You know what the hardest part of watching these games is? It's not the Redwings playoff losses, or the Ohio State game, or Verlander making errors in the World Series. As annoying, frustrating, angering, infuriating, and disappointing as all of those things are, they pale in comparison to the true bane of televised sporting events.
The commentators.
I don't know what it takes to be a sportscaster. I can imagine that it is a very competitive field, with every armchair and monday morning quarterback thinking they could do a better job. But that being said, I really hate a lot of the announcers, commentators, sportscasters, or whatever they're all called.
When I lived in Ann Arbor I used to watch Redwings games on Hockey Night in Canada because we got the CBC. Compare that to the coverage during the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs on US stations, and it's night and day. The best compliment I could think of to pay a sportscaster is to not notice that they are there. You get the score, you get the recaps, but they aren't filling the airwaves with their mindless chatter and biased speculation. You know that the NHL desperately wanted Pittsburgh to win the Stanley Cup so that Sidney Crosby could be the hot young poster boy for the NHL. Nobody wants to see Detroit win - they're just a bunch of anonymous old veteran players who work hard as a team without a flashy superstar. When I say nobody, I mean nobody except the entire state of Michigan and millions of other displaced Hockeytown residents around the country.
And so, what this is all building to - the crux of the argument - I think the sports world hates Detroit. Despite being named the best sports city in the country, I don't think that the "professionals" in the sports media got the memo.
This rant is the result of watching the Twins at the Tigers this afternoon and listening to the atrocious Fox commentators do nothing but lavish over the Minnesota Twins. At one point during the Tigers at bat the entire inning was focused on an interview with Twins pitcher Joe Nathan (a douchebag) with off hand mentions of what was going on during each at bat. All we heard all game was about the Twins players that were going to the All Star game which, in case you didn't know, will be the last All Star game played at Yankee stadium. This fact has only been mentioned every 4 seconds, so you may have missed it.
I hate the Yankees. It's not like the stadium is behind on the rent and the team is getting evicted. No, it wasn't as big and as new as the Yankees think they deserve, so they're building a new one that they can make more money from. That's it. End of story. It's not about all the history and tradition of the old stadium, it's about George Steinbrenner making a bit more money next year.
Oh, and I hate the Red Sox too.
