Baseball Broadcasters: Please Stop Misusing the Term "Walkoff"

Several years ago, baseball broadcasters started using the phrase "walkoff home run," or "walkoff" for short. The term was used to describe a home run hit by a batter which ended a game.

The walkoff is exciting for several reasons, foremost, the home run is often an epic hit whenever it comes in a baseball game. Sometimes the homer is a huge shot that escapes the stadium. Sometimes, it's a shot that just barely clears the wall, a shot that the fielder is almost able to make a play on, but not quite. Either of these is epic.

Another reason is that the walkoff to end a game can only come in the bottom of the final inning, whether the ninth or in extra innings. In either of these cases, the game will be tied or the home team will be behind. With the home team down, the crowd will be sitting on the edge of their collective seats, this adds to the drama.

To see a recent walkoff, follow this link for Alex Gordon's walkoff against the Orioles last night.

Finally, the entire reason to use the word "walkoff" is that after hitting a home run, the batter doesn't have to run, he can walk around the bases as the opposing team walks off the field.

Now, for the abuse of the term...

After a couple of years, the term "walkoff" was so beloved that it has begun to be used for any hit to to end a game coming in the bottom of the final inning. But here's the problem with this, if the hit is not a home run, the batter, the base runners, and the fielders had better be hauling their tails. They had better be hustling. They had better not be walking off. The history of baseball is filled little quirky endings that would have been different if someone had hustled.

Hence, only a home run (or a bases loaded walk, but that's not quite the same) can be a walkoff. That's it. Please, broadcasters everywhere, please reel in your use of the term "walkoff." If it's not a homer, it's just "a game winning hit" which is pretty good on its own merits.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

Naming Time

Marie and I were out of town last weekend. We had lunch at the McDonalds in Conway, Arkansas, just off of I-40. As with many other Mickey D's, they give you the cup and you dispense your own drinks.

Well, there was a sign on the machine, "Free refills apply only to the same visit." This made me wonder how many people came in with skanky old cups for their millionth refill. Ick!

On a similar note, the cup of my Mickey D Sweet Tea came with a coupon for a free smoothie on my next visit. The coupon itself also had this little note that defined next visit as "being at least two hours after the visit where you got the coupon." I guess this way you can't peel the coupon off of the cup and get a free drink immediately, you have to return.

A free refill is good on the same visit which ends when you leave the restaurant. The next visit can't come until at least two hours later. So McDonalds has defined a sort of "no-man's land" of time between visits.

So, what shall we call this period of time? I propose "tweener-time" but I hope someone can do better.

Dez Bryant and the NFL

Dez Bryant is the 2010 first round draft pick of the Dallas Cowboys football team. He was the 24th player picked overall in the NFL Draft. This means he's a very good football player. It was said that he could have gone higher but he comes with what ESPN calls "some risks."

Well, one of those risks came home to roost Sunday morning at the Cowboy's practice.

One of the "time honored traditions" of sports (at all levels) is rookie hazing. Athletes can make fraternities look timid with hazing. Cowboys veteran wide receiver Roy Williams told the rookie Bryant to carry his pads in from practice to the locker room. Well, Dez doesn't play like that. Dez Bryant told Roy Williams that he wasn't to carry other player's pads. He was there to win football games.

Well, this didn't set well with sports pundits everywhere. The links I have provided lead to other links if you are interested in what others have to say. As for me, I am torn.

As a Minister and former fraternity member, I am against hazing. People say it contributes to camaraderie. Well, it adds to resentment and a continuing pattern of violence against pledges, or in this case rookies.

Yet, I want to say, "C'mon Dez, he told you to carry his pads, he didn't tell you to do something more degrading." I once heard of a baseball team that was playing at "The K" in Kansas City and was forced to go from the locker room to his hotel room in a go-go dancer outfit.

"Yeah, cross dressing, that's how I spell camaraderie! I can smell the team spirit growing."

On a side note, some one shot the visiting team's bus and the bullet, which went through the side of the bus, was stopped by the leather boots. Lucky? I hate to use the argument "It could be worse," thankfully that's not all I have.

What could have Dez done to mess with the hazing on the other side of civil disobedience? I would have loved it if Dez took Roy's pads and started walking toward the parking lot. It would have been wonderful if Roy yelled "Meat, where're you going with my pads?"

I would have loved to hear Dez reply, "I'm takin' them to your car. You aren't going to need 'em out here much longer."

