Friday Funk

Things I don’t care about but that seem to be what everyone is talking about right now:

*David Ortiz interrupting Tito’s press conference because he was mad about a scoring change:  I’ve seen very little about this as I’ve been offline for about 24 hours, but, really, I couldn’t care less.  As long as he doesn’t make it a habit, I can forgive an instant of him being rude.  He’s human, it happens.  I’m only annoyed because unless something amazing happens in tonight’s game, it’s going to be all Tim McCarver will talk about tomorrow.

*MLB investigating Alex Rodriguez for taking part in  high stakes poker games: Here’s a surprise…I don’t like Alex Rodriguez.  Because of this, there is no way I can garner righteous indignation for MLB going after ARod for whatever he might or might not have done.  Have at him.  Like I said, I couldn’t care less.  Now, do I think they should reprimand the players who get arrested for DUIs or the players with murder charges against them or those accused of domestic violence?  Of course.  As a matter of fact, I would prefer they lob some kind of punishments against those players as opposed to keeping tabs on Slappy’s desperate attempts to go Hollywood.  But, really, I will experience schadenfreude any time ARod’s name is connected to something negative.  It makes my black heart happy.

*Heidi Watney possibly leaving NESN: This might come as a genuine surprise to some of you, but I really don’t care if she stays or goes.  I think she has improved a lot since she joined the NESN team and most of the time actually sounds like she understands the terms coming out of her mouth (one of my biggest issues with her when she started was that any time she used baseball terminology she fumbled over it like it was totally foreign to her.  Not what I want from the person assigned to telling me what is going on with the team) and I have been guilty this season of occasionally being entertained by her visits to the food stands during road trips (although I could live a long time without ever having to see her choke down food…you don’t ask someone without legs to dance and I don’t think you should ask Heidi to eat fried food on camera). But if she were to find a job on ESPN or the MLB Network I wouldn’t celebrate nor mourn her loss.  I don’t think NESN will take a huge hit with her being gone but I would worry they’d try to replace her with some talking head who knows nothing about baseball but looks good.  Maybe the devil I know is better than the one I don’t?

Here’s something I do kind of care about.  Yesterday both Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald and Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe tweeted their displeasure of a sign they noticed in the Red Sox clubhouse that reads: “What You See Here, What You Hear Here, Stays Here”.  The sign doesn’t bother me.  It’s been posted in baseball clubhouses and at AA meetings for decades.  What bothers me is that, once again, the writers need to seek things out to write negatively about.  Amusingly enough, Peter Abraham brings it up in his blog entry from just after 11pm last night, and phrases it like this:

During the game, the Red Sox posted a large red sign in the clubhouse that says, ‘WHAT YOU SEE HERE, WHAT YOU HEAR HERE, STAYS HERE!” Apparently the Red Sox clubhouse is the secret headquarters of planning against terrorist networks in the Middle East.

In all seriousness, these are adult men. They really need signs with hackneyed slogans? The Red Sox should be more sophisticated than that.

When Abraham covered the Yankees, the people who commented on his blog would complain that he came across as if he didn’t like the team and they all blamed his being from New England on his dislike of the Yankees. Now that he covers the Red Sox, his hometown team so to speak, he treats the team with the same disdain he did the Yanks.  I think I’ve written this before, but I’m writing it again.  I’m fine with the writers who cover the team not being “fans” of said team.  But I think it’s completely unprofessional when the writers covering the team show so much outward hostility toward the team, and this is something Abraham does often.  It must be horrible having a job many would sell a kidney for covering one of the most popular teams in baseball history and getting yourself on television every night with millions of people listening to and reading your every opinion.  Tough to bring up any sympathies here.  God forbid writers actually adhere to any kind of code these days.