Baseball for Brain Surgeons

While I was anticipating taking a bye week for Madden Madness, Scot has offered up a gem that will become the official Madden Madness quote for week 6.0. Also, we have found another sportscaster to pick on.

Back during game 6 of the ALCS with Boston holding a considerable lead at either the very end of the 8th or very beginning of the 9th inning (depending on your outlook and my memory), Tim "Foul Out" McCarver said:

There's still a lot of baseball left to be played.

In fact, there was not a lot of baseball left to be played. There was one inning left to be played. Normal humans use the above cliche'd quotation anytime before, say, the 7th inning stretch, when a team still has at least a third of the game to overcome a deficit; the statement gains more poignancy and is even more applicable when the trailing team is showing a sign of coming back.

Tim McCarver's teasing was so blatantly false that Dave and I began discussing the need for an Official Baseball Cliche Guide, telling announcers exactly when it was appropriate to say things like "It's do or die time, for the ___s" and correcting common misstatements like "They're down to their last pitch. " If everyone is going to use such phrases, let's make sure they're being used correctly.

"Baseball for Brain Surgeons" may continue (McCarver willing) through the end of the week, when we will know who walks away from the World Series (misstatement of all misstatements) with a championship.