The Good Guys Win Again

I surprisingly enjoyed watching some of the Yankees game yesterday. Yes, I used enjoyed and Yankees in the same sentence.

I was doing some things around the house yesterday afternoon and had the MLB Network on TV  (if you have the means to watch it, I highly recommend it). The Yanks/Blue Jays game was the only baseball game on at that time, so they showed a good bit of the game.

I was happily surprised to hear what the Yanks broadcasters had to say. They commended great Blue Jays plays, time and again. The Blue Jays beat the Yanks yesterday. Because of that, they had better plays going on throughout the broadcast. Normally when that happens, the team broadcasters would be down on their own team, rather than praising the opposing team. But I have to give it to the Yanks broadcasters. It almost sounded like the broadcasters were neutral.

You don't see (or hear) that too often. The extreme is the White Sox broadcasters. If you have ever had the non-pleasure (I can't think of the opposite word for pleasure), you know what I mean.

When I was young, we got WGN on cable TV. WGN carries Sox & Cubs games. I can remember the Sox broadcasters always overly praising their team and trashing the other team. They're still notorious for it today. I could be wrong; but I think they still have the same play-by-play guy. He sounds the same as he did fifteen to twenty years ago. He refers to the Sox as the "good guys." So when they win a game, it's always: "The good guys win again."

I think that's trash. Well maybe not trash. But it is disrespectful, especially if you're watching the game with those broadcasters as a neutral fan or fan of the other team.

Unfortunately, that's the way it is with many things these days. I told myself that I was going to sit down and watch the Republican National Convention last night. I'm not much of a fan of watching either convention. I plan on watching one or two speeches in each . . . and that will probably be it.

But last night, I decided I was going to give it a go. I listened for a couple of minutes to one particular speech. I won't say who it was . . . but he used to be a pastor. That's troubling because the parts of the speech I heard were blatant lies. Words used to get the crowd going, regardless of their truth or their outright meanness when trying to describe the other side of politics (particularly coming from a former pastor!).

The same thing will probably happen throughout the convention. And then it'll happen again when the Democratic National Convention happens.

And it will continue to happen until we demand more from our politicians . . . and from our baseball broadcasters.