Can You Guess The One ESPN 'Expert' Who Actually Chose Carolina To Win On The Road Tonight In Dallas? You Better Be Able to!

So you've read the title to this post and undoubtedly you're glancing at the graphic trying to make sense of my question.

The graphic to the side is from ESPN's website but it's wholly inaccurate. It indicates that all of ESPN's analysts (and boy are there a lot of them) picked Dallas to Christen the new stadium with a win tonight.....but that's not what I saw on TV whilst watching the pregame. A lone 'expert' climbed out on to the limb of the crazy tree and prognosticated a Panther win in Big D.

Now look at that lineup.....EIGHT. Count 'em, EIGHT, 'experts' giving their predictions. Which fella chose the woeful Carolina Panthers to get a tough road victory in week 3. Look hard....

Who's the type of guy who would go completely against the grain despite the ignorant masses (me) guffawing at his every ill-timed, idiotic move?

Who's the guy who, year in and year out, proved the ol' adage that, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

How 'bout the guy who regularly substantiates the idea of the Peter Principle?

Have you still not guessed? ESPN baffles me with their hiring practices.....

Put In The call To Glenn Danzig......we're about to make him current via Chris Berman's inanity

The Schwam's ready to sing......are you?

Below, you'll find the modified lyrics for the Misfits' classic anthem, Die Die My Darling......with a slight alteration necessary to bring it into the new millennium.

It's amazing how easily the names Chris Berman/ Boomer/The Schwam piece themselves into this early '80s ode to an undesirable creature (a female in Glenn Danzig's case and an over the hill sports talking head in ours).

There are two camps on the Chris Berman issue:

1. Those who naively cling to the nostalgia of their youth (player nicknames and HR calls at the Hotel California) thus denying the current constructs of reality.
2. Those that have taken the red pill...stayed in Wonderland...and acknowledged Chris Berman's supreme douchey-ness.
   

To us though.....it is much, much, more......it is this blog's Zeitgeist. Hit the play button and sing along.......

"Die Die Chris Berman"

Die, die, die Chris Berman
Don't utter a single word
Die, die, die Chris Berman
Just shut your gaping mouth

I'll be seeing you again
I'll be seeing you in Hell

Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Your future's in an oblong box, yeah
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Should have seen it a-coming on
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
I don't know it was in your power
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Dead end Song for a dead end Schwam
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Now your life drains on the floor
Don't cry to me oh Boomer

Die, die, die Chris Berman
Don't utter a single word
Die, die, die Chris Berman
Just shut your gaping mouth

I'll be seeing you again
I'll be seeing you in Hell

Don't cry to me a Boomer
Your future is in an oblong box
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Should have seen the end a-coming on, a-coming
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
I don't know it was in your power
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Dead catch phrases for a dead end life
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Now your life drains on the floor
Don't cry to me oh Boomer

Die, die, die Chris Berman
Don't utter a single word
Die, die, die Chris Berman
Shut your gaping mouth

I'll be seeing you again
I'll be seeing you in Hell

Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Die, die, die Chris Berman
Don't cry to me oh Boomer
Die, die, die Chris Berman
Die, die, die Chris Berman
Die, die, die Chris Berman

Die, die, die, die, die, die....

I'll see you back, back, back, back in Hell, Berman!

Adrian Gonzalez's HR Derby Performance: Sadly Intertwined With The Buck/Berman/ESPN Love-Fest

I was irritated like never before watching Adrian Gonzalez in the ASG Home Run Derby and it wasn't because of his power outage. This post is essentially the same one I posted at Gaslamp Ball earlier tonight...with a couple of enhancements.

I'll preface this complaint by saying that I am aware that the Home Run Derby is an exhibition within an exhibition that masquerades as something meaningful.......so who really cares.

However:

ESPN's coverage of Adrian's Derby ABs was a complete joke!

It was an uneventful performance that only lasted a shade under five minutes and you wouldn't have even known that Adrian Gonzalez was batting if that idiot Chris Berman hadn't stopped yapping his gums 35 seconds into Adrian's AB.

• First 35 seconds of AGon Derby AB consists of Berman talking about the Cardinals.
  
