Every once in a while, I come across a post that’s basically gibberish. Like squirrels skracking furiously in trees as they chase each other around, lonely dogs whining in kennel pens, starved for food and companionship. Or the industrial grind of giant garbage trucks crushing refuse in back alleys, trebled by the random work-chat of helpers. That sort of thing.
This post isn’t nearly that intelligible. This is more like the harrowing interference you get when you simultaneously
press the buttons on two walkie talkies and bring them together: eehhHRRAAIIYYYOOOOUUUP.
AAUGH. Rick Moran (ha) of Right Wing Nuthouse and Pajamas Media can’t seem to make any sense out of what he’s so convinced of. He’s thinking ‘victimization’ is bad for men and bad for America. Okay. But after that, the thinking rushes to crude imbecility, taking the post with it.
Forget that ‘victim’ is not some highfalutin concept. Never mind that mistakes happen, that bad things happen, that corrections are often possible and reasonable to expect. Moran says that once the disaster has occurred, and Loser America sees that you’re the victim, be a man and do the proper thing: shut the fuck up. Then, get really pissed and pound somebody’s ass.
Then: Run to Daylight. Now: Whine to Oprah
‘Pitcher Armando Galarraga is the poster boy for modern, Oprahfied American sports. But I would take the attitude of a Vince Lombardi any day over Galarraga and his touchy-feely sensibilities.’
Moran is going to try to use the guy who pitched a perfect game but got robbed by a blown call to teach us about America. Bad idea. Here:

. . Sprinting down the line, Donald stretched out his foot to make contact with the base, only to have the ball and Galarraga beat him to it. Donald was clearly out by half a step. But 23-year veteran umpire Jim Joyce inexplicably called Donald safe at first to the chagrin of Galarraga, Cabrera, and every fan in the stadium.
I must say that Galarraga has handled the blown call extremely well.
Damn right. There have only been 20 perfect games in all of Major League Baseball history: that’s about one every 20,000 games. Baseball nuts can name every one of them off the top of their heads. The umpire’s brutally bad call robbed Galarraga of a place in history. A lesser man would’ve ripped Joyce mercilessly, would’ve screamed bloody murder at the Commissioner’s office. Galarraga, instead, got off the quote about the now historic blunder: “Nobody’s perfect.”
Which is why Moran figured Galarraga for an un-American pussy.
In fact, too well. Galarraga was seen smiling broadly, which I suppose is the reaction of a man who wants to cry but doesn’t want to break down in front of 30,000 people. I can imagine what Don Drysdale or the fearsome St. Louis Cardinals hurler Bob Gibson would have done following such an outrage. The next batter that stepped to the plate had better have been prepared to duck as the very next pitch would have been in their ear.
Now that’s what a real man does. A CONSERVATIVE man. Screw confronting the responsible party, HE summons the courage to take it out on a bystander. Very manly, in a spineless way.
Know who else is a pile of pink lady parts? The umpire. Because Priscilla saw the replay and admitted that he was wrong. Unbelievably, he apologized to the pitcher.
Joyce’s reaction to all this has been unbelievable. He is being
praised from one end of the country to the other for his “honesty” in admitting his mistake. He should be fined, suspended, and prevented from working either the postseason or the All-Star Game. Not for missing the call but for undermining his and every other umpire’s credibility by actually talking to the press about it in the first place, and then not having the courage to stand by his decision made in real time on the field.
That’s right. In right-wing world, you build credibility by refusing to admit or even want to know that you could be wrong.
– “Hey Helen Keller, did you blow the call?”
– ‘Slurp a cock.’
– ” . . . there goes the best umpire in the Major Leagues.”
Admitting he screwed up, Jim Joyce, what a Euro loser. And can you sense a George W. Bush thing going on here? Hmm.
Meanwhile, Galarraga is receiving kudos for his
“sportsmanship” in not holding it against the umpire. Holy smokes, fella. Act like a human being (or at least a baseball player) rather than some Oprahfied dishrag of a professional athlete. In an age where parents discourage their kids from competing, where every kid who participates gets a reward, where there is less emphasis on winning and losing, Galarraga becomes a poster boy for modern American sports.
Let’s see: Galarraga’s an unbelievably talented guy, who just pitched one of the greatest games in 130 years of baseball history, who got robbed of the official recognition, who refused to excoriate the one man who wronged him or act like a petulant child and hit the next batter in the face with a fastball. I’ll buy that poster. Extra large, please — can I get it signed, Armando? Just write ‘To my newest fan.’
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