Idiots Write About Sports

Let us turn our attention away from the dark clouds gathering around the A’s and back toward happier times — the long-ago time known as last week when the A’s could score runs at will and boneheaded plays were committed by Other People wearing Different Uniforms.
I speak, of course, about last Thursday’s Angels-A’s game, a 5-4 Oakland win decided on a ninth-inning play you have probably never seen before nor will ever see again.
The scenario: Jason Kendall is on third, Bobby Crosby is on first, and Eric Chavez is digging in at the plate to face Francisco Rodriguez, who is already steaming about a 3-2 ball that put Crosby on base. The book calls for Crosby to steal second on the next pitch, if only to give the Angels one less base to make the third out at. Rodriguez throws, Crosby runs, it’s a ball, and we all settle in for the 1-0 pitch… only Rodriguez muffs the return throw from catcher Bengie Molina. Maybe he was miffed that yet another pitch got called a ball. Maybe he saw a pretty girl in the stands. Maybe he suffered from a momentarily brain-lock. Whatever the reason, he half-heartedly stabbed at the ball, which glanced off his glove and rolled away. Jason Kendall raced home, and for 24 glorious hours, Oakland enjoyed sole possession of first place in the AL West before the cold reality of the pennant race set in. Over at Baseball Prospectus, James Click described the play as a walk-off “return throw to a pitcher too busy acting like a five-year old child who isn’t allowed to buy what he sees in the local Toys ‘R Us to bother catching the ball” play, which is as fitting a description as any for what transpired.
I didn’t see the play as it happened, as I can’t tolerate the Angels’ terrible television announcers. I’ve outlined my basic objections to Rex Hudler time and again, but for you newcomers, the Cliff’s Notes version is basically this:
1). He is an unrepentant homer who heaps man-sized helpings of praise upon anyone remotely connected to the Angels organization whether said praise is deserved or not;
2). The few times he cites statistical evidence for his half-baked opinions, he places undue importance on wildly unrevealing stats like batting average and garbage numbers like productive outs while pooh-poohing things like on-base percentage and slugging percentage;
3) Most of the time, though, he gibbers on and on about things that can’t be measured like “heart” and “hustle,” which only he, as an ex-ballplayer, can discern; and
4) He can’t string two sentences together without saying something non-sensical.
And the funny thing is, he may not even be the weakest link in the Angel TV booth. Steve Physioc, the play-by-play guy, is every bit as terrible. His cadence is completely wrong for baseball and has been ever since I had to suffer through his stint as the Giants play-by-play announcer in the mid-80s. Good announcers realize there’s a difference between a sparkling defensive play in the fifth inning and a walk-off home run in the ninth; Physioc doesn’t, so he screams at the top of his lungs at any sort of positive development for Anaheim, regardless of its context. Which probably doesn’t make much sense, I’m afraid, excepting that it’s teeth-gratingly annoying.
So when the Angels play the A’s, I’m torn. On the one hand, I know I won’t be left to the whims of the Extrta Innings package as to whether or not the A’s are worth carrying on a particular evening — every game of the Oakland-Anaheim series will always be on TV down here in Southern California. Unfortunately, between Physioc’s screeching and Hudler’s assorted idiocies, I’ll usually be driven mad by the third inning and flipping over to Simpsons reruns on Channel 11. So what I’ve been doing lately is listening to the games on the Angels’ flagship station. Rory Markus and Terry Smith aren’t the greatest radio play-by-play team in the world — for my tastes, there’s a little too much of the TASS-style “wheat production up five percent!” approach to broadcasting anything remotely negative about the Angels, if you get my meaning — but when compared to Physioc and Hudler, they come off like Huntley and Brinkley.
Which is a round-about way of saying, I had the radio on when Rodriguez’s brain locked the other day. And while Markus’ description of what happened delievered a solid mental picture, I found myself flipping on the TV, in part to see the video replay of the blunder in question, but mostly to see how Phys and Rex could spin this disaster to the greater glory of Arte Moreno.
Rex, as you might expect, did not disappoint.
As the video showed, in painful detail, Rodriguez nonchalantly flipping up his glove to knock the ball away and cost the Angels a game, it sounded like Rex was fighting back tears. “That’s almost unacceptable,” he said.
And I hope you’re thinking what I am about that analyis: Almost? A guy bungles a routine throw from the catcher — a play that happens hundreds of thousands of times without incident over the course of a season — and it’s only almost unacceptable?
Which brings us to our pop quiz for the day: what would have made that play entirely unacceptable to Rex Hudler?
A) If Rodriguez had muffed Molina’s throw while in the midst of a prolonged denunciation of Arte Moreno’s ownership.
B) If Rodriguez would have been too busy mocking the hair plug commercial that Rex Hudler appears in to properly receive the return throw from Molina.
C) If Rodriguez, in his haste to retrieve the ball, would have knocked over a crowd of small children, expectant mothers and disabled war veterans who had inexplicably wandered onto the field.
D) If Rodriguez grabbed the stadium P.A. microphone to call for the violent overthrow of the United States government.
E) If, in the midst of drowning his post-game sorrows, Rodriguez had whipped out a bong stuffed with an especially potent brand of grass and refused to let Rex take a hit.
F) All of the above.
G) True Angels never do anything that’s unacceptable.
I suspect, if pressed, that Rex would pick G. But that play was almost unacceptable in the same way that Rex is almost moronic.