Idiots Write About Sports

If I have to listen to him, there’s no reason why you people shouldn’t suffer, too. So we proudly introduce a new feature here at the Idiot Sports Weblog: the collective wit and wisdom of Angels color man Rex Hudler. Whenever circumstances require me to watch a significant portion of an Angels telecast featuring the fomer utility man and current shill, I will select one quote that captures Hudler’s special je ne sais qua.

Without further ado, here are the candidates from the April 15 broadcast of the Angels-A’s game:

Runner-Up: The situation — Barry Zito has just completed eight innings of stellar work, but leaves the game trailing 2-1.

Quoth the Hudler: “[Zito pitched well] though he has a chance not to win this game.”

Yes, well, now that he’s been removed, I would say that the chances are 100 percent that he won’t get the win. Or, to use Hudler-esque sentence structure, his chances of not winning are double negative-zero plus infinity.

The Winner: Steve Finley has led off the fifth inning by getting plunked by Zito. That brings Bengie Molina to the plate. He works a 3-0 count before, inexplicably, swinging at the next pitch and popping it up. The A’s end up escaping the inning with no damage on the scoreboard.

Says our man Hud: “”Mike [Scioscia] likes to turn Benjie loose though so he doesn’t get on base and clog the bases.”

Yeah, the last thing you want midway through a scorelss ballgame is to start an inning with too many men on base. That really bogs an offense down.

You know, I think I heard that "clog the bases" thing from Harold Reynolds last year, too. What the hell is that?

I think it's the flavor of the month for the anti-statistical analysis crowd. "Sure, statheads talk about the importance of on-base percentage, but they never played the game like you and me, Krukie."

Next month it will be how hitting home runs helps kill off rallies by taking runners off base -- a theory I actually heard someone advance listening to a Pirates game last weekend.

Actually, if you knew anything about the Angels you would know that while Benjie Molina is a great catcher, he is a very slow runner, which is why Rex said he could "clog the bases."

Candice --

I am familiar that Benjie Molina is a big, flat slob who I -- a slightly less big, fat slob -- could beat in a footrace. It's not a difficult concept to grasp -- just like it's not a difficult concept to grasp that the way to win a baseball game is to score more runs than the other team and that one of the ways you increase your chances of doing that is to get runners on base in order to increase the number of run-scoring opportunities.

If Molina is such a slug that getting him on base provides such a competitive disadvantage then perhaps he should consider an alternate career -- I understand there are wonderful opportunities in the field of competitve eating. But let's not confuse a player's inability to perform one of the three fundamental requirements of the came -- hit, field, run -- with a stroke of strategic brilliance, as Rex Hudler seems to insist that we must.

Post a comment