With my job, days off are few and far between. However, when I do get them...they're used to their full advantage. I'll usually have yesterday's game on MLB.tv on my computer while I have ESPN on my tv.
Well, I managed to wake up early enough to watch ESPN's First Take(Formerly "Cold Pizza") and the intelligence(or lack thereof) and bandwagon-ism showed me why it's put at such an early timeslot and on ESPN2.
Rob Parker(not sure what he's ever done in sports to deserve a radio show, let alone in New York) said that the Rays winning like they are "is not good for baseball because baseball thrives when teams like New York and Boston are winning."
Classy, Parker, classy.
We all know that baseball fans love arguing about ratings and money, forgetting everything about why we truly watch baseball. Not love of the game or following good stories, but cash and tv ratings.
While I carry alot of venom towards Skip Bayless, I agreed with him saying that it gets tiring to hear "Yankees, Red Sox, Yankees, Red Sox" all the time and the Rays playing fun and fundamental baseball is a good thing.
Why should we listen to a crummy Detroit Sportswriter? Why doesn't ESPN wake up and give Keith Law and some of the other Scouts Inc. guys their own 1 hour show, it'd be fun to watch scouting vids and get real perspective about athletes that sportswriters know nothing about. We all must remember that Bill Plaschke got Paul DePodesta canned in LA, so we know how bad sportswriters talking out loud can be a bad thing.
What does Rob Parker know about Tampa Bay sports? He's a Detroit sportswriter whose New York love ranges on the Buster Olney level. He thinks that the Rays are a small media market, yet he forgets that we have an NFL team(with a championship and some good players), a NHL team(with a championship and some good players, as well) and now our MLB team is starting to show that it's good as well. Think again, Parker, we're a middle-market run by smart people. Rather than overspend on name recognition, we rather depend on cohesiveness and building from within to win. When a 40 MIL payrolled team wins 50 games through 82 games, it shows alot more to baseball fans than 150+ MIL payrolled teams doing the same. Yet chuckleheads like you continue to show biased ideas and use the money issue as a reason why we won't and shouldn't win.
What have New York-based teams shown for themselves in the last decade, again?