A special tip of the cap to Ted, who sends us this...
thing, by Mike Seate of the Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review. (It had already been FJM-icized [unbeknownst to us] before we published this, at
Bucs Dugout.)
Anyway, it starts off kind of normal, and gets super weird, superquick. I just don't know what to say.
Bucs' 'fans' don't know meaning of the word
The smell of freshly greased leather and the crack of Louisville Sluggers drew me inside the David L. Lawrence Convention Center over the weekend. It was the 18th annual PirateFest. It's a courageous act, celebrating baseball in Pittsburgh, considering the Pirates suffer from one of the lousiest fan bases in all professional sports.
Okay, so, maybe Pittsburgh fans aren't the most ardent in the nation. Dave Littlefield, Kevin McClatchy, and fifteen straight losing seasons will do that to people. But it's okay, I guess, to call them out, if you're a local journalist and you support the home team.
There, I said it. And, no, I'm not about to backpedal or apologize for characterizing most of the team's followers as whiny, loudmouthed louts who are too insecure to appreciate what being a fan is really about.
Yes. You're very brave. Get to the point.
To make my case, I'd like to compare the difference between the ways fans of stick-and-ball sports -- a category that includes baseball -- approach their favorite games, to the manner in which fans of my personal favorite sport, superbike racing, do.
...
Sorry, I'm going to ask you to repeat that. Because for a second, I thought you were about to compare baseball to a made-up thing called "superbike racing."
To make my case, I'd like to compare the difference between the ways fans of stick-and-ball sports -- a category that includes baseball -- approach their favorite games, to the manner in which fans of my personal favorite sport, superbike racing, do.
...
Huh. Okay. You did say you were going to compare baseball to "superbike racing."
Or, at least, compare fans of baseball to "fans" of "superbike racing."
Let's just pause here and try to figure out what the fuck superbike racing is.
Superbike racing is a category of motorcycle racing that employs modified production motorcycles. Superbike World Championship is the worldwide superbike championship. Many countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, and Canada, operate national superbike championships. Superbike racing is very popular with manufacturers, since it helps promote and sell their product. “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” is very relevant in Superbike racing.
You guys have all heard that famous phrase, right? "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday?" It's the "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" of superbike racing. Also, look at this again:
Superbike World Championship is the worldwide superbike championship.
That's Escherian. That's a brain teaser of a sentence, man. Who wrote this Wikipedia entry? Some like Japanese motorcycle designer who doesn't speak English very well? (Probable answer: yes.)
Now, many of you are probably saying, "But Ken, isn't superbike racing just the same as MotoGP racing? No, you ignorant assholes, it isn't.
Superbikes are based on standard production models, MotoGP bikes on the other hand are propotype machines that bear little resemblance to production machines. One might consider that a MotoGP bike is related to a Superbike in the same way that a Formula One car is related to a Touring car.
The analogy is imperfect, however; while a touring car could never compete with a Formula One machine, the performance gap between a Superbike and a MotoGP bike is much smaller. MotoGP bikes develop approximately 230 bhp, and reach top speeds of 340 km/h while superbikes develop 220 bhp and reach speeds of 320 km/h. Based on lap times from circuits where both MotoGP bikes and Superbikes race, superbikes are 2-3 seconds per lap slower than MotoGP bikes. This means that a number of superbikes would be able to easily qualify for a MotoGP race.
See?
The point, though, is: fans of superbike racing are superior to fans of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball. (That's the point. Can you believe that's the point?) Let's see how.
Whether viewing superbike races on TV or from the grandstands or paddock, you will never find one of us screaming "You suck!" at a racer.
Shocking though this may be to some of you, I have never attended a superbike race. I've always meant to, it's just that I would rather do anything else in the fucking world than attend a superbike race. I have come to this conclusion in the last 15 seconds, which is the total amount of time I have known that there are superbike races. But: and this is key: I would imagine that yelling "you suck" at a superbike racer would be a mostly futile enterprise, because (a) I am going to assume that superbikes make a lot of noise, and (b) the racers are really close to the noisy bikes and (c) wearing helmets.
We do not, by habit, turn our backs on racers at the start or finish lines because of a lack of winning results, as Pirates' "fans" did last summer, and we do not view ourselves as part of the team.
Sorry, I just need a minute here.
Hang on.
Okay. I am ready to continue.
Mike Seate, superbike racing's #1 fan in the greater Pittsburgh-metro area, is bragging about the fact that fans of superbike racing do not "turn their backs" on superbike racers at the "start or finish lines" because of a "lack of winning results."
