plus defense. No. The grittiness is much more important.)

2 comments:

JohnF said...

Hey there was this one time when Manny Ramirez was hit by a pitch three times in one game. That's because Manny is fundamentally sound. Oh, but the Red Sox lost that game. I can't expect Timmy to know something like that, though. I mean, it happened yesterday, for Pete's sake.

CitizenX said...

That wasn't grit, chowdahead, that was Manny being Manny.

Seriously, if he had been anybody else, those HBP wouldn't have been added to his tally.

I checked.