Where have you gone, Ken Tremendous?

Baseball is back. It’s happening right now, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Hell, it’s not even real baseball, it’s this World Baseball Classic nonsense, but I don’t care. Seriously, it’s baseball. Of course, baseball brings its own baggage with it. Yeah, there are steroid stories and crap, but I don’t care about any of that. It doesn’t bother me. What really annoys me is that now that baseball is back, the idiots who get paid to talk about it are back too.

I was watching the Dominican Republic thwomp Panama Sunday, despite Carlos Ruiz’ best efforts, when I was ambushed by Steve Phillips. Yep, the Steve Phillips that ESPN thinks is going to save Sunday Night Baseball from Joe Morgan (he won’t. If Jon Miller can’t make up for Joe Morgan, I doubt anyone can. Maybe not even Harry Kalas. And poor Jon Miller, what did he do to deserve both Morgan and Phillips in the booth with him?). He came out of nowhere, and really bothered me for like an inning and a half. But I quickly got back into regular season shape, and before I knew it I wasn’t hearing him anymore. It was glorious. And then Gary Thorne struck! I normally don’t have a problem with Gary Thorne, and I’m not positive that it was him; it may have been just one of those ubiquitous voices that they seem to grow in Bristol. Whatever. On to what he said.

Panama was up in the top of the sixth, down 5 to 0, one out. At the plate was Julio Zuleta, whom I’ve never heard of, but the announcers were hyping him as a pretty powerful hitter. After Zuleta hit a pretty deep foul ball, Thorne said, “Right now Panama needs some base runners. A long ball with nobody on isn’t really going to do anything for them.” Or something like that. What the hell? You know what a home run does for them? It gives them a fucking run. What does a walk or a single do? Yeah, it puts a guy on base, which would have been nullified when the next batter grounded out to Tejada, which could have been an easy 5-4-3 double play. It’s not bad to put a run on the board; a home run is pretty much always preferable to a single. Yeah, this has been done pretty much to death. But seriously, people, even Tim McCarver is coming around to understanding this. Scoring runs is better than not scoring runs.