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The Worst Thing About The Post-Dispatch

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Without a doubt the worst thing about the sports coverage of St. Louis' major daily newspaper is the incessant moralizing of Bryan Burwell, who seems to consider himself some sort of Pope capable of dealing out final judgements at the drop of a hat. There is a "good" example of this in his column about Mark Mulder:

So for all the stupid and irrelevant angst the chat room grumblers and call-in nitpickers claim they are experiencing, none of it measures up to what Mulder has suffered. "I just keep getting let down. I don't know really what to do," Mulder told the Post-Dispatch's Joe Strauss after Wednesday's crash and burn.

I can't tell you how annoying it gets to read the narrow-minded stupidity of "fans" who claim some sort of victimization from Mulder's medical misfortune.

Oh, give me a break. Do some fans get a little too emotionally involved? Sure. Do they take some ill-considered positions about players or managers? Undoubtedly.

But, that is the fucking point of being a fan. (Which reinforces my belief that Burwell has no real connection to the St. Louis teams. Someone like Jeff Gordon keeps his professional detachment, to a point, but you can tell the Blues missing the playoffs bugs the crap out of him.)

These "stupid" and "annoying" fans are not getting paid to follow these teams, in fact it usually costs them money to do so. They are literally "invested" in the team/players in a way Burwell isn't. So Burwell could easily keep his bitching about fans to himself, since he isn't one of them.

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Southlandish said…
Amen. I had similar thoughts. I don't believe in beating up on Mulder. I'll reserve that for Jockety for trading Haren for him. But it does piss me off more than a bit when a guy like Mulder is presented as some warrior hero battling back from injury...for a mere $10 or 13 million a year. Guess what. I type for a living for just a few zeros less and I blew out a tendon in my finger a few months ago and had to learn how to type without that finger. In the past I have also had 23 stitches in my left thumb and lack full mobility in it and another 9 stitches in another finger. You deal with it.

And the American hero worship of the injured warrior who fights through it can be a bit annoying. I was reflecting on this a couple of weeks ago. Izzy caught all manner of hell for his 2006 performance. He refused to admit he was injured and it hurt the club. His wife, I believe, raged about the fans who turned on him. You could argue they had a right to be even more nasty since he put his ego ahead of winning. I was thinking about this because before the Euro2008 final David Villa made it clear he wasn't going to play and said point blank that at 75-80 percent he would hurt the team. So call the winner of the Golden Boot a pussy, but he probably did as much as anyone on the club to win that final by sitting his ass on the bench.
July 12, 2008 at 9:46 PM
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