That is one of the strangest brags I have ever seen. I don't...I can't even wrap my head around that brag.
We do not, by habit, turn our backs on racers at the start or finish lines because of a lack of winning results.
Someone needs to cut a hip-hop single around this sentiment.
And as for baseball fans thinking they are part of "the team," well, yes, that's kind of silly, when people do that. But I certainly don't give you any points for not thinking you are part of the superbike racing team because what the fuck is a superbike racing team?
It is endlessly fascinating to hear football or baseball fans lamenting that "we lost" after their city's team is defeated, when the fan's contribution to the team effort involved chugging cans of Coors Light while munching on bags of Doritos.
Not specific to Pittsburgh. Not specific to baseball. Not germane to the discussion of baseball fans vs. superbike racing fans. (In case you started reading this halfway through, that's what we're doing, here, today -- discussing the merits of superbike racing fans as they relate to, and outnumber, the merits of baseball fans in the Pittsburgh area. I know. I can't believe it either.)
Because superbike racing is a dangerous sport to master, fans tend to be more realistic about the outcome. We don't call 2006 Moto GP champ Nicky Hayden a bum when he crashes, because many of us know what it feels like to be thrown off a motorcycle at triple-digit speeds.
My brain just spun around in my brainpan.
I am going to try to disassemble this paragraph so I can understand it. It's going to take some work. I might need to break down every letter to its constituent pixels before I get to like a sub-atomic level where I might be able to see something I recognize as English.
Because superbike racing is a dangerous sport to master, fans tend to be more realistic about the outcome.
No idea what this means. Not even close. Because it is dangerous...fans...tend to be more "realistic"...about the..."outcome?" Okay. I think what he means is, because of the dangers of superbike racing, whoever wins a race, the fans are kind of like, well, it's superbike racing -- and we all know what that means, because we're huge superbike racing guys. And what that means is, hey, anything can happen, and let's just be happy that everyone is alive, because their participation in this incredibly dangerous sport is kind of like its own reward, or something. Close?
We don't call 2006 Moto GP champ Nicky Hayden a bum when he crashes,
1. Why did you pick the 2006 champ?
2. Knowing nothing about superbike racing, I somehow instinctively know that "Nicky Hayden" is an absolutely perfect name for a motorcycle racer, and that
3. Nicky Hayden is a dick.
3a. That might be unfair. I just went to his website, and I can't tell whether he's a dick or not. Here's a picture of him riding on a camel:
Judge for yourselves.
4. Um, excuse me, there, Mike, but it's my Wikipedia-based understanding that MotoGP racing and superbike racing are two very different things. Check your facts!
because many of us know what it feels like to be thrown off a motorcycle at triple-digit speeds.
How many of you know that? Seriously. How many of you know that? A lot of you? If so: what are you doing riding motorcycles that fast?
By comparison, how many Steelers or Pirates fans who rail against the team's performance have even touched a football or baseball after age 12?
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than have fallen off a motorcycle at 100+ MPH, you dingbat.
When one of my favorite racers, Australian Troy Bayliss,
Well, sure, who doesn't love Troy Bayliss? "Oh, you know who my favorite baseball player is? Babe Ruth." What a hacky choice.
crashed at 170 miles per hour last year, grinding off one of his pinky fingers, I didn't scream at him for incompetence.
Did you wince and moan and turn away in fucking disgust that you live in a world where people are allowed to fly off motorcycles at 170 MPH and grind their pinky fingers down to dust for other people's entertainment? Because that's what I would have done.
There were no ESPN superbike racing talk shows to phone repeatedly about whether Bayliss would ever return to form and no Internet chat rooms to gather in.
That's not because superbike racing fans are superior to baseball fans in terms of their like maturity level or something. That's because -- and I need to you to hear me on this -- no one cares about superbike racing. (If you do care about superbike racing, please, I am begging you, do not write to me with statistics showing how much people care about superbike racing. I beg you.)
Instead, we race fans simply got on with our lives as if nothing happened.
You are truly brave. It is astonishing to me that after someone named Troy Bayliss fell off of his motorcycle in a race no one cares about or has ever heard of, while competing in a sport no one cares about or has ever heard of, that your whole worlds did not come tumbling down. How did you even function, after that made-up-world-rocking event?
