ESPN and My Last Nerve

To be completely honest, I love the concept of ESPN.  I am a 25 year old male who loves watching and talking about sports more than just about anything else in the world so the idea of a channel that does this all day and night long is something that I cannot claim to have feelings of anything but absolute adoration towards.  I am also not naive enough to watch this channel and not expect to see a certain amount of east coast bias.  I also know that although baseball is my favorite sport, I completely realize that I am among the minority.  Too many people have moved on to care only about Football and whatever other sport is going on at the time to care about the marathon of a season that baseball has held onto in a culture where no one wants to commit more than about 3 hours a week to anything.  All this being said, I had to turn off the ESPY’s the other night after cursing loudly enough to get very strange looks by my fiance.

My anger began with the lack of support for Game 6 of the World Series as the game of the year.  The game that won, the NFL playoff game between the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco 49ers was an exciting game, but Game 6 of the World Series was quite possibly the best and most exciting game of baseball to be played on the biggest stage the sport has to offer.  While this ESPY did not go to the team or even the sport that I wanted, at least the Cardinals were nominated, and the winners were selected by fans, most of which do not even realize that baseball exists when there is another more popular sport such as football or occasionally basketball are being played.

The category that caused me to scream out obscenities as I turned off the television was the nominations for the best moment.  I can understand that Tebow mania took hold and the combination of the average sports fan’s desire to share their hate or love for the man as often as possible, and as I said earlier, the NFL is so much more celebrated than baseball that it is sickening for those of us, or maybe just me, to think about.  Then again, I knew the second I saw that highlight that this would be voted as the best moment of the year.  The part of this that really ticked me off was the fact that while baseball did get a nomination for this moment, it was the Tampa Bay Rays clinching a playoff berth with a walk off homerun by Evan Longoria combined with the loss of the Red Sox in their enormous collapse… If anyone can explain this to me, I would love to hear it.

First of all, let’s talk logistics.  This is not one moment, it is two moments in two different games.  I understand that Game 6 of the World Series was a series of moments, but at least it was in the same game.  Second of all, the fall of the Red Sox, as I am sure this moment was billed more as than any sort of rise of the Rays, (let’s be honest, much more was made of the team that lost the lead than the team that won the Wild Card against all odds as seems to be a common theme of the Tampa Bay Rays.  Got to love how ESPN seems to cover places outside of the New England/New York area only whenever it is convenient and/or necessary) occurred to get into the playoffs.  Game 6 of the WORLD SERIES seems to be a little more pressure, right?  Where twice the Cardinals were down to their last strike, and twice they came back, only to end the game with a walk off homerun that still sends chills down my spine along with anyone else who was either there in body or there in spirit. 

I know that just as ESPN has the east coast bias, I have my own biases so I understand that I may be a little too harsh on the channel that so commonly graces my television screen.  I was not hoping for too much from this awards show, but I was looking forward to watching as many different angles and highlights of the Cardinal’s historic run last year as possible.  I guess I figured that a World Series that more than just me are calling the best that people have ever seen would get a little more love in the award ceremony that claims to cover greatness in sports.  Maybe I am just from a different era than my 25 years of age seem to suggest.  I still somehow want to live in a world where baseball is king and the other sports are enjoyed but not necessarily held in such high regard that everyone forgets to pay attention to the game that once held this country’s undying interest.  I guess as a baseball fan in the Midwest, I am doomed to never truly have my team and sport covered by any sort of national publication like ESPN.  Maybe I should just stop looking for it.