Idiots Write About Sports

Actual dialogue from last night’s Astros-Cardinals tilt, during that giddy 20 minutes when the Astros were rubbing their hands over the soft, soft felt of the NL pennant:

Thom Brennaman: There has never been a World Series game played in this nation’s biggest state.

[Pregnant Pause]

Steve “Psycho” Lyons: Texas?

That’s because there’s never been a major-league team in Alaska, genius.

Oh? You meant by population, not geographical size? Well, many World Series games have been played in the nation’s largest-by-population state. The last one was in 2002, when the World Series was contested entirely within the state of California.

So I guess Psycho’s response was the best under those circumstances. I wonder what idiotic thing McCarver would’ve said in that situation?

My wife, being from Arkansas, developed a studied loathing of Texans. Stealing from the old joke the British tell about France, the canonical joke was that the principle problem with Texas was Texans. A couple brief anecdotes:

Some time in the last decade or so, Texas, like a lot of states in the southwest, realized that growth combined with dwindling freshwater supplies equalled trouble. At a press conference on some state panel to study the problem, the governor came out and said they'd just take whatever they needed from Arkansas. Arkansas, awash in water (the Arkansas River doubles the Mississippi when the two join) but unhappy about officiating in the Southeastern Conference (i.e., Texas and Arkansas), immediately arose as one... and said something on the order of, "Like hell!" Only they wouldn't say that because they're far too polite.

The other Texas story was when some braggart Texan was talking about how big his state was, and an Alaskan piped up and told him to cool it, lest they divide Alaska in three and make Texas the fourth-largest state.

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