Yes, a lot of people would have not liked this answer either. It might have been seen as uppity; not respectful of the veteran Williams. Some would say it's petulant; he hasn't done anything yet. But what it would have done is fire a shot across the bow of the Cowboy's locker room saying, "I came to take your spot."

With this statement, Dez would have said what he is going to do, not what he isn't going to do. That will earn a lot more respect than saying "I didn't come to..."

Proactive Dez, that's the way to go.

Friends with Like Friends

The facebook social networking website has a rubric to help match people and groups. This helps people find other people with similar interests and blah, blah, blah.

I got this suggestion this morning when I logged in:

The Bible
Many who like SEC Football like this
Like

I'm just wondering, does The Bible like SEC Football as much as SEC Football likes it? Unrequited love can be such a drama-fest.

Cover Songs

Tonight, I'm featuring Tom Jones, yeah, that Tom Jones, covering an old John Lee Hooker song.



A cover is a song made popular by one artist performed (or "covered") by another. Tom Jones has made a career of covering other people's work and has done well. He's sung "The Tennessee Waltz" with The Chieftains and "Kiss" with Art of Noise among others.

Cover songs can be interesting. The CD I talked about in my previous posting has something I like to do from time to time when burning a disc, it opens with Steely Dan doing their original version of "King of the World" and ends with the Joe Jackson cover, sort of like book ends.

I actually have three versions of the Jimi Hendrix classic "Little Wing" and none of them are Jimi's version. How did that happen?

Not everyone can pull it off. Michael Bolton's "When a Man Loves a Woman" is a note for note copy of Percy Sledge's original, so who cares, there was no new ground covered. I love Joe Cocker, but his version of the Squeeze song "Tempted" is misguided.

Tom Jones has the knack.

So friends, with no further ado, Enjoy!

A Reflection on Music

Microsoft did one thing right with MediaPlayer, and that's song selection. Years ago, I used their filters, not ones I created, and took a batch of songs that I preferred to listen to at night frequently and took the best and put them on compact disc.

I call this disc "Night Music." Not coincidentally, "Night Music" is the name of a Joe Jackson disc. Go figure.

Some great moody music on this disc--Steely Dan, The Pogues, Sarah McLachlan, Concrete Blonde, Fiona Apple, Living Colour (covering an Al Greene song much less)--just to name a few.

Now, I lamented a few years ago that music just wasn't doing it for me anymore. "Rhapsody makes me blue" was one of my wittier laments.

Tonight, this is a great disc.

That could leave a mark...

According to "Show Biz Today" on Headline News and NBC's "The Today Show" Enrique Iglesias will fulfill his promise to water ski naked on Biscayne Bay because Spain won the World Cup.

It's all good fun until someone puts an eye out.

New York Yankees' Owner George Steinbrenner Dies at Age 80

Well, this may not mean much to many of you, but if you follow baseball at all, you know who "The Boss" is, and it's Steinbrenner. His son took over the day-to-day ownership of the Yanks a few years ago, but George is still "The Boss."

Sorry Bruce, you might be "The Boss" to the rest of the world, but in baseball, that title belonged to Steinbrenner.

I was just listening to ESPN Radio where the topic of discussion was "Who is now the most well known owner in sports?" There were some good answers:

• Al Davis, aka "Skeletor" and the owner of the Oakland Raiders of the NFL,
• Jerry Jones, owner of the NFL Dallas Cowboys and recently on HBO's "Entourage" (This little fact was used by different callers as both a plus and a minus.),
• Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks and reigning biggest mouth in sport
• Michael Jordan of the NBA Charlotte Bobcats but let's face it, his fame is from playing and not as an owner. In this discussion he gets an "Honorable Mention" before we go to the other contenders.

As for the other contenders, this is where the host said that nobody will replace Steinbrenner today. It's as simple as that. Truly, it has more to do with "The Boss" than it has to do with the competition and this isn't to say that one day one of these men won't take the throne, but today, the answer is still Steinbrenner, he is and for a while more will be "The Boss."

Who Is My Nieghbour?

Get the spelling? I'm hooking in with the Stones tune title.



This week's gospel reading the story of the Good Samaritan. So here's the big question this lesson asks, "Who's my neighbor?" Who indeed.

Let's just say that as for me with the new Arizona Immigration law, I'm waiting for the head of the Hopi and Navajo nations to enter the state house and send everyone without papers back to where they came from.

What, they were born in America? Well shoot, without identity papers I don't know if that matters.

Rule of law is one thing, but legalistic is quite another. The biggest problem with a legalistic society is when the rules get turned in ways that were never expected.