One night in Boston makes a hard fan humble
Twenty-seven runs. Thirty-eight hits. Three errors. Four blown saves. Five home runs, one of which might not have been a home run if Bobby Valentine hadn’t too been busy searching Hotwire for one-way flights out of Boston to ask for a review. Ten innings. Two overpaid, pitching-starved clubs locked in an East-vs.-West death-match for the title of Most Unimproved Team.
MLB.com calls it a “classic.” I call it a four-hour bludgeoning of all my baseball sensibilities. MLB Network says it was “maybe the best game of the year.” I say “yeah, in the way that ‘Jersey Shore’ is maybe the best TV show of all time.”
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a relentless American-League slugfest. But—especially given the past week’s rash of PED-related suspensions—let’s remember this the next time someone shrugs and says “Well, chicks dig the long ball” as a shorthand explanation of baseball’s obsession with explosive offense.
Female fans get slammed all the time for supposedly not appreciating the finer points of the game and relying on home runs to hold our interest. But now that the league’s official website and TV network have crowned a showcase of cruddy defense and worse pitching as “maybe the best game” in a season that included this and this and this, I think we “chicks” are officially off the hook. Woohoo!
Which means at least one good thing came from that stupid, stupid game.
You know, maybe I’m a weird female fan, but I always find the runs scored on good old singles, doubles, triples, doubles that you would have thought would have been singles, and scrappy base running more fun. I also love to see brilliant pitching, and the guys making the plays, even when they go against my guys. I may not cheer for the other team, but I still appreciate a good play. Nothing against homeruns, (well as long as it’s my team that gets them), but let’s face it, they aren’t the exciting part of the game).
I don’t see how that is a “great game”. Neither team is gonna make the playoffs, the outcome was irrelevant, it took way too fucken long, and there was tons of incompetent play. Maybe some optimistic Angels fans thought it was “great”?
‘Twere a messy game. I do admire the blog’s title this time!
Reblogged this on Girls Play Baseball.
Just finally reading/finding this – LOVE it – the post, esp the title. Hysterical. Good memories of bad 80′s one hit wonders, which is what the Sox remind me of regularly this season. I suffered through this game as well and thought this tweet was the best sum of the whole thing:
RT: @Kevin_Goldstein: It’s like one-game playoff for most disappointing team of the year.