When I turned on the TV a few weeks later to see Bayliss win a race -- with his injured digit wrapped in a bandage -- it was a fine show of self-determination and grit,
That is amazing, I have to say, that the dude got back on a bike and raced again so soon after that. Amazing, and fucking insane.
and not, as stick-and-ball sports fans would have it, an occasion to head for the nearest sports bar to pound beers and talk loudly about the incident until even the bartenders tire of our company.
Sorry -- so, the complaint here is that baseball fans talk about baseball too much? Maybe that's because baseball exists and is interesting. Unlike -- to give one example off the top of my head that I just like pulled out of nowhere as a thing that neither exists nor is interesting -- superbike racing.
I can think of two reasons superbike fans don't go to sports bars, drink beers, and talk loudly about superbike racing:
1. There are only two superbike racing fans in the entire world, and finding a bar exactly halfway between Pittsburgh and Manitoba is tough.
2. If you went to a sports bar and talked loudly about superbike racing, the other people in the bar, who are probably talking about actual, real sports that actually exist and about which people care, would tell you to shut the fuck up.
So, with the start of baseball season only a few weeks away, try to remember that part of being a fan means being respectful toward those who do what you cannot. And it means the team needs your support, win or lose.
I cannot believe that after eating mushrooms, making up the sport of "superbike racing," furiously typing a 750-word article on why superbike racing fans are better than baseball fans, and telling me that after some Aussie ground his pinky into a nub by falling off his bike at 170 MPH and how superbike racing fans kind of didn't care about it that much and somehow suggesting that this was a positive aspect of superbike racing fans, his conclusion is: "Being a fan means supporting your team."
I have never been more confused.
Labels: camel-bro, fuck the heck, mike seate, oh my god, superbike racing, that can't be right
Close up shop. Blow the team sky-high. Take that 81-55 record and shove it up your pee holes, because it's meaningless.
As we all know, the World Series trophy is awarded every year to the team with the fieriest passions. Who will scream and yell and curse the most? Who will fill the dugout with tears of insanity? Who will give the most hugs? These are the questions that will be answered in October, when we once again crown The Most Emotional, And Therefore Best, Team In Baseball.
Unfortunately, Red Sox, Eric Wilbur has decided that that team
will not be you this year.
They have the best record in baseball (barely), but they aren't baseball's best team.Tell me about it. Just look at these
run differentials!
Red Sox +184
Yankees +144
Angels +91
Indians +77
What a bunch of losers!
They have the best pitching in the majors, but with a lineup of increasingly frustrating incompetence.And we all know the old saying: hitting wins in the playoffs.
They are going to win the American League East for the first time since 1995. They may even have home-field advantage throughout October.
But there is no way these Red Sox are winning the World Series. There you have it. Eric Wilbur is offically putting the odds of the Red Sox, the team with the best record and best run differential in baseball, at 0%. 0 out of 30. 0 out of a million. Zero.
I'm going to go ahead and say that if the Red Sox make the playoffs, their odds of winning the Series are about 1 in 8. But let's read on. I'm sure Eric has some sound baseball reasons behind eliminating them altogether on August 30.
As far and as much as a fire for playing the game is concerned, the Yankees, Angels, and Indians all have to be considered superior American League squads.Yep. Did it. Changed my mind. Forgot about fire. My bad. Can't win shit without fire. Gotta be fiery. Fire it up, Yankees, Angels, and Indians! You're all contenders for the World Series this year! Of course, as is the case every year, the World Series will be awarded to Ozzie Guillen and Ozzie Guillen alone.
First-place Los Angeles put on the clamps, and shut down the Mariners to take control of the West with a 5 1/2-game lead over Seattle. The Indians put any lingering thoughts the Twins might have had about getting back into the race by sweeping and putting Minnesota in a nine-game hole.Very good use of the little-known MLB loophole (Rule 35.17 in the rulebook): "Performance in the last series of August shall be used to determine World Series championship eligibility, pursuant to Fieriness Clause in Rule 42.9." Red Sox got swept by the Yankees, as you recall, so they are ineligible for the World Series this year. Too bad, fans.
Additional note: the Yankees (run differential of +144) are a much, much better team than both the Mariners (+4) and the Twins (+23).
Your Boston Red Sox? They go to the Bronx and show all the passion of a weasel on Xanax in getting swept by the Yankees, who made them look foolish offensively and even suspect on the mound, where Boston has honed its greatest strength this season.Is a weasel a particularly passionless creature? It seems like this joke would've worked better with an especially docile animal. My pitches:
sloth (a little obvious, but point gets made)
basset hound (droopy face, droopy eyes, droopy ears; slow-moving)
armadillo (these things don't seem that passionate -- prove me wrong)
Asian person (get a pulse, am I right, guys?)
