Home Run Derby

I'm going to sort of live-blog the Home Run Derby, as I'm watching it alone and it's really good this year and I have nobody to share my thoughts with. Onward!

The Derby started with the incredibly lame and annoying boilerplate sports nostalgia highlights that I've come to expect before every single nationally broadcast baseball game. Remember when this sort of thing was mostly limited to athletes' stories during the Olympics? Now, mid-May games between the Cubs and Cardinals are preceded by 15 minutes of Joe Buck blathering on about Stan Musial and Billy Williams for no particular reason. I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I think this practice really picked up around the turn of the century and became a permanent cancer on baseball broadcasts when A) Fox started doing a lot of baseball, and B) 9/11 happened and baseball stirringly returned in Yankee Stadium. The latter, incidentally, is also the reason why we now have to endure God Bless America before every Sunday game.

The other reason I approach the Derby with a bottle of scotch and an assumed crash position is that Chris Berman calls it. I understand that when he was fresh on the scene, ol' YWML and his rhyming schtick was considered pretty cutting-edge. And when I was a teenager, I thought calling my favorite slick-fielding first baseman "Mark 'Holy Mary Mother of' Grace" was hilarious. Now that I'm an adult, and I've achieved a solidly below-average level of maturity, I can't abide his noxious gimmicks. That said - despite the fact that Satan arranged for him to be partnered with John Kruk and Joe Morgan - Berman has been pretty tame tonight. I literally came into this show dreading the patented "BackbackbackbackbackbackGONE!", but fortunately we haven't been subjected to too many of those.

ESPN has been really, really off the ball (Off the ball. Get it? I probably stole that one from Berman.) for the past few years, but so far tonight has been a return to form. The other announcers, besides Berman, Kruk, and Morgan, include Erin Andrews (meh), Rick Reilly (cool), and Peter Gammons (awesome). Gammons, as always, knows more than everyone else and has better insight than the entire rest of the commentary crew combined. But Reilly...that guy is really making tonight special. He clearly adopted the role of the outraged classy sportswriter, the kind of guy who used to write vicious, sharp, angry pieces in Sports Illustrated on important topics. He pointed out, in a gravelly, unforgiving voice that clearly couldn't care that ESPN specializes in boring, anti-septic, patriotic, happy-go-lucky broadcasts these days, that despite precedent, all of this year's ten Derby contestants are white. Then he shut up completely, just letting that uncomfortable truth dangle in the dead air like a twirling Cirque Du Soleil trapeze artist. Listening to the other commentators try to rapidly change the subject, without dealing with Reilly's statements in any manner whatsoever, during what they probably thought of as the easiest broadcast of the year, was worth every single second I had to spend listening to Joe Morgan. There's something like a zero percent chance Reilly is invited back next year.

The other bit that ESPN is getting right is adding super-slow-mo cameras to get beautiful, crystal-clear, ultra-high speed images of each batter's swing. I have no idea how much those things cost, but I'd kill to be able to add those to every game broadcast.

As for the actual contest...well, no Cubs and no White Sox participated, so I felt free to pick whomever I wanted. I decided I'd go with Ryan Braun, because A) He's Jewish, and B) There is no B.

It was actually a very boring Home Run Derby, with a couple players disappointing and nobody hitting more than 8 dingers in the first round. Surely all the sportwriters assigned to cover the event were desperately trying to think of interesting things to say as the second round began, because nothing obvious would come to mind...well, maybe Josh Hamilton, a former first overall pick, who was out of baseball for 3 years with a serious drug addiction, got his life together, returned to the majors after 50 career minor league games in A-ball, was traded this offseason for a current Cy Young contender, is threating to win the Triple Crown in the AL, who hit more homers in the first round than the next three batters combined, including some of the longest in Derby history, off of his chosen batting practice pitcher, his 71-year old former little league coach, who spent his life helping kids and whose only previous trip to Yankee stadium was over 50 years ago when he happened to see Don Larsen's perfect game in the World Series.

Pity the sportswriters.

...and then Hamilton managed to lose in the final round to Justin Morneau, whose first name I believe is Canadian for good, bland, and kinda overrated. A truly disappointing end, but to give you an idea of just how awesome his first round performance was, after the event finished he was interviewed before Morneau. Yankee Stadium, which is filled with some the least classy fans in existence, and who actually gave a Bronx Cheer to some of the players who had bad days (by the way, there's a reason booing and sarcastic cheering is referred to as a "Bronx Cheer,") was chanting his name for ten minutes at one point. Hamilton reportedly doesn't go outside alone because he doesn't trust himself not to use, spends his free time talking to kids about his experiences, and is totally on my fantasy team. I really, truly wish him the best.

P.S. Sammy Sosa still holds the record for longest Derby homer (524 feet, IIRC), and boy do I believe it. I've been blessed enough to see a cool few things at baseball games in my time (a straight steal of home, Kerry Wood's first game back from Tommy John, and Mark Prior's first ever major league game amongst them), but by far the most astounding was a 532 foot Sosa homer off of the Pirates.