Skip to main content

The Worst Thing About The Post-Dispatch

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.

Comments

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.

Popular posts from this blog

Early Thoughts on City 2025

There are few things harder to keep track of than an MLS side in their off-season, at least for me. Despite the fact it takes place roughly during the time the MLB Hot Stove season is in full swing, it is nowhere near as easy to follow along with as baseball. Part of it is how disconnected MLS is with the international soccer calendar. St. Louis City SC is still digesting the moves it made last summer even though those players have already played important games for the club. It is all weird and disjointed, and I always feel like I am playing catch-up. Happily, the moves made in the off-season this year were not numerous.  German Timo Baumgartl comes over from Europe as an option at center back, which is good because that was a position that was a little rocky for City last season. Given his own troubles over the last few seasons (cancer and uneven play in the aftermath of that), a spell with City can give Baumgartl a chance to have a re-set. Given his pedigree and the fact City si...

A Note of Optimism About the Note

 If you have been trying to watch the St. Louis Blues attempt to play hockey of late it would be hard to believe the word optimism could ever be in play. The losses continue relentlessly, often in the "never in the game" style, but increasingly in a "lose from winning position" flair which is enough to make someone turn on the news for an upbeat change of pace. (Wow, plane crashes and LUNACY!) This team still can't score with the regularity needed to win consistently in this league. The coaching staff knows they have precious few natural goal scorers (one is precious few), so they attempt to make up for it by getting what I call "process" goals, i.e. goals scored by virtue of constant pressure, crazy bounces, accidental deflections, etc. Basically, any goal you can get from a player who doesn't have the knack for scoring them on their own. The Blues are something like zero for their last 12-15 breakaway chances, and zero for their last 25-30 2 on 1...

Blues Fall Off a Cliff

 Hockey seasons will have their ups and downs. For whatever reason, be it injuries, a challenging schedule, an inexplicable loss of form, it is difficult for teams to maintain a good level of compete for an entire season. The good teams just limit their funks. The St. Louis Blues, however, are not a good team. They are a poor team, and poor teams sink under the weight of "here we go again" night after night.  I will admit I only watched the first two periods of last night's 5-0 loss to a Colorado team that had been scuffling of late. Two periods were more than enough to get the gist of it. It was also enough to lead me to a diagnosis as to what ails the team. It isn't that they are young and are going through growing pains. No, the reason the Blues are so bad is that the veterans who are being paid to be the backbone of this team are not doing their jobs. I'm talking about Schenn, Buchnevich, Faulk, and even Binnington and Parayko. Over $30M of the salary cap is b...