Auxiliary pitch:
instead of Xanax, how about "(passionless animal or Asian person) on downers"?
It's a different brand of baseball come autumn, and it's now completely evident that the Red Sox don't have that (bleep) 'em attitude that defined their 2004 predecessors. The Yankees have it. The Angels have it. The Indians seem like they have it. The Red Sox? I give you J.D. Drew.2007 Red Sox: Good pitching, not enough fuck 'em
2007 Yankees: Rag-taggest, underdoggest, scrappiest, fuck 'em-iest team ever!
Doesn't it seem like J.D. Drew is the quintessential fuck 'em player? The guy clearly doesn't give a shit, ever. The always helpful Urban Dictionary
defines "fuck 'em" as "In a state in which a person could careless [sic] about a person, place, thing or a group." J.D. Drew cares so little about baseball it looks like he's on the verge of taking a nap in between pitches. If you look closely at his face, he actually mouths the words "fuck 'em" on every feeble missed swing he takes.
For all the warranted criticism hammered upon the underperforming outfielder, his emotionless approach to the game has seemingly become this team's calling card.J.D. Drew = Emotion Cancer
For all the passion emitted from guys like Josh Beckett, Kevin Youkilis, Jonathan Papelbon, and David Ortiz, on the whole the Red Sox are a squad that comes to the office, does their business with zombie-like efficiency, says all the right things afterward, and then has fans scratching their heads wondering if there is anything special here at all. That's J.D. Drew, and that is the Red Sox.There you go. It's not enough to have the best record in baseball. It's not enough to have the best pitching staff. They're not
special enough. Not special like the turd of a team the St. Louis Cardinals were last year. Not fire-breathing passionate personality monsters like the dynastic San Antonio Spurs are in basketball. Not emotional, constantly weeping, frighteningly volatile like Bill Belichick and the Patriots.
I also love that he names four very passionate essential Red Sox players in an article decrying the lack of passion on the team. I mean, seriously, let's do an inventory real quick:
Passionate (Special, World Series-worthy, Fiery, Prone To Being On Fire, Combustible, Flammable, Inflammable)Beckett
Youkilis
Papelbon
Ortiz
Schilling
Varitek
Pedroia
Lowell (borderline, but he's a Cagey Veteran who sublimates his fire into Lunchpailism)
Wakefield
Gagne (facial hair! curses in French!)
Crisp (diving catches! leaps into walls!)
Buchholz (hugged a lot of people last night!)
Tavarez (once murdered a drifter with a mini-screwdriver!)
Dispassionate (Not Special, Emotionally Cancerous, Membership On Team Automatically Disqualifies Team For World Series)Drew
Manny
Lugo
Matsuzaka (Japanese robot)
Honestly: Red Sox, passionate or not? You make the call.
Curt Schilling came out of New York with the best outing of any starter, but was victimized greatly by a Manny Ramirez-less lineup that had the following 6-9 hitters: Drew, Jason Varitek, Eric Hinske, Alex Cora. Beckett pitched well when he needed to wriggle out of jams, but 13 hits?Disregard this paragraph; we're talking about who's going to win the World Series, not about
baseball stuff.
Daisuke Matsuzaka at this point is an enigma, and has not had a memorable, step-up, "wow" performance in his rookie season other than a recent 1-0 outing at Cleveland.Would've rewritten to say "Daisuke Matsuzaka is at this point an inscrutable, crafty, math-genius enigma ... "
Also, re: "wow" games -- how about that complete game, one run affair against the vaunted Tiger offense? How about a span of four consecutive games where he allowed a total of
two runs (and in the process struck out 8, 9, 8, and 9)? How about the month of June, when he had a 1.59 ERA? (I guess that doesn't count because there were some National League teams mixed in, and everyone knows you do not play National League teams in the process of winning the World Series.) Is anyone wowed by the fact that he's struck out 174 Major League batters in 176.1 innings?
The days of late-inning heroics are long gone; the celebrations of leaping men in uniform at home plate a thing of the past. This is the same group of guys who
scored six in the ninth to beat Baltimore, and there were plenty of leaping men in uniform last night, if I recall.
That was the identity of the Red Sox these past few years, more than often bailed out by Ortiz. What is this team's identity?Best record in baseball. Good team. Good pitching. Solid starters, excellent bullpen.
