When Mighty Casey struck out, he may have disappointed the fans of Mudville, but he didn’t insult them. He didn’t brand them racists. Or at least Ernest Lawrence Thayer—the poet who immortalized Casey’s big whiff—didn’t mention any such calumnious castigations in his delightful ditty of the diamond.

But this isn’t 1888—the publication date of Casey at the Bat. No, it’s 2011—the much more modern and much less civilized era of loudmouthed serial interrupters like “Hardball’s” Chris Matthews, who makes rude conquerors like Alexander the Great look polite by comparison.

Used as I (and I suspect you) am to Matthews’ cheesecloth logic and scattershot, half-cocked accusations, I make it a point to miss “Hardball” as often as possible. When Fate is kind, on any given week I am able to miss all five episodes of The Interrupter’s Diatribe-Disguised-as-Dialogue program. Not catching Chris’ hour of senile logorrhea gives one a rare feeling of euphoria—akin to finding a free parking spot in downtown Chicago on a Saturday night, or—back in the days when apartment life compelled me to frequent laundromats—finding a vacant dryer with time still paid for on it. Missing ”Hardball” is just one of those simple pleasures in life that puts a little extra spring in your step and a smile on your face. I’m grateful to MSNBC for affording me this little weekly bit of heaven on earth—missing “Hardball”—especially now that I can no longer thrill to missing “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” five times a week.

(more…)

Batter up!

But ol’ Charlie’s still got a way to go to top this one:

By comparison, here’s what a real first pitch looks like: (more…)

Or something like that. That headline certainly makes as much sense as this deranged PC-rant from National Progressive Radio by way of the ancient leftist publication The Nation: “Why the Far Right Hates Soccer,” by Dave Zirin. Just when you think the lunatic fringe can’t get any nuttier, along comes this:

Every World Cup, it arrives like clockwork. As sure as the ultimate soccer spectacle brings guaranteed adrenaline and agony to fans across the United States, it also drives the right-wing noise machine utterly insane.

“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us,” yipped the Prom King of new right, Glenn Beck. “It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.”

That darn right-wing noise machine, upset over a little thing like lethal soccer riots! But you know — you just know — it goes deeper than that, and we all have a sense of where this is heading, don’t we: (more…)

Just a couple of days after the Mideast peace-threatening incident between Israeli commandos and the “peace flotilla” headed to Gaza, Charlie Rose nabbed a great “get” yesterday when he reeled-in VP Joe Biden for an exclusive one-on-one interview.  Yes, Charlie Rose, a guy who has more kudos than the candy aisle at Costco, sat down with our Vice President — and almost nobody noticed.

Biden, the usually reliable, one-man-gaffe-machine actually came out and validated Israel’s actions against the flotilla saying;

Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interests.

Only Fox News seemed to notice.

Saying the following to Charlie Rose, the Vice President displayed great clarity on the issue and deep knowledge of what actually happened, as opposed to what has been reported on MSNBC and CNN: (more…)

**** Update 2: Commissioner Selig won’t reverse the call.

**** Update: Major League Baseball reviewing umpire’s call.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga wuz robbed of a perfecto last night at Comerica Park in the Motor City by a call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce that will rank as one of the worst calls ever. One out from perfection…

Out by a mile.

Okay — you’re the sportswriters, so have at it.

Now even the sportswriters are getting into the act. Here’s CBS Sports.com’s national columnist, Mike Freeman, on the All-Star Game, scheduled to be played next season in Arizona:

The following scenario could actually happen. In America. In the 21st century …

It’s 2011 and the All-Star Game is just a few days away in Arizona. Albert Pujols decides to take a stroll in downtown Phoenix. A police officer drives by and doesn’t realize that Pujols is a baseball icon. To the officer, he looks potentially like an illegal alien. He is, after all, brown skinned.

Sure, that’s plausible — one of the most famous baseball players on the planet, a guy whose team, the St. Cardinals, regularly plays against the Diamondbacks, doesn’t get recognized on the street by a cop.  Albert Pujols couldn’t walk a block in downtown Phoenix without getting mobbed by fans and autograph hounds, and this hypothetical cop is… a clueless racist.

Freeman continues his little fascist fantasy: (more…)

The question didn’t seem all that difficult. Washington Nationals broadcaster Bob Carpenter asked a certain “White Sox fan” who moved from Chicago to much nicer digs in Washington D.C. last year to name his favorite Pale Hose player. President Obama danced around the question, said that he actually followed the Oakland A’s growing up in Hawaii, declared that the Cubs had some good players too and ultimately let the subject drop uncomfortably. Perhaps this was just another example of our perpetually tongue-tied president trying to work without a teleprompter net, but one rather doubts it.

As someone born and raised on the south side of Chicago, I’ve been a White Sox fan since my father first bounced me on his knee in the left-field bleachers in the 1960s and let me steal a sip of his beer when mom wasn’t looking. I’ve been a die-hard White Sox fan ever since. But I went to games at the old Comiskey Park, while the president apparently sat in the stands at someplace called “Kaminskey Park,” wherever that is. Presumably the teams that played there weren’t all that memorable.

Baseball fans argue endlessly about the best players to hit the diamond for their club. Nobody who has followed a team, even casually, has a problem rattling off a long list of favorites. The biggest difficulty involves narrowing the list down to one. The president lived in Chicago from 1991 through 2008. In that time, the White Sox roster included: Frank Thomas, the greatest hitter in team history; current manager Ozzie Guillen; perennial all-star third baseman Robin Ventura; Cy Young award winner Jack McDowell; the always reliable Paul Konerko; World Series MVP Jermaine Dye; control artist extraordinaire Mark Buehrle (to whom Obama spoke on the telephone after Buehrle’s perfect game last year!); and our incorrigible backstop, A. J. Pierzynski. Those are merely the names that happen to roll off the top of my head. The most famous White Sox fan in America couldn’t come up with one – just one? (more…)

Here’s the Punahou Kid — an unequaled combination of Pericles of Athens and Oscar Robertson — tossing out the first pitch yesterday at the Washington Nationals’ home opener.  The former South Sider also tells the world who his favorite Chicago White Sox players are.

No comment necessary at this end.  Over to you to make the call. For extra credit, compare and contrast:

I kid you not. Fantasy baseball invented what Warren Buffet calls “financial weapons of mass destruction” – synthetic derivatives.

As we all know fantasy sports provide an answer to the age-old puzzle:  I’m getting older. I can’t play any sport too well anymore, and never really could. But I think I’m smart enough to manage a professional team. The problem, of course, is not my prodigious talents. Rather it is the supply of major league baseball teams – there are only 30.  Due to reasons beyond my control (connections, not talent) I’m not likely to get my chance. So for six months of the year I have to watch some jerk manage my favorite team.

Along comes fantasy baseball and it solves the supply problem. It creates an unlimited number of teams to be managed. I now can let it rip. Also, it allows me to gamble, yet another activity that goes hand in glove with sports.

We didn’t know it at the time, but your favorite pastime – rotisserie baseball – provided the perfect model for Wall Street. It solved their supply problem. It solved it so well that it nearly took down the world economy. (more…)