Welcome to Soctober

Mini-Rant No. 1

What is it about television that turns people into idiots?

It could be ESPN's Erin Andrews, wearing a hooded poncho while before the high-definition cameras under monsoon conditions in Blacksburg, Va., during the B.C.-Virginia Tech football game Thursday evening, telling her viewers, "It's really coming down here." Our cable fees pay her salary, mind you.

It could be Fox's Joe Buck, during an interlude about Jason Varitek's favorite music, cracking wise about the Bare Naked Ladies [sic, naturally]. "That's a band," Buck deadpanned, while Tim McCarver started giggling like a dyslexic schoolgirl. Fantastic stuff.

It could be Rob Stone, during a highly anticipated monologue preceding Game 1 of the MLS Eastern Conference Semifinals on ESPN, declaring that the 10th month of the year no longer belonged solely to baseball. Major League Soccer was the world's game, and all that. Then, the coup de grace. "Welcome," Stone said, "to Soctober."

Look, I'm a huge soccer fan. As I type this sentence in my living room, I'm looking at a massive banner for Arsenal, the pride of North London and my favorite soccer team. I'm wearing a pair of soccer shorts. Watching my TiVoed English Premier League highlights on Monday evening is the highlight of my television-watching week, and there are at least four soccer Web sites in my regular rotation.

So, it's with no innate prejudice or predestined hatred that I say that if someone said "Welcome to Soctober" to me in a bar, they'd get bust in the mouth. And then called an idiot.

Yet this cutesy, plucky, pun-ny, and otherwise completely objectionable shit is par for the course on sports television broadcasts. I'm beginning to think that the red light that comes on when the tape is rolling gives off some weird radiation. Either that, or the producers off-camera are secretly some of the most venal, tasteless citizens of the republic. Possibly both of these things are true.

Either way, we need an investigation into the matter. This is clearly as case for E:60.

[An exception to the TV rule -- the New York Giants' Osi Umenyiora. Asked on YES' weekly football show why the Jints' defense had been playing so well recently after giving up 80 points in the first two weeks of the season, Osi didn't flinch. "Well, I barely played the first week," he said. "Only like three plays. And then the second week, at Green Bay, I was just getting back." Atta boy -- if you're the key to an NFL team's success, say so!]

Update: FOX's Chris Myers, to some Taco Bell corporate stooge during an "interview" in the sixth inning: "Thanks for thinking outside the bun." That's it. I quit.

Mini-Rant No. 2

Not to pick on Denver Dave's boys, who clearly need all the help they can get at this point. But at this point, the pendulum has swung way too far back in the other direction. The landmark story about the Rockies' religious, ahem, leanings came out last summer, and since then, Colorado has seemingly convinced everyone that the story was overblown; that they weren't a team full of soldiers for Christ who just happened to play baseball together. Needless to say, their denials have rung rather hollow here at Y2K. We know a coven of believers when we see one.

But other people, including the liberal acolytes of the Times' sports section, are apparently far more credulous.

Now, [Jason] Hirsh said not once during the season had he felt uncomfortable with the place Christianity occupies within the organization.

“There are guys who are religious, sure, but they don’t impress it upon anybody,” Hirsh said. “It’s not like they hung a cross in my locker or anything. They’ve accepted me for who I am and what I believe in.”

So, this is the standard now, eh? As long as they're not actively rifling through your undergarments, all is forgiven? You're a cheap date, Hirsh.

Me, I remember what Mark Sweeney said last summer. "You wonder if some people are going along with it just to keep their jobs. Look, I pray every day. I have faith. It's always been part of my life. But I don't want something forced on me. Do they really have to check to see whether I have a Playboy in my locker?" And I'm keeping one eye on the guy at the next locker, whether he's at Bible study or not.

Esquire's decidedly non-Christian Scott Raab sums up the issues here:

Eh. I can't get manage to get myself worked up enough to root for the Rockies or the Sox. A bunch of Bible-thumping goyim playing in a park named to honor the worst beer ever brewed in America by crypto-Nazis, versus a club with every advantage enjoyed by the Yankees -- except for playing in a great city. Are they lovable? Sure -- but only if compared to John Kerry and Mike Dukakis. As for the baseball itself, I actually heard Steve Phillips on ESPN say that the Rox have the offensive edge going into the Series because they have more 100-RBI guys than the Sox do. I guess Manny didn't make the cut because he only had 88 during the regular season and he's obviously not in any kind of groove these days.

Amen. And the television bashing! That's synergy for you.

Another good rule of thumb -- find out who Chuck Colson is rooting for, and go the other way. This hasn't failed me yet.