What? It’s NOT the end of the world? Manny Ramirez committed baseball blasphemy.
Ramirez: Red Sox losing ALCS wouldn’t be ‘end of the world’
ESPN – Manny: BoSox losing ALCS not ‘end of the world’ – MLB
MLB.com has nothing on this. ESPN radio’s Mike and Mie in the morning were talking about it this morning, so I went to espn.com and there it was as a main news link for today.
It goes right in with the MLB commercials with the “I live for this” theme. yes I, the quintessential baseball fan, who even has a T-shirt that says “Baseball is Life, the rest is just details”, am a bit put off by the way people absolutize sports, and talk about it in terms of life highlights. Now I do admit to knowing dates of non-sports things by remembering what was going on in the world of sports during that time, and matching it up with my “stat-head” memory as to what team won what in what year.
But “I live for this” is a bit much. I can’t quite describe sports thrills in those terms anymore. And I can get up and get down with the rise and fall of my team along with many others, but it’s just not what so many people invest into it. For many years, I could get pretty down when my team got eliminated, particularly after a good season when hopes were high. In the last few years, my emotions tend to be limited to the game time and maybe an hour or so afterwards.
Most of all, “I live for this” is just downright idolatrous. This sounds like nonsense to a sports-crazy culture, but it looks to me to be more and more out of whack. It ‘s ENTERTAINMENT. It’s DIVERSION. It’s fun. Nothing more. if we “live for this”, then we’re pretty sick and warped.
(BTW, I have some good news for Red Sox fans. They have Beckett going tonight—a game too late as far as I’m concerned—-but a win getsthem back to Boston, and Schilling can certainly step up and get them to game 7, where ANYTHING can happen. The whole “on 3 games rest” as if that’s something super human should ask the pitchers who pitched prior to the mid-90’s. Jose Rio was dominant in games 1 and 4 in the Reds sweep over the A’s in 1990. It was a given that the top dog on the pitching staff would pitch games 1 and 4, and 7 if neccessary. In 1968, Micky Lolich even stepped up and pitched game 7 after winning games 2 and 5. Two games rest? No way! What’s more is that pitchers pitched 300 innings plus ALL The time, and the ones who did this the most LASTED well into their 40’s? Where does that leave all this “sceince” of pitch counts and 4 -5 days rest? Boston should have gone with Beckett in game 4, and tied the series up. World Series MVPs all through world series history have been the dominant pitchers who pitched 1,4 and 7 —(7 gamers backwards from 1991) Morris(91), Viola(87), Darling(86), Tudor(85), Matlack (73), Hunter 2-5-7 (72), Lolich and Gibson (68), Gibson and Lonborg 2,5,7 (67), Koufax 2,5,7(65), Gibson 2,5,7(64), Ford 1,4,6(62), Law (60), Wynn 1,4,6(59), Spahn 1,4,6 and Burdette 2,5,7(58), Burdette 2,5,7(57), and on and on…….WIMPS!
