Dear Fox Sports, You're Ruining Baseball

by Bad Kermit, Hire Jim Essian!

VIA E-MAIL
Fox Sports Net, Inc.
10201 W. Pico Blvd.
Bldg. 101, 5th Fl.
Los Angeles, CA 90035

Re: Your "Game of the Week"

Dear Fox Sports:

You see those guys to the right? You might recall them from last summer's company picnic. The one on the left is Joe Buck. They were showing widescreen reruns of Playmakers on his forehead in the parking lot. Remember? You had to keep yelling at him to shut his mouth because of the glare off his teeth. You stored your bucket of popcorn and your soda in the chasm on his chin.

The one on the right is Tim McCarver. He was the guy at the picnic who was sweating really badly, remember? His hair dye was running in little brown rivulets down his face. He kept walking up to the kids at the picnic and saying, "Hey, if you pull my finger now, that is the kind of finger-pulling that will last from generation to generation throughout the ages of finger-pulling everywhere." You took your kids away from him so you could drop them off with the convicted child molester running the Bozo buckets game instead.

Remember how no one wanted to talk to them during the entire picnic? Your wife tried to talk to McCarver, but after ten minutes she came back to you rolling her eyes. She said his breath smelled like Kools and feta cheese, and she forbade you from ever going out for drinks after work with him.

Buck spent the whole picnic drinking glasses of spring water. You spent a good fifteen minutes staring at him and thinking to yourself, "Where did that guy get that glass? And who invited Greg Marmalard to the picnic, anyhow? And I didn't even know they still made ascots!"

Fox Sports, those are the guys you keep shoving down our throats every time you broadcast a baseball game, particularly during your Saturday "Game of the Week." See, here's the thing:

We hate them.

As a Cubs fan, I have come to enjoy Len Kasper and Bob Brenly, despite all of their flaws. It's bad enough that on Saturdays I am forced to watch a pair of national broadcasters who know little about my team and little about the game of baseball. It is completely unacceptable, though, to present me with a broadcast team that knows so little about how not to fill me with murderous rage.

But this is far from the only problem with your baseball broadcasts, Fox. Can I ask why you don't do a national "Game of the Week"? I'm going to watch the Cubs regardless, so why not show me a game between two teams I may not otherwise watch? Why not have just one or two "Games of the Week"? Put one game at noon, and put a second game at 3:00. None of this, "Catch the Cubs-Pirates, Dodgers-Brewers, A's-Mariners, or Indians-Yankees game at noon, followed by the Red Sox-Angels, Cardinals-Mets, Braves-Astros, or Tigers-Devil Rays at 3:00." Because you know what happens when you do that, Fox? You end up having Mark Grace broadcasting games. And we all lose when Mark Grace talks, Fox. All of us.

While we're on the subject of broadcasting, do you think you can throw some sort of shroud over Kevin Kennedy's face when he's doing the pre-game show? Frankly, I don't care what Edward James Olmos thinks about the Brewer bullpen. Maybe you could just hide him behind Eric Karros' hair or Jeannie Zelasko's nose?

Your failings don't end during the pre-game, Fox. Which member of your marketing team thought it would be a good idea to have players announce the lineups? For the sake of your souls, I hope that guy is tied to a boulder at the bottom of the ocean floor. I thought you had bottomed out when Ryan Dempster took forty-five minutes to announce the Cubs starting lineup while doing an impression of Will Ferrell doing an impression of Harry Caray. Then, I tuned in to last Saturday's game.



Kip Dynamite? Really, Fox? Hasn't Rich Hill had his ass kicked enough? I'm looking forward to seeing Derrek Lee read the lineup next Saturday and then finishing with, "This lineup is so money, baby, and it doesn't even know it."

What's more, Fox, you don't even get the games you do cover. Look, I hate the "celebrity 7th inning stretch" as much as anyone, but how do you televise a Cubs game and not televise the stretch? I know "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" doesn't have the fan following of "This is Our Country," but damn you for depriving me of the chance to learn about people like Kellie Pickler, who thought that they sold peanuts and Apple Jacks at Wrigley Field, and who openly wondered if the vendors at Wrigley sold milk. But for the stretch, HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT THERE WERE PEOPLE LIKE THAT OUT THERE, FOX?

Please, Fox, for the sake of baseball fans everywhere, heed my advice and fix your Saturday "Game of the Week."

Sincerely,
Bad Kermit

P.S. Don't you dare think, Fox, that I have forgotten about Scooter the animated baseball. I have a picture of Scooter next to my bathroom mirror. I stare at it every morning as I cut "SCOOTER 4 EVA" into my chest.