• AGon intro then lasts 7 seconds followed by quick segue back to Joe Buck.
• Joe Buck says how excited he is to see Adrian's performance in the Derby as well as in the ASG tomorrow because "Adrian Gonzalez is the best player you've never heard of.".......and as the last syllable rolls off of Buck's tongue, Berman jumps all over him with, "What was it like to be Jack Buck's son?".
• The Buck/Berman/Morgan/Phillips Love-Fest went on for the next 4 1/2 minutes while Adrian Gonzalez innocently slapped line drives around Busch. Adrian made his tenth out , took a seat, and toweled off......and then 30 seconds after he had finished, Berman acknowledged that Adrian had actually completed his turn in the competition.

Now if Adrian had started hitting some bombs perhaps the whole Jack Buck Love Fest / "St. Louis Cardinal Nation" History Lesson would have been brought to an end but here's my issue:

Joe Buck told a national audience that Adrian Gonzalez IS the best player you've never heard of and how he couldn't wait to watch him.....and then spent the next 5 minutes looking at the ESPN Desk waxing poetic about the Cardinal's rich history in the Midwest. Anyone on ESPN will also tell you that Adrian IS the best player you've never heard of.......yet they never took the opportunity to talk about him in front of a captive audience.

I'm not really surprised but what a fu@*ing joke!

I'll work on obtaining some email addresses if anyone is inclined to fire off some complaints.

In the meantime here's some YouTube fueled hatred:

Chris Berman's nicknames and HR calls were cool....when I was 12. Now he's a douchey caricature of himself.

This is arguably one of the best plays in Super Bowl history. Would you know it from the Joe Buck call?

Chris Berman and Joe Buck.....dickheads.

Rethinking The Revolution by Kimball Taylor

Our good friend Kimball Taylor had an article published in the surfing section of ESPN.com. Here's the start of it and you can continue on over at The Mothership. Good stuff, 'balla!

Surf historians have long regarded San Diego as a holy site in the development of the modern shortboard. It's a sentiment with which a cadre of legendary residents will agree—adding quickly however, for all of the wrong reasons. This is because surf media continues to attribute one moment in the city's history to the advance of the shortboard revolution: the day in '66 when Australian Nat Young rode a board named "Magic Sam"—a 9'4" Gordon Wood copy of a Bob McTavish hull—to victory at the World Championships held at San Diego's Ocean Beach. [continue reading]

Effects of "The HBE"

After many page views and a bit of bickering in the "Comments" section here's where we stand in the aftermath of the Heath Bell Effect:

The Good Reader was encouraged to arbitrarily take out their frustrations on Scott & BR regular Sid Rosenberg. Rosenberg being an East Coast based radio personality and Mets fan would serve as THEE symbol of bias for the following email:

Dear Sid:

We ruined your opening night and took the series from you....we know, we know...we listened to your interview with Scott & BR---"The Mets didn't take the series seriously"---"The Padres are an awful baseball team"---"We only have two players, and some guy named Headly who gets lucky every once in a while"---"And when the season's over the Padres will be where they belong...in last place".



Well let's look at last year: The (last place) Padres took 5 of 7 from the Mets and the Phillies won the East by 3 games....do the math and chew on that Mighty New York Fan. Your overpriced team will likely cave again and we'll just keep on battling....see you on August 8th!



Sidney Arthur Rosenberg responded as follows:

Love the enthusiasm. Good email. Factual and well written. But your team still sucks. Take care!

Nice! A good fella, that Sid. Hope we didn't crash your e-mail box (Suppose that 4 e-mails probably couldn't do it anyway...)



After Sid responded a heated discussion began to take place by one East Coast representative, one West-Coast apologist and of course yours truly. While attempts were made to actually have a debate the parties involved were so entrenched in their own viewpoints that an old quote came to mind:



"Arguing with a teenager is like mud wrestling with a pig — you both end up dirty but only the pig is happy!"



In either one of the above cases you fail to get anywhere substantive and it began to feel that way in regards to our media bias discussion......so I gracefully (as possible) bowed out. As the conversation became more spirited it eventually ended with the West Coast representative declaring that....I speak my mind and don't want to argue with idiots like you that have no common SENSE. But I sure would like to know where you live.



Ahh, the spirit of debate......so I got to thinking.....



