Another thanks from here, Craig. ATH and the entire blog are great baseball fun.

Craig, +1 to the Thanks ledger. It’s always nice to have one more reason to interfere with the start of the workday.

Thank you Craig.

The problem, Hermit, is that the networks have to “dumb down” the post-season coverage and try to educate an audience largely ignorant of the game, the teams, and the season. This makes even good broadcasters insipid: when Jon Miller did play-by-play for the O’s and Red Sox, later the Giants, he could be terrific. Even McCarver can be perceptive. On a network, Scully’s just left with his catch phrases. Why can’t ESPN or someone have a separate feed for people who follow the game, and don’t have to have the basics spoon-fed to them? Who don’t need “the story-line” spelled out? I don’t need to hear about Jon Lester’s cancer,CC and A-Rod’s past play-off woes, how great Mariano is, about Papelbon doing the damn jig, the travails of the Angels against the Sox in October and the story about the demise of the team’s fallen young pitcher, about Manny’s suspension and Brad Lidge’s collapse. I know all that, so do you. Surely there would be a substantial audience for a broadcast that omitted all the old crap. No?

Thanks from me as well, Craig.

As for the AL, I’m actively hostile to both the Red Sox and Yankees, so I’m rooting for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (etc.) as well. It strikes me as interesting that they have been a very good team for the last several years, manhandling the AL West on a regular basis, but they don’t seem to get much press buzz about it. There are times when you’d be forgiven for thinking that the AL only consisted of the East—and that only two of those teams mattered.

Well, they win, that’s the problem.

When they win, by definition other teams lose. And those who not follow the Red Sox don’t like their teams losing.

Jack, perhaps I’m biased as a Yankee fan, but Youkilis pisses the #### out of me, and not just a player on the field.  JD Drew, for one reason or another, has alienated a couple fan bases, and he’s generally seen as a poster child for what’s wrong with a sabermetric viewpoint, but I have no qualms with him personally (as an aside, any Sox fan who has read Joe Pos’ recent blog posts on Drew and Theo needs to do so.  Like, now.  The rest of my boring post will still be here when you’re done).  Pedroia suffers a Jeter-esque syndrome, where the way he’s covered in the media grates on people more than anything he actually does.  Papelbon you mentioned, and as someone else mentioned, winning breeds contempt.  As a Yankee fan, I could look at their roster and wonder the same thing.  Who’s there to hate?  A-Rod for his past antics (though he’s been milquetoast this year, and I couldn’t be happier), Joba because Goose Gossage doesn’t like that he shows emotion, Jeter again for the media hype… I mean, who else on the team is really hateable for reasons other than being better than *insert favorite team*‘s option at the position?

On a completely different note, if you haven’t read K-Law’s Yankee scouting report, please do so.  The MAORP paragraph is quite possibly the funniest thing in a not-sad way I’ve read on the four-letter this season.

Yeah, but Youkilis looks like a billygoat.  Your honor, the state rests its case.

Agree: All bandwagon fans are objectionable, regardless of loyalty. And cheering for the visitors has to be done with delicacy and relative restraint.

“And cheering for the visitors has to be done with delicacy and relative restraint.”

You mean I was being a douche when I went into Fenway in ‘03 and chanted “1918!”

Hey, in my defense, I was still in high school.  I didn’t know any better.