Quote:
Originally Posted by Westheim
Red Sox-Yankees the only show in town at one eastern. How convenient  |
What's even more "fun" is that ABC has decided that they're cutting in on football to show Aaron's ABs, not only on ABC (goodbye Clemson-Wake Forest) but ESPn (sorry, Baylor-Iowa State) and SEC network+ (tough luck, #1 Georgia! Dawg Nation can't watch y'all against Kent State) and the ACC Network, too (suck it, whoever!)
This would be one thing if This Is It, if it was now or never for Aaron to Break The Record. But the Yankees are playing tomorrow. And next week. And the week after that. This is just one chance of many for him to hit #61, which only ties Maris, so presumably we have to sit through all this bullspit for #62 as well. Endless listening to Michael Kay hyperventilating through foul balls until Aaron walks or strikes out or pops out or singles to right or whatever, over and over.
Now it would be one thing if ABC/Disney was doing this on ESPn News, which is a sports NEWS channel and this might be NEWS (although the odds are it won't be, as Aaron has failed to homer in ~90% of his plate appearances this season), but they're interrupting coverage of sports people have actually chosen to watch. I'm sorry, I love baseball, it's my favorite sport (which is why I can no longer support what Manfred has done to it), but if someone wants to watch football, let them watch football. Or golf, or synchronized swimming, or tiddlywinks or whatever. This ridiculous "Judge Watch!" crap is really annoying.
What's more, as noted above, Aaron isn't really "Breaking the Record". (They get around it by referring to the "American League Record" but c'mon, man! [/Biden] MLB has spent the past 30 years working to obliterate the individual identities of the Leagues.) It's nice that he might become the first person to cleanly hit 62 (or more) HR (if he's clean, and who knows, nowadays?), but since MLB let Bonds cheat and let McGwire cheat (2x) and let Sammy double-cheat ['roids and cork] three separate times, all we're doing is watching Aaron (possibly) become the 8th person to hit 61 HR in a season, and then possibly become the 7th to hit 62.
Yippee.
(As I'm on delay in watching/posting, he may have already hit the damn thing. But still. Okay, here's the refs overturning a possible targeting call against Clemson, while we watched Aaron whiff. Thrilling…)