Idiots Write About Sports

I can’t say for certain that Steve Lyons is the worst sports broadcaster in the English-speaking world — perhaps SkySports over in Britain has some sort of gibbering monkey calling the Leicester-Blackburn match — but he has to crack the Top 10, at least. And certainly few incompetent announcers are given such plumb assignments as the National League Championship Series, which Lyons is slobbering his way through on behalf of Fox.

A college-thesis-sized tome could be published outlining the spectacularly obvious observations, incorrect analysis and factual manhandling that Lyons and his nearly-equally awful counterpart Thom Brennaman make during a typical broadcast (And perhaps I’ll do that very thing in the coming days). But my basic problem with the clown is that he says things — easily verifiable things — that are laughably incorrect and no one ever calls him on it.

I offer up this gem from the wine-dark mind of Steve Lyons, straight from the man himself, after the cruel fates conspired to rob the Chicago Cubs of certain victory in Game Six. Lyons, comparing the Cubs’ Game Six disaster to the Boston Red Sox gacking up the ‘86 World Series, offers the following pearls of wisdom.

A. “The ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs, and the Red Sox ended up losing that ballgame.”
B. “What a lot of people forget was, that that was game six.”
C. “The Red Sox did have a chance to win game seven, but it was almost so mentally crushing, they couldn’t come back.”

This merits some rebuttal.

A. I’m sure Calvin Schiraldi, Bob Stanley and Rich Gedman all appreciate that you’ve left out their roles in that little passion play, Psycho, but they probably had as much to do with blowing game six as Buckner did. It was Schiraldi, after all, who gave up three consecutive two-out singles in the 10th that allowed the Mets to cut Boston’s lead to 5-4. Stanley came in and uncorked what was scored a wild pitch (Gedman should have caught it), scoring the tying run. Then and only then, did the Buckner error come in to play.

B. Many casual baseball fans — and all serious baseball fans — remember perfectly well that the game in question was game six.

C. The Sox were so mentally crushed that they jumped out to a 3-0 lead in game seven, which they held until the bottom of the sixth. Even after the Mets took a 6-3 lead in the seventh, Boston battled back, closing the gap to 6-5 in the eighth, before losing 8-5. My point? Yeah, they lost, but it’s not like they went out with a whimper or curled up and died the second the ball trickled through Buckner’s legs.

So in the course of three sentences, Lyons made three incorrect statements. Not matters of opinion, not interpretations, but three things that are simply not true and patently ridiculous.

It makes one look forward to the World Series and Tim McCarver’s endless belaboring of the obvious. Better to listen to someone who insults your intelligence than someone with no intelligence whatsoever.