Most close games in sports are reported as one of two mutually exclusive options: Either this team won it or that team lost it. It was surprising, then, that ESPN’s Tuesday afternoon coverage of the greatest baseball game ever played in the mountain time-zone turned into a treatise on instant replay. Sure, Jim Rome was all over the Rockies bandwagon, downplaying the call at the plate and comparing Tulowitzki to Jeter. But he has a view from California.
Out in Washington D.C., where they tape Pardon the Interruption, it takes days for our Pony Express rider to reach them from our remote mountain outpost, bringing tidings of our 14 of 15 win streak and bearskin rugs for trade.
“A team has a chance to win the World Series because of a bad call,” proclaimed Tony Kornheiser, taking a 6-day break from fucking up Monday Night Football. “[The Rockies] don’t deserve to be in the playoffs.”
Go ahead and call Matt Holliday out at home, the Rockies still would have won. Anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention to the Rockies over the last few weeks knows our resiliency. This is a team that simply will not be denied. The Padres could have put the greatest closer of all time on the mound and the Rockies still would have buried him.
Oh, right. Tony Kornheiser doesn’t know that. Like most sports commentators, he’s too busy falling all over himself for the Phillies, or, more accurately, reporting the Mets “historic collapse” like it was the fall of the Alamo. Kornheiser is self-deprecating enough to confess his East Coast bias and admit his pick of the Phillies over the Rockies is due in large part because “I can’t name anybody on the other team.” But to claim an inconclusive call at home plate is the primary reason the Rockies are in the post-season, or, worst yet, imply that a World Championship would be tainted because of it, is to misrepresent the Rockies entire storyline to millions of viewers.
Still, in the immortal words of 3LW, haters gonna hate, playas gonna play: I’ll leave the Rockies to make their own rebuttal. They should be arriving in Philly by steam-powered locomotive any time now.
-- Mark Schiff
Why are you so upset? This is nothing new, no matter the quality of the play in Colorado we will always be second class citizens to the East Coast media elite. Kornholer is out of his league and makes his money being outrageous, not informed.
So be it. The Rox will Rock the world.
Posted at: October 3, 2007 8:58 PM