Some miscellaneous sports thoughts, cobbled together for when we need them most.
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I genuinely believe sports radio is the worst thing you could possibly listen to (this coming from someone who irregularly creates his own radio programs!), but last week, due to circumstances beyond my control, I was placed in a minivan on a three-hour round trip with a sports radio listener, and he was in charge of the dial. So for possibly the first time in my life, I was subjected to more than an hour of sports radio, consecutively.
And what a time to finally involuntary take that dive! Because there are no fucking sports being played right now! I don't know what's more insane, that we are forced to live through a spring with no professional baseball, or that people are still listening to sports radio despite that. Sport radio with sports is already the lowest common denominator, so how much lower can you go during a pandemic?
Well, I am here to report how Mike Missanelli filled that blissful hour that I was tuned in. It ain't pretty, folks.
1) The Michael Jordan documentary — I'm trying real hard to get out of the lifelong habit of denigrating pop culture bullshit that I have no interest in. If this is your thing, then great, watch a nine-hour documentary about Michael Jordan. Enjoy. I just know personally that I don't give a single fuck about the dude's life or legacy, and I can assure you that I will never watch it. Missanelli was discussing some playoff round that was covered in the portion that he just watched. I zoned out.
2) The 20th anniversary of Iverson's infamous "practice" rant — I've seen this press conference before (I didn't see it as an 11-year-old because I cared even less then than I do now), and I think it's pretty funny. (Sidenote: even funnier was how wrapped up in it Nick Jonas seemed to be in 2016.) Do we need to reminisce about it for 20 minutes? Probably not. I did learn something, though—apparently Iverson's best friend had just passed away, which explains why he was so upset that day.
3) Green Bay's black population — I have no idea how they even got on this subject, but apparently, before the Packers signed a famous black football player in the '80s, there were no black barbershops in Green Bay. Missanelli subsequently pondered if Green Bay's black population was even that much bigger today. (One of his sidekicks looked it up—3483.)
4) Clowney is rumored to be headed to the Eagles! — I know that name! I had to ask what team he was on prior (the Seahawks)! I think that talking about the NFL in May is just about the saddest goddamn thing in the world!
5) Actors playing athletes — Missanelli stated that the best performances by actors playing athletes are the ones that look the most natural while acting out the sport itself. Missanelli claimed that it would be best if Hollywood just picked the best athlete to play the role (yes, that's how casting works). There was a long discussion about what actor does the best at playing his respective sport in a movie. They landed on... Shooter McGavin?!
6) Presidential middle names — Missanelli likes trivia, apparently, and some dude won $100 to such and such for knowing that Bush's "W." stood for "Walker." Then Mikey Miss and his cohosts all revealed their own middle names. Riveting shit.
7) "Why is the pandemic political?" — Missanelli questioned why anyone would be pushing to reopen the economy when it's clearly not safe yet to do so. There were call-in responses to this. If you make me repeat them on this blog, I will probably kill myself, so let's just move on to the day's final discussion point...
8) Harps — apparently we can all agree that harps sound nice. SPORTS RADIO!! WOW!!!
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The Ethical Dilemma of Starting Baseball
The lack of baseball in my life is fucking painful, so I was excited to see a week or two ago an alleged plan to get the MLB back on its feet. The first priority should be the safety of the players and their families (forget the fans—it's pretty much a given that baseball, if it does happen in 2020, will be played in empty stadiums). How do you prevent athletes in a sometimes-contact sport from contracting a deadly disease from each other?
This alleged plan that I saw called for a truncated season, from July to September. Players would be allowed to live with their families during this time. The league would be divided into three leagues—West, Central, and East—and you'd only play the other nine teams in your league (limiting the amount of cross-country travel).
Most important to the safety of the players, every player and player's family member would receive weekly COVID-19 testing, and would only be allowed to participate if they were negative. There would be about 3000 people being tested weekly through the MLB.
The fact that I so crave baseball may have blinded me to the fact that maybe this isn't such a good idea? Pam, for one, said that this would be wrong for the MLB to enact, that those tests could be used on everyday people, on nurses and medical staff, or grocers and other essential staff. There's already a shortage of testing, so why should baseball players be the ones to get the testing weekly, while others with actual symptoms are left out in the cold?
Fair point. If we take it as fact that there are a finite number of tests in the United States, then yes, of course you don't need to test Krew Harper every single week. Save 'em for the non-union supermarket clerks who are being ritually sacrificed by the corporate overlords, who are being asked to put their lives at risk for minimum wage. If the government is only able to produce a certain number of tests due to general fucking incompetence by the buffoons in the White House, then sure, give it to people who need it. I agree.
But if I may play devil's advocate for just a quick second, and speak to the very specific concern of professional baseball... can't we have it both ways? I am not a medical professional and know nothing about how tests are made, but if the MLB was able to use a portion of its nearly infinite funds to make their own tests, and use those tests exclusively on its players, then wouldn't that be okay?
Baseball is a product, and there are consumers of that product (me, others), and so the creators of this product (the commissioner, et al) could create a means in which to protect the delivers of this product (the players). This would be akin to Amazon making COVID tests for their delivery men and women. If Amazon is creating additional tests to make sure that the workers are okay, then wouldn't that be okay too?
Baseball players are employed workers. They are overpaid to begin with, sure, but they are still employed workers, and I don't see the issues if their employers want to spend their own money to create tests that would make those employed workers safer.
