I think we can all agree by now that sports commentators (and journalists) love saying and writing things that are flat-out wrong, or misinformed, or unsubstantiated. Then there are times when someone says something so obvious, so not worthy of spending the energy on speaking, that it's worth noting. And now, a far-too-long story about one such event.
I'm watching the Outdoor games or whatever thing it is on ABC / ESPN that has dogs and lumberjacks. (By the way, did I catch Bill Clement announcing this garbage? Sure sounded like him.) One event called "Hot Zone" features a handler throwing a frisbee to his or her dog, who is supposed to catch the frisbee in 5 different zones. In the middle of these zones is a "hot zone," a bad place. If the dog catches a frisbee in the "hot zone," all of the team's points are reset to zero. By team, I mean dog and human together.
So one team is just kicking ass at this event. Three zones in 30 seconds. Then the handler tosses a frisbee, and it just barely drifts into the "hot zone," where -- of course -- the dog catches it in his mouth. And it is at this point that the color commentator, whose name I unfortunately never caught, offers up the most obvious, self-evident "analysis" I've ever heard. I wish I could recreate for all of you how earnest and self-important he sounded when he said:
"In this case, you just have to blame the handler. Because the dog's just going to catch any frisbee you throw out there."
It sounded as if he felt the mighty burden of disabusing us humans of the notion that sometimes -- sometimes! -- it's not the dog's fault.
Okay, somebody please get us back to stupid things people say and write about baseball.
EDIT: Typo that Junior pointed out.
Meta-EDIT: Typo that Murbles pointed out.