It seems to be so intuitive that when you hear baseball news there are the Haves and Have Nots.....there are those teams that ESPN leads with (NYY, NYM, BOS, CHC) and then everybody else. Let's also be realistic in saying that EVERY team receives coverage but that it is doled out in lesser degrees relative to the big spending franchises. It should also be mentioned that it is ESPN's prerogative to continue with the inequity as long as they feel it is the most profitable course for them to continue on (although we disagree......if Baseball Tonight gave the Padres adequate coverage then I would watch it.....and then I would learn about some of the other "have-not" MLB teams thus leading me to be intrigued by some of the nightly ESPN broadcasts, which I might then watch. Clearly ESPN disagrees with us...).



.....back to what I was thinking. I needed to turn on ESPN radio and then check Baseball Tonight when I got home on Monday night....just to confirm that I was not crazy. What did I hear/see:



ON ESPN RADIO (4:15pm Monday)

• Josh Beckett of the Red Sox and his suspension.
• The high rate of balls flying out of Yankee Stadium.

Baseball Tonight on the radio would eventually discuss the Dodgers in detail (but who really cares about them?). At home I would turn on ESPN to find out that the game that was supposed to be on was Oakland at the new Yankee Stadium but it was postponed due to rain.....bonus coverage of the Braves....first highlight on Baseball Tonight: Red Sox winning for 6th consecutive time on Patriot Day. Tuesday morning I turned on Dan Patrick. He was talking about the HR balls flying out to right at Yankee Stadium and the prospects of bringing in an expert of some sort to analyze angles and slopes, blah, blah.



Is it really very far fetched to suggest that there are certain teams that receive more coverage than others? It's not even wrong that ESPN chooses to cover baseball this way....but it's intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge the facts.



What were other's saying? Geoff Young's Padre blog, Duck Snorts, said the following in his weekly column:

I love that Bell called out ESPN for covering three teams and ignoring the other 27. Everyone knew that already, but it’s cool to hear a big-league player acknowledge it. As I’ve said before, San Diego is not ESPN’s market. That’s not a complaint, it’s a fact. We have no use for each other. I would rather invest my time in “Millionaire Matchmaker” or “Cash Cab.” If I’m going to watch crap, it should be entertaining.

Do What You Cannot Do [Ducksnorts]

I agree...... Crap does need to be entertaining (hope this blog is doing the trick).

What about Craig Elsten and Chris Ello over at 619 Sports?

They had a great podcast on the topic with each taking a very different viewpoint on the matter. It was sensible and passionate and we encourage you to have a listen (they have a bunch of other good podcasts as well at their new site):

New Closer, New Song, New Attitude [619 Sports]

Going back to the email that I encouraged people to send out.....The email was meant to be a protest of unbalanced coverage of the "Big Dogs" on ESPN.....Heath Bell complained about the Padres getting very little run on Baseball Tonight but in reality this is not an issue solely related to the Padres. At the core it is more a matter of a vast majority of teams getting inequitable coverage from ESPN.

In the process of spreading the Gospel we were banned from our local Padre blog, Gaslamp Ball, because our enthusiasm runneth-ed over until it was technically classified as "Spamming"....ooops. We grovelled our way back into good graces.[Gaslamp Ball]

We were also unexpectedly approved for posting by the Executive Vice President of the Padres. Paul De Podesta let us sneak in at his blog:[It might be dangerous...you go first]

An interesting week it's been......and the Padres have dropped three in a row. Jake got banged yesterday and a 10 inning affair this afternoon in SF.

The Mope Goes To Da Bears

"To acquire Cutler, the Bears had to give up quarterback Kyle Orton and first-round picks in 2009 and 2010, a source said.
To complete the trade, the Broncos had to give back a third-round pick in 2009."

Espn's John Clayton

The Denver Mope (aka The Little Hillbilly) has been dealt to the Windy City. Bear Down Chicago Bears! You've just received a 12 year old girl to act as the franchise's Field General.

Cutler Going To Bears
[Espn.com-John Clayton]

Editor's Note:
(10:30pm) The Denver Post reports that the trade breaks down as follows:
Denver Gets:

• QB Kyle Orton
• 1st rounder 2009
• 3rd rounder 2009
• 1st rounder 2010

Chicago Gets:

• QB Jay Cutler
• 5th rounder 2009

Broncos happy with Cutler deal
[Denver Post-Mike Klis]