AL East: Joe West, Mike Lupica Don’t Want Red Sox or Yankees To Do Their Best
September 4, 2011 · Harold Friend · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
Everyone jump onto the bandwagon.
Let’s all agree that Joe West, whom players ranked as baseball’s second-worst umpire in 2010 (C. B. Bucknor was the worst) and a smarmy writer for a New York City tabloid are right.
The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees should care more about the length of their games than winning them.
In 2010, West criticized the teams for the slow pace of their games.
The umpire said, “Their compliance to the Commissioner’s edict on pace of game is pathetic and embarrassing.”
The smug writer, who fancies himself not only a baseball “expert” but also a political pundit, claims that Red Sox-Yankees games have become “stupidly” long.
He tells fans who care more about having their team win than about the length of the game that they are “nuts” to think that way.
Then he attempts to denigrate something that has made baseball different from almost every other sport, certainly the major sports.
“We are way past the point where the timelessness of baseball, the fact that it doesn’t have a clock, is part of its charm.”
Mike Lupica has created his own reality (or have I?).
Right, Mike. I want Mark Teixeira to swing at Josh Beckett’s first or second pitch because I want the game to take only two-and-a-half hours instead of almost four.
Red Sox fans would be happier if Kevin Youkilis walked less and didn’t try to work deep into the count. The fact that working the count is what helped Youkilis become great doesn’t matter.
Fans of both teams would be “thrilled” if neither team tried to get the opposing pitcher’s pitch count high enough so that he would be taken out.
Yankees fans want wins. Red Sox fans want wins. Who cares how long it takes? Yes, I know, Joe West and MIke Lupica care.
How exciting it is when there is no doubt that both teams are trying their utmost, with little thought to the price they must pay to earn the victory.
Tell us, Joe West or Mike Lupica, do either of you think that Red Sox fans thought that the sixth game of the 1975 World Series took too much time? Nuts, why did Bernie Carbo hit that home run?
Tell us, Joe West or Mike Lupica, do either of you doubt for a second that there is any Yankees fan in the world who wouldn’t have given almost anything for the seventh game of the 2001 World Series to have continued into the 10th inning? Or even into the 20th inning?
That’s what I thought.
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