A Little Part of Me is Still an Angry Blogger

I know, I'm old, and now I apparently listen to NPR, so that's that.  Nobody has posted on this blog in almost two years but I heard something on NPR this morning and it made me want to come here and yell into the void.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The Major League Baseball season is a grind. It's about six months, 162 games. So now that we're about halfway through, these guys deserve a few days rest, right? They're getting it. Next week, it's the All-Star break, and the brightest stars from the National and American Leagues face off Tuesday night in Miami. This year, the Houston Astros are sending five players to the All-Star Game. That's a lot of players. That's a big deal. It is a historic turnaround.

Is it really historic? I don't  know. But this is the least offensive thing.  It's going to go downhill from here.

The Astros have had a terrible record for years. They lost 111 games in 2013 alone. This year, they have turned the tables.

Actually, the Astros haven't had a terrible record since 2014.  They were over .500 in 2015 and 2016.  So really the tables turned like three years ago.  This segment is horribly out of date.

 They are the top team in baseball with the LA Dodgers on their heels. Now I have to confess, I don't watch a whole lot of baseball, so I called Jessica Mendoza to explain. She is a former Olympic softball player and now a broadcaster for ESPN. And she says the Astros managed to turn those rough years into an advantage. In Major League Baseball, the worst teams get first dibs on bright young players in the draft.

Good thing we have an expert broadcaster here to explain how baseball's draft works like every single other professional team sport in this country.

JESSICA MENDOZA: So what the Astros were able to do is, because they were bad for so long, they went and got them a Dallas Keuchel, who's their starting pitcher and has been ridiculous - Carlos Correa, who is probably the best young shortstop in a huge fleet of young players that have been stars.

Dallas Keuchel was drafted in the seventh round in 2009, the year after the Astros went...86-75 and finished in the top half of their division.   Also, lolz at "their starting pitcher" and "fleet of young players". I get that perfect  diction on the radio is hard, but it's her job!

Well at least she was right about Carlos Correa.  But this ain't baseball. Going 1-for-2 when you have plenty of time to prepare is not good enough.  All you had to do was look up "George Springer".

BUT WAIT IT GETS WORSE

MARTIN: Switching gears a bit, the All-Star game, as we mentioned, is coming up, and the rosters for that game have been announced. This is, like, the best of the best who play each other. So who were some of the other players - you mentioned a few that you're watching from the Astros - but who are some other players who are having breakout seasons?

Justin Smoak! Jose Ramirez! God bless Zach Cozart! Cody Bellinger!

Uh oh...

MENDOZA: Aaron Judge who's on the Yankees.

Oh no.

I mean, first of all, he's the biggest player that we've ever seen in the sport. 

No.
Not the tallest (he's a full four inches shorter than Jon Rauch), not the heaviest (Calvin Pickering! Walter Young! Jonathan Broxton! Dmitri Young!).  Big? Fine. Biggest player ever? Nope.

OK? So this guy is 6-foot-7, 280 pounds. 

He's not even the biggest guy currently playing on his own team! MTess's cousin is 6-6 3-bills! I would say that's bigger than Judge.

We have never had someone this size and weigh this much be able to play the game.

Dozens of guys in the past decade have been that size and be able to play the game.

BUT THE WORST ISN'T OVER

 But what's impressive about him is the fact that he's been able to adjust his swing and change from where he was last year - struggling, not able to make a lot of contact - to now being the most powerful home run hitter we've seen since pretty much Babe Ruth.

This was the line that set me off.  I've heard a lot of dumb things said and seen a lot of dumb things written about sports, and none of them made me mad enough to go back to blogging on this blog that I started blogging on as a 23-year old blogger. I have three kids and am trying to finish my dissertation, keep my job, and move across the country and I am taking my time to blog about this because it's just the worst thing ever.

Man, it must nice to be a Yankee and be able to play well for half of one &@*&^ season and have broadcasters declare you the second-best power hitter ever. It must be nice to be a broadcaster and roll out of bed, do no research, and say stupid things on national radio.

They go on to describe how great it is that THIS TIME IT DOESN'T COUNT. But that's just filler talk.