Before I go into my little diatribe here, allow me to point out two important details about my involvement in Red Sox fandom over the past 11 days:
- I believed that the Red Sox were going to lose the ALCS against the Yankees, citing their enormous 3-0 deficit in the series. Who knew that a 3-0 deficit would cause me to run the gamut of emotions from utter disgust to elation? Criticize my doubt all you want, but when a team that’s technically better than the Yankees is down 3-0, you’re lead to hope for the worst.
- I missed the Red Sox actually winning the World Series last night due to both a lunar eclipse and a dog who dilly-dallied during his evening walk. Apparently, the bottom of the 9th inning lasted only 8 minutes. The dog took 9 minutes — or more — to complete his business.
Watching the Red Sox win a World Series was kind of weird for me, too, given that it aired on the Fox Network. That is, John Kerry (from MA) is in a tight presidential (election) race, even if the current polls that suggest a 5% “lead” for GW Bush actually involve any “likely voters” from the Northeast. And of course, the network pundit-types on Fox, regardless of their political leanings, are beating their drums long and loud. As it relates to baseball, the worst part of watching Major League Baseball during the postseason, then, was that it aired on the Fox Network.
If you take neoconservatives (like Ann Coulter) at their word, you’d be lead to believe the Fox News was created in response to liberals in the media. These liberals in the media apparently told conservatives to “create their own news network” if “they don’t like the message here”. From this mindset, Fox News — in all of its “Fair and Balanced” Glory — was born. If you take these remarks at face value, then you’ve been struck repeatedly over the head with a Red Herring. It’s almost like a felon telling you they’d switched from Embezzlement to Robbery, because Embezzlement wasn’t confrontational enough. Either way you look at it, it’s a crime, so why bother with spin?
Getting back to baseball, I’m more than a little bit certain that Fox was totally against the Red Sox. Forget the storyline that Fox commentators were playing up about “The Curse”. I believe that, pure and simple, Fox wanted to portray the Red Sox as some off-based enabler for wild-eyed liberals in New England. The Yankees, on the other hand, were portayed as “professionals” who came from a “winning tradition” in the Land of Bloomberg and Guiliani.
The only part of that Fox got right was that the Yankees have won a lot (of World Series, in particular). But Fox somehow missed important details like how the Yankees pitching was suspect, and how they’d consistently tapped into their bullpen before six innings during the season. Instead, Fox chose to portray Pedro Martinez as a washed-up sourpuss (well, it’s a half truth, but need not be said during World Series coverage), Varitek as an average catcher, Curt Schilling as “not ready for the big game”, and a number of other things that you could consider as gaffes — including a constant stream of compliments about the Yankees organization and its “star players”, even when the Yankees were getting torched in Game 7. The only thing I could surmise was that the Fox Network is loaded with meatheads, or people who wear tinfoil hats and stand in the middle of a busy road on a sunny day.
After the Red Sox won the ALCS, Boston fans were labeled by Fox as “rabid”, and St. Louis Cardinal fans were complimented as the “best in baseball, all-class”, and as “the best fan base in America’s heartland”. What, Boston isn’t America’s heartland? Technically, no, if you think of heartland in geographic terms, then Boston isn’t in America’s heartland — but Fox was inferring that St. Louis was God’s Country — which connotes a different meaning of “heartland”. Now that I think about it, the inferrence was probably made because nothing of any historical nature ever took place in Boston, or least not in the minds of the Fox Network.
A funny thing happened on the way to America’s heartland, however. The St. Louis Cardinals lost the first two games in Boston. Then they lost Game 3 pretty convincingly in St. Louis. And then? There was booing in God’s Country! The best, classiest hometown fans were booing their own team! Fox, on the other hand, wrote this off by complimenting the excellent play of the St. Louis infield, noting defensive miscues of the Boston Red Sox, and reiterating how great of a fan base St. Louis has (excuse me, but is that booing in the background, Joe Buck?).
Perhaps, the mindset of Fox was: in a three-man race between the beloved President George W. Bush, the stoic “liberal” John F. Kerry, and the 2004 Red Sox, it would seem the most prudent to eliminate the 2004 Red Sox. Therefore, if we portray them as buffoons, and their fans as beer-guzzling hooligans, they’ll drop out of the race. Fox would probably have better luck defeating that Kerry guy. He’s a mere mortal, after all.
