I Didn't Expect To Be Arguing With Dan Le Batard Listeners Today, But Here We Are
I blogged about this clip earlier, and I guess I should’ve disclosed that I’ve never listened to Dan Le Batard’s show once in my life. Nothing personal against Dan, I just don’t listen to national radio shows over local radio shows. Within ten minutes, he had seen it, and apparently wasn’t pleased with it.
Here’s what I said:
I’m not even mad about Dan Le Batard’s take here. I obviously completely disagree with it, and I’m sure part of his take is just taking a contrarian angle to piss people off and get attention, which, here you go. My issue is more with the other guy, who kinda looks like the type of guy who you’d rather stand on the subway than sit next to him, even if it were the only open seat. Le Batard is simply echoing the voice of the old crusty white guy who has an issue with the outfield dance celebration, which I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there who feel how Le Batard is pretending to feel. You’ve got LeBatard posing the question of, “Why hasn’t anybody thrown at these players for dancing?”, but then you’ve got the creepy dude in the corner like, “Oh, I’m certain someone will.”
Dude, no they fucking won’t. There are TEN games left in the regular season, and nobody has thrown at them for doing this. Ten games left means they’ve played 152 games, so three outfielders times an average of four at-bats per game, and that’s a little more than 1,800 opportunities to throw at a Red Sox outfielder for dancing, which they’ve done 84 times. Before you call me out for my math, they’ve won 88 games, have three walk-offs and one rain-shortened game where the outfielders didn’t do their dance. I’m pretty sure that if opposing teams were upset about it, something would’ve been done about it by now. Idiot.
You know why else the Orioles wouldn’t throw at the Red Sox for dancing in the outfield after they win? Because the Orioles do it, too. Idiot.
After Le Batard retweets my blog, I’ve got a bunch of his listeners in my mentions defending Dan, and telling me that “You don’t get the show,” which I quickly gathered is a catchphrase of his. Great. The only problem is that I never came at Dan. The first thing I said was how what he said didn’t bother me. I took aim at the other guy, who was SO convinced that the Orioles were going to throw at the Red Sox tonight for doing the outfield dance, and then I presented my case as to why that was idiotic to be so confident about that statement. I said that Dan was representing the voice of the people who hate celebrations and showboating in baseball, which apparently he’s the exact opposite of that (thanks for the heads up, Twitter), but you’d never know that if that clip was the first and only time you’ve heard him speak.
The gist of everybody’s outrage was that Dan is pro-celebration in sports, and that he was challenging the unwritten rules of baseball, which he disagrees with. Okay, well that’s not how it comes off in that snippet, especially when your opening line is, “Why hasn’t anybody thrown a baseball at anybody on the Red Sox?” Which, again, let’s moonwalk back to the main point here — my blog was about the other’s guy take. Had nothing to do with what Dan said. I completely skimmed over that, and dissected the followup point, which was made by a completely different person.
Also, the video clip was falsely presented in a way that makes it seem like Dan is against the outfield celebration dance. So, once again, ESPN lies.
