Baseball Analysis Analysis

I just head a genuinely surprised Tim McCarver say: "how often do you hear a crowd pick up on a balk?" Now, I've been to over a dozen MLB games, and if the opposing pitcher does anything remotely close to a balk, you'll probably hear people shouting for the ump to call it. This happens all the time. But then again, this is Tim McCarver, so I was silly to hold him to any standard of general baseball knowledge. This is the guy who complains about Jason Giambi "clogging the bases" by drawing walks. You got that, kids? Not getting out is bad.

And now that I've ripped into an announcer, I shall come to the defense of one. From this AP article:

In the second inning of Friday's game between Detroit and Oakland, Piniella talked about the success light-hitting A's infielder Marco Scutaro had in the first round of the playoffs. Piniella said that slugger Frank Thomas and Eric Chavez needed to contribute, comparing Scutaro's production to finding a "wallet on Friday" and hoping it happened again the next week.

Later, Piniella said the A's needed Thomas to get "en fuego" - hot in Spanish - because he was currently "frio" - or cold. After Brennaman praised Piniella for being bilingual, Lyons spoke up.

Lyons said that Piniella was "hablaing Espanol" - butchering the conjugation for the word "to speak" - and added, "I still can't find my wallet."

"I don't understand him, and I don't want to sit too close to him now," Lyons continued.

Fox executives told Lyons after the game he had been fired.

So, in essence, Piniella was talking about missing wallets, then later he spoke some Spanish. Lyons goes for some humor by saying "First I'm afraid of of Lou pickpocketing me and now I can't even understand him." And that's offensive enough as to get one fired. What a joke. There is literally nothing wrong about what Lyons said. In fact, the only thing offensive or racist about all this are the Fox people who are actually creating a connection between Hispanics and petty theft, a stereotype of which I've never even heard.

And would someone PLEASE tell Fox that I do not care about Jeff Suppan's favorite food, or Todd Jones' favorite hobby, or what David Wright is currently reading. This is not the Little League World Series!