If you're like me and you can't live without your daily dose of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, feel free to skip the first two paragraphs here. It's mostly review.
On Thursday evening, I was engrossed in an interview on The Daily Show between Stewart and Bill O'Reilly. It was a rare opportunity, as I saw it, to kick Fox News' iconic windbag while he was down -- first the Democrats ran the table on Election Day, and next Stewart was to settle the battle of the cable news anchors, mano a mano.
The topic, for the most part, was Bill-O the Clown's assertion that America was a "center-right nation." We are, Bill-O argued, leaning to the right "because we respect tradition in America." Stewart's response was right to the point: "The tradition in America is a progression of individual freedoms. You know what the tradition of America would say? Gay marriage is the next step."
This got me thinking.
The great thing about being on the left is that ultimately, you always win. Maybe not right away, but if you keep fighting for change, it will come eventually. Seceding from England and forming a nation? That was once considered too liberal. Ending slavery? Giving women the vote? Radical, crazy, leftist changes that were once vehemently opposed. Eventually, they happened. It was only a matter of time.
I know -- this is a sports column. Gimme a minute, I'm getting there.
The connection lies in the fact that baseball -- or, more specifically, the members of the media who cover baseball -- is a center-right nation. Change comes much more slowly to the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) than it does to America as a whole.
I say this because in this era, we have more information about baseball at our fingertips than ever before. Every minute detail of every game, every play and every pitch is out there, waiting to be discovered -- and so many people seem so reluctant to discover it.
This year, the BBWAA got its annual awards the least wrong it has in a long time. Seeing Albert Pujols, Geovany Soto and Evan Longoria take home hardware was encouraging; the other three picks (Dustin Pedroia, Cliff Lee, Tim Lincecum) ranged from decent to debatably right. For the first time in a long while, nothing colossally stupid happened in the November awards season.
But there's still work to be done. How many writers blindly followed Lincecum's winning percentage (by the by, Gavin Floyd went 17-8 this year and Jake Peavy was 10-11 -- you tell me who's better), ignoring Johan Santana's league leads in ERA and innings pitched? How many completely overlooked Grady Sizemore, the American League's true most valuable player despite his team's mediocrity? How many supported Ryan Howard for MVP simply because of the RBI-powered beer goggles worn uniformly by the BBWAA?
One writer, Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, proudly announced on his blog that he ranked Pujols -- far and away, absolutely undeniably, you'd-have-to-be-clinically-insane-to-debate-this the most valuable player in baseball -- seventh on his MVP ballot. (Two Brewers cracked his top six.) His rambling justification was that his team finished fourth, he didn't come through in crunch time (that 1.130 September OPS was just a mirage, I guess), and that "Ryan Ludwick had just as much to do with keeping the Cards in the hunt as Pujols did."
This is petty and nitpicky of me, but let's be honest -- baseball can do better than this.
Haudricourt was one of 12 writers to pick Howard for MVP. Two others picked his Phillies teammate -- no, not Utley, but Brad Lidge. Yeah ... we've got a ways to go.
But I'm optimistic. The system isn't perfect yet, but give it time.
Franklin Roosevelt once said that a conservative is a man with two good legs who has never learned to walk forward. There are plenty of these self-crippling men covering baseball games today. But give them time, and they'll start walking.
Change will come. It always does.
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