It's different when you talk about the federal government, because they are a public entity, and they exist for the benefit of the country's citizens. If, say, trump was tested once a week even though he had no symptoms, that would be fucked up, for him to turn around and use multiple tests on himself while struggling to provide tests for ordinary citizens (and it's trump, so of course that's actually true).
With private companies, I don't see a problem, as long as they are truly producing their owns tests. I would have a problem with the MLB getting allocated the necessary tests from the federal government, to the detriment of us ordinary folks who are actually sick. If that didn't happen, but rather, baseball became insular both in contact with the outside world and how they provide safety for each other, then fuck it. Do it. Give me baseball.
I don't know why I'm wasting my breath. I know this isn't how the world works. Baseball is going to start on July 1st, and on July 7th some newspaper is going to report that a major city reallocated hundreds of thousands of tests away from hospital janitors to provide them to baseball players, or some shit like that.
And I don't even know if any of this is actually true. I don't know if baseball would come back under these circumstances, and I certainly don't know how COVID tests are produced. It's possible that MLB cannot make their own tests, and they would be forced to unethically use tests intended for the regular folk. If that's the case, then I'll see ya in 2021, baseball.
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I know that it might not be feasible, or safe, or beneficial to anyone for baseball to start right now, but goddamn, I miss it. To sooth my sores, here are 69 things I miss about baseball.
- The sweet/salty/smoky smell of Citizens Bank Park when you walk through the big red gates
- Harper's massive swing, and the crack that you hear when he connects
- 1st basemen digging balls out of the dirt while doing a split
- Trying to catch a foul ball
- Yelling "sucks!" after every opposing player's name
- Cursing Mike Schmidt under my breath
- When something happens during a particular game that hasn't happened in 50 years, and because it's baseball, they can tell you all about the last time this happened, and the specific circumstances under which it occurred last time
- Drinking a beer an inning
- Hearing Larry Andersen complain about the umpires
- Waiting for Inquirer's Home Run Payoff Inning
- Eating as many Crab Fries as I can while waiting to pay for the Crab Fries
- 0-2 pitches
- That moment immediately after an 0-2 pitch lands in the catcher's glove right outside the strike zone, and the batter didn't swing, and everyone thinks it's a strike, and it probably is, but the umpire is a dick and stands there all silent, and then the response of "WHAT?! Are you kidding me?!"
- Dollar dogs
- Outfielders that use two hands to catch fly balls
- Stirrup socks
- Franzke and Andersen's rapport
- Listening on the radio in between calls at work during a day game
- Bat flips
- Walk-offs
- Big strikeouts from dependable closers
- Complicated hand signals that basic are meant to say "steal" or "don't steal"
- When pitchers put up worthy at-bats when they get to the plate
- Recognizing mediocre players from other teams because they used to be a mediocre player for the Phillies ten years ago
- Reminiscing about 2008
- The terrible Northeast Philly accents on the radio advertisements
- A bang-bang play
- A diving catch over the rails
- How every walk-up song for every batter is either the most generic rap or the most generic country
- Watching the grounds crew hose down the base paths between innings
- Having time to think about baseball in between each pitch
- Having time to talk about baseball in between each pitch
- The Phanatic's hip-thrusts
- Drinking beers in Jetro or Lot K beforehand, washing down soft pretzels someone picked up on the way down
- Sitting in traffic on Pattison Ave. after an amazing win
- Tom McCarthy being the biggest goddamn goober on the planet
- Murph interviewing some corporate bigwig whom no one cares about on the much larger portion of the split screen while integral things are happening on the field, being unremarked upon because some fucking billionaire paid Murph to stroke his ego on television
- Roman Quinn breaking speed records and then injuring himself
- Rhys Hoskins hitting like 47 homers in one month and then not getting a hit for two
- NOLA DAY (when he is hot) (even when he is cold, fuck it, at this point I'll take that too)
- Velasquez throwing like 120 pitches in 3 innings
- Trying to make eye contact with the Phanatic so he knows to point the hot dog cannon my way
- Hoping to see another unassisted triple play in my lifetime
- Predicting that the Phillies pitcher is going to pitch a perfect game... and making that prediction before every single game
- Umpires with obnoxious strike calls, complete with violent hand movements
- The Bernie-cam
- Extra innings
- Position players being forced to pitch
- $11 Bud Lights
- Filling out a scorecard
- Watching the condensed game the next day when they are on the west coast and there's no fucking way I'll be able to stay up till 1 AM to watch the whole game as it happens
- When the ceremonial first pitch doesn't reach the plate
- 10-pitch walks
- 10-pitch home runs
- Outfielders that bring sunglasses into the field but then wear them on top of their heads
- How weird baseball can be sometimes
- Reading The Good Phight after the game (that poor site right now is recapping virtual simulated Phillies games, or some bullshit, it might be sadder than sports radio)
- Booing the opposing pitcher when he throws to first
- A Harper outfield assist
- J.T. Realmuto gunning down a base-stealer
- Pretending that Willow gives a shit about any of this
- A relief pitcher coming into the game to throw three pitches
- Batters that adjust their gloves after every swing
- Cheering for a nice foul ball catch from a fan (bonus if the fan's kid throws the ball back)
- John Kruk mumbling something hilarious
- The sights, the sounds, the clichés
- All those big wins (there were supposed to be over 100 for the Phillies this year)
- A crowd on their feet with two outs in the ninth
- Shit, I'd even take another Ryan Howard strikeout in the fucking dirt, even though those days are long gone
Baseball, please come back.
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