Saturday, June 02, 2007

Memo To Everyone, Part 2: Shut Up Shuttin' Up.

Up And In

And here we go again. Last night, in hte ninth inning with the Yankees way ahead and Ty Cobb Kevin Youklis up, Scott Proctor threw one way up and way in. Youklis made a move towards the mound, the benches and bullpen emptied and there was all that testsoterone-fueled milling around and glaring at each other.

Cute.

But ridiculous.

The score was 9-3, Yankees. Bottom of the ninth, one out. All Proctor wanted to do was get two outs and get out of there. Yes, there had been some guys hit in the course of the game. But none of them looked particularly intentional and none of them were up high. There was no bad blood going in this game. Proctor was trying to pitch inside and it got away.

But whenever a pitch goes up and in rationality goes right out the window. Yankees' announcer Michael Kay even acted like it was intentional on Proctor's part. "Why on earth would Scott Proctor DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO that?!!!?!??!?" And Ken Singleton, who played the game, who knows it wasn't intentional, just sits there, instead of saying, "Michael, you stupid snot, have you learned nothing in all your years of watching baseball?"

After the game Kay tried to sound semi-rational, saying "IF it was intentional. . . . " Too late. Either you know it's not intentional and you say that, or you go along with the sexy story line. Post-facto backpedaling makes Kay look even more lame (which isn't easy).

And it makes wonderful talk-radio fodder. Chris Russo on WFAN said this morning that Scott Proctor "has good control." What? Do you watch any games, you weasel? Proctor is always walking guys at the worst possible time. 13 walks in 26 innings. Not "good" control. But of course if Proctor doesn't have good control that blows the whole "Proctor did it on purpose" story line.

Everyone, please shut up. Please.

Fox, today, and ESPN, tomorrow night, will have a field day with this of course. Won't it be fun to hear the opinions of Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, John Miller and Joe Morgan on this?

I may have to watch this weekend's games with the sound off.

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