Up yours, ESPN

It's just crazy the kind of crap that's being passed off as a sports article these days.  Take ESPN for instance, or as I now refer to them: Extremely Stupid and Pitiful Nitwits.  A story published today makes the unsubstantiated accusation that the Toronto Blue Jays have a "man in a white shirt" in the outfield somehow stealing and relaying signs to batters 420 feet away based on nothing other than the claims of 4 anonymous members of the White Sox bullpen, and the fact that the Red Sox and Yankees both have opted to use multiple signs when there are no base runners in what has now been dubbed the "Spydome".  What an assinine suggestion.  "If the Red Sox and Yankees are using multiple signs, there must be an organization wide conspiracy going on, regardless of how unrealistic, illogical, or nonsensical it would seem to be."

Imagine the time between a signal being flashed by a catcher and the time a pitch is delivered.  A couple seconds.  Here's what must be happening: White shirted man in the outfield (with binoculars of course) looks in and sees the signal being put down by the opposing catcher.  A split second passes while said man processes the information and decides whether to "wave his arms around" to signal the hitter a breaking ball is coming as is alleged by the article.  The batter must take his focus off the pitcher as he looks to spot the white shirted man in the outfield and determine whether he is waving or not.  In the case the batter is Rajai Davis, he will opt to swing and miss on the bouncing breaking ball in the dirt regardless.  The idea, says the stupid article, is that no signal from the fan on the grassy knoll means a fastball is coming.  Because the conspiracy is in effect, the man in the white shirt must be reacting accurately and responding with waves in kind to every appropriate pitch, since a single "lack of wave" means the Jays hitters are sitting on a fastball that's not coming.  This system has all the logic and common sense as Homer Simpson's "everything's okay alarm".

 

Imagine the spectacle this must have created on Canada Day.  Everyone in the stadium is wearing the red hand out shirts, and there is one fan in dead center field (where there are no seats) wearing a white shirt and obsessively rotating between staring in with binoculars at home plate and waving his arms like a madman on half of all pitches.  People must have thought the guy was crazy, but nobody took any note of it.

The article goes on to support its case by pointing out that "a lot" of Jays hitters have better stats at home as opposed to on the road.  Give me a break.  Everyone knows the Skydome is a great home run hitting park.  Everyone knows most hitters fare better at home.  Shut up would you please?

ESPN made a bad decision here.  They knew they were going to get attention from the story and they did.  They knew they were going to piss off Toronto and they did, they just didn't care.  It's not an american city after all.  But their story is baseless and everyone knows it.  It was irresponsible journalism, without a shred of evidence and an embarrassment to a network that I used to respect.  The caption under the article title boldly states "The Blue Jays deny they're stealing signs -- evidence may lead to another conclusion".  Up yours, ESPN.