We've sought so long and hard for one that by now it has become evident that it doesn't really have one. Theo Epstein wanted to rid himself of the "Idiot" culture, but he has replaced it with a collection so vanilla in attitude that one has to wonder what the consensus is when adversity is placed in front of the OPS objective.Not to get all Michiko Kakutani here or anything, but how can an "objective" encounter "adversity"? Can an "objective" really reach a "consensus"? Can an "attitude" be "vanilla"? That's just weird. A lot of abstract nouns doing a lot of active things in there, Wilbur.
Where's the fire? Where's the passion?Mark my words: Tim Duncan will never win a championship. Pete Sampras will never win a tournament. John Stockton sucked balls. Ivan Lendl was so bad at tennis whenever he touched a tennis ball it would explode and kill fourteen innocent bystanders. Unless you scream and curse and cry and pump your fist and chop your groin
all at the same time, you will never be good at sports.
The Yankees welcomed the Red Sox into their home and were ready to pounce, even after falling one night earlier to Detroit, 16-0. Their zeal was evident from pitch one on Tuesday.Their zeal was evident in that they won. They won the games. That's why this article was written. If the Sox had taken one or two of the games, regardless of how passionate they looked while doing it, this article doesn't exist. Winning. Winning is important. Winning makes guys leap into each others' arms. Winning makes David Ortiz crush people with bear hugs. Winning at sports.
Now, before we get out of hand, let's be fair and rewind the clock. It was Sept. 17-19 of '04 when the Red Sox invaded Yankee Stadium for three, starting with a thrilling 3-2 win on Friday night, and ending with embarrassing 12-5 and 11-4 losses the next two days. The next weekend, the Yanks made Pedro Martinez their adopted son.
One month later, none of it mattered. Way to disprove your own article.
Maybe we're being a bit too revisionist, erroneously remembering the 2004 squad as a group that could change water into wine, slay the dragons that unwelcomingly inhabit the Charles, and accurately able to translates the mayor's jabberings. But still, that team had a certain undeniable ardor that this edition is severely lacking.New sports word: ardor! Ardor: does your team have it? A short radio play:
Joe Buck: Well, Tim, you have to like the Red Sox' starting pitching and bullpen, but how do you feel about their ardor?
Tim McCarver: Ardor is a funny thing, Joe. It's like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography: "I know it when I see it." And with these Red Sox, I just don't see it.
JB: How
do you know it when you see it, Tim?
TM: For me, it's when you see the dick going in.
(
ten minutes of silence)
TM: Oh. I see. You were talking about ardor.
"You know what happens when you wake a sleeping giant," Papelbon said yesterday after the Chamberlain incident.
Yes. But whether the Red Sox are indeed a snoozing leviathan or indolent group of nondescript ballplayers remains the question.
Hey Eric Wilbur, indolent means "slothful, lazy, idle." You really think a large percentage of Red Sox players are slothful, lazy, and idle? Okay, dude. Have fun telling them that.
Plus, nondescript? Tell me: which team, other than the Yankees, has more descript players than the fucking Boston fucking Red Sox? We're talking descript as hell here. Ortiz, Schilling, Manny, Dice-K, Papelbon, Beckett. These guys are unique, superfamous uberstars. Even the role players are descript: Youkilis is
Moneyball-famous, Pedroia is three feet tall, Coco Crisp has a funny name, Wakefield throws a knuckler, Varitek is supposedly a god of intangibles. I'll tell you who's nondescript: the Pittsburgh Pirates.
They're one of the best teams in the game, no doubt, and have an outside shot at a 100-win season. But be honest, can you really imagine this group as World Series champions?Yes. Broken record: very good pitching, decent hitting, dependable bullpen. No one's a lock, of course, but they have a shot, sure.
On the flip side, nobody expected Detroit and St. Louis to be in the World Series last year after the way they played much of August.Way to disprove your own article, part II.
But the fact that there is something so maddeningly lacking on the Red Sox in terms of fire and inspiration still has much of the baseball world looking elsewhere when trying to pinpoint a winner. They can do it. No, you can't backtrack and say they
can do it now. You can't. I'm not allowing it. The whole thesis of this article is that they can't do it because they're not emotional. They're not special. You're not buying it back here.
They just have shown us no reason why anyone should think they could. 81-55. AL-best 3.75 ERA. Fourth in MLB in runs scored. No reason.
Guys scream and pump their fists and point to the sky and give each other funny handshakes when they win. For the last time, it's not the other way around.
Labels: eric wilbur, fire, food metaphors, fuck 'em, fuck the heck, oh my god, passion, red sox, that can't be right
