Idiots Write About Sports

Confession time: the author has not always lived and died with the exploits of the Oakland Nine. I grew up a Dodger fan, even after my family pulled up stakes and moved from Los Angeles to the Bay Area when I was a lad of nine. It was no small accomplishment, rooting for the Dodgers in the Bay Area of the 1980s when the Giant fanbase consisted largely of angry drunkards. And so rooting for the team even through the lean early and mid-90s was a cinch by comparison.
So why am I now an A’s fan who views the Dodgers with studied indifference? Like most unpleasant things associated with modern living — bad television, terrible news coverage, Tim McCarver — the blame lies squarely on Fox.
Rupert Murdoch purchased the team when I was in my mid-to-late 20s, doing everything he could to obliterate the goodwill the O’Malley family had foster during the previous two decades of my life. The Fox ownership started playing more rock music between innings in lieu of the far superior organ music. They experimented with idiotic sound effects (Austin Powers scream, “Yeah, baby!” for every Dodger double-play), giving Dodger Stadium a AA-ball feel. Hell, they even floated the idea of razing Dodger Stadium, until the citizenry gave them the fish-eye.
Jerry Seinfeld has that bit about in this day of high-priced free-agency and franchise relocation, you’re not rooting for players and teams so much as you are for laundry. Well, the Fox folks wanted to change that, too, introducing garrish blue jerseys, ostensibly just for Think Blue Week but really as a trial balloon for an alternative third-jersey for a team whose appeal rests primary on its tradition.
Well, about 1998, 1999, I found myself rooting against the Dodgers. It started out with just hoping that a lengthy losing streak would force the jittery Fox ownership to jettison talentless blowhards like Kevin Malone, but soon I found myself taking active pleasure in Dodger defeats. You can describe yourself as many things when you’re doing that, but a fan of a team ain’t one of them.
So I switched my allegiances over to the A’s. Lest you think this was some form of craven bandwagon-jumping — they were still sort of mediocre when I started rooting for them, honest — I will point out that I spent most of my teen-age years attending A’s games at the Coliseum (see above reference to “Giants, drunken fanbase of”) and I had largely pleasant memories of the Green-and-Gold. Pulling for them felt natural and, since I had gone to so many A’s games as a youngster, I have more than a passing familiarity with the team’s history. The only time things get awkward is when someone brings up the 1988 World Series, which I know is supposed to devastate me, but really doesn’t, since, you know… it ended sort of well for me at the time.
I mention all this (which I’ve probably mentioned on the blog before) as a way of saying that if Rupert Murdoch and Fox hadn’t driven me screaming from the Dodgers five or six years ago, Frank McCourt and his merry band of penny-pinchers surely would now. Because I saw in the Long Beach Press-Telegram (link courtesy of 6-4-2, the blog approved by Idiots Who Write About Sports management for all your Dodger-Angel needs) that Ross Porter is getting the ol’ heave-ho after 28 years calling Dodger games.
There are not enough synonyms for “stupid” in Roget’s Thesaurus to adequately describe how wrong-headed this decision is.
This, I have said before: Ross Porter is one the best play-by-play men you could ever hope to have for a baseball game. He’s oft overlooked, since Vin Scully casts a rather long shadow, but he’s a great announcer in his own right who deserves better treatment from the carpet-bagging skinflint who’s giving him the bum’s rush.
The Dodgers, who have employed a one-man broadcast booth dating back to their days in Brooklyn, apparently plan to turn their radio broadcasts over to the relentlessly mediocre Rick Monday and a clichE-spouting ex-jock to be named later. (Presumably, the three-inning simulcast of Scully’s TV play-by-play will continue, lest Dodger fans run McCourt out of town on a rail). If the Press-Telegram story is to be believed, the decision seems to hinge primarily on the Dodgers’ desire to save a buck or two by replacing Porter with someone cheaper.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Here’s hoping that one of the 29 other Major League teams is ready to pounce on McCourt’s mistake. I know of one team some 300 miles to the north of L.A. that would more than benefit from adding Ross Porter to the fold.
Until then, thanks for the good work, Ross. Even when I was pulling for the team to tank it, you made the games fun to listen to.