The Eternal Bulls*** of the Sportscaster's Mind.

I'm not afraid to write the word Bullshit, but I don't want to encourage the decline of this very fine blog into a sump of nastiness which substitutes lurid language for reasonable commentary. (Damn! That's a really cool sentence I wrote.) Applause! :) I would especially not want the Arboretum to be as profane on screen as I am in person so much of the time.

But, you know folks, I'm right that bulls*** is a perfect word for what most sportscasters spout during a game. If bulls*** is trite, then let's say hogs***
I'm talking about TV. They babble on about subjects so peripheral to the game that's going on that one either tunes it out, turns it off, or gets angry.

And, most of them are inclined toward clairvoyance and crystal balls. "They will walk Inge, in this situation," the guy intones majestically, and then we watch while Inge strikes out. "When I was a manager, I would have walked a batter in this situation," says the mumbling mouth. (Hey, Dude, maybe that's why they fired you from that job.) "Yes, I agree," says Moe sitting next to him. "Would you have walked him, Curley?" Naturally, Curley says he would; and then passes the query for one more pop: "Let's go to Angie on the sidelines. Angie, do you have any idea why they didn't walk Inge?"

Or, here: "In this situation, first down, he's unlikely to pass.....Henne drops back to pass.(tension in voice) He throws to Arrington. (shouting!) It's caught! (shouting louder.) That was a great! pass, an outstanding! pass, and an even greater! catch. You won't see it done any better that that."

To use the vernacular, G-I-I-I-V-V-E me a BREAK! We could see he was going to pass; we saw him throw; we saw someone catch the ball. That's why it's called teleVISION. I could have watched all that without that hyperbolic nervous breakdown!

This is not the only problem. Now, the bastards have computers. And they hire people to churn up on these computers, painfully obscure statistics and fractured factoids which they spray all over their commentary. I presume they want us to think that they, these clever and percipient EXPERTS, know all this junk by skill and memory. This has gone far enough! One doesn't know whether the E.R.A. of Vida Blue is more or less important than the shoe size of Joe DiMaggio. We are lost in a blizzard of numbers of scant - if any - importance. By the time a football game ends, a typical sportscaster has invoked the names of 15 long dead players and the particularities of the careers of 15 others who are alive but inactive. Stop! Shut Up!

Then for fear that a 'caster might actually fill some space with a calm and welcome silence, they hire "color commentators" and side-liners and even bring in stale old guests to sit beside them in the booth and ramble on about their little feats. All of this has the effect of heaping turds upon turds of banality.

Now they've fired Steve Lyons. Did he deserve it? Why, yes, because he talked. If he had just sat there with his pants off, as if he were in that game back in Chicago, he'd have been fine. But, no, he talked. They already had two other guys, and didn't need him anyhow. Every sportscaster who talks more than 15 words a minute deserves to be fired. Hand me the stack of pink slips. I'll gladly do it!

I wish we could vote in November on this stuff. One sportscaster to a booth, and he can be replaced only if he falls over dead, and only after he's been removed and the floor's been cleaned up. And someone is counting his words with a shut-off button in hand. That's how I want it.