"I Hate Myself for Loving You?"

Okay, maybe I'm just too ignorant of 80s music, but I was unaware of the 1988 Joan Jett and the Blackhearts song "I Hate Myself for Loving You," at least until my XM 80s channel just played it. I know this song as the Sunday Night Football theme, sung not by an aging Joan Jett but by some blonde in a tight black Joan Jett-style thing.

Right? Was this just brutally obvious, such that any non-physicist with normal pop-cultural literacy would have known this? And if the SNF theme IS based on a 1988 Joan Jett song, does that mean that my generation is taking over the world? Will we soon see Sting and Duran Duran replacing Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones on ads for retirement funds and cholesterol-lowering medication?

 

This is what the Nachoman ponders as he waits for baseball to resume.  Too bad they didn't bother to schedule an ALCS game Friday night, when the weather was lovely... now it's likely the World Series will last into January.

 

GCJ

Are the Yankees "desperately needed" by baseball?

The NachoGrandpa writes:

"A radio talk show host, I think Colin Cowherd, said that Yankees-Angels had a TV rating of 6.5, whereas Dodgers-Phillies had a 3.5. The 3.5 is well lower than the big college football games, and the NFL gets around a 12.

He concluded that the Yankees are desperately needed by baseball to do well financially. Does this ring true to you?"


Yes, but NOT for television purposes. If national TV ratings were the only important issue, then MLB would do what I've wanted to see for years: Cut the season so that it ends on August 10th, have the playoffs and world series finish before the start of the NFL season, and make the games fit into a concise 2.5-hour bin. National TV ratings would, at minimum, quadruple.

The fact is, individual teams get substantial revenue from local broadcast rights and from attendance at the games themselves. This is NOT the NFL, where national broadcast revenue dwarfs pretty much every other source of money. Only die-hard baseball fans care substantially about the playoffs and world series if the home team isn't playing. This wasn't true 30 or even (maybe) 20 years ago... but now, NFL playoffs are national events regardless of who's in them; baseball playoffs are only truly important in the home market.

Nevertheless, which team gets the largest local broadcast revenue? The Yankees. Which team makes the most money per game throughout the season? The yankees. Which team sells the most paraphernalia? Yankees. Which team is guaranteed to sell out in a visitor's stadium, even if that stadium is named PNC Park? Yup, the Yankees. So strong New York baseball is definitely important to the league, but for different reasons than Colin Blowhard says.

(My second act as commissioner would be to put a team in Brooklyn named the Dodgers with the correct old insignia. I actually think that the New York market is underserved by baseball.)

The baseball analogy might be Reggie Jackson hitting a bird

Okay, the NLCS last night just stunk. I watched a couple of early innings (since when can an "elite" offense not hit Vicente freakin' Padilla?), as well as about an hour of the bottom of the eighth. All you need to know about this game, and about the detritus that is modern postseason baseball, is that this hour did not represent the entirety of the half-inning.

So I'll post about soccer instead. Under the "truth is stranger than fiction" tag, as well as "you see something new and crazy all the time":

Liverpool playing at Sunderland, first few minutes... Sunderland takes a shot from about 15 yards out, straight in front of the goal but with a few defenders around. It's a kinda weak shot, headed straight for the keeper for an easy save. BUT WAIT! A balloon was on the pitch. "A rogue balloon, dispatched by the spectators," was sitting on the ground near the Liverpool goal. This shot ricocheted off of the balloon, changing its path just enough to get past the goalkeeper.

Now, I don't know enough about soccer rules to know what is supposed to happen here, but I doubt this situation is covered in your normal official's clinic. Apparently the goal stands -- that certainly makes the most sense, even though Liverpool could be justifiably angry at the unfortunate and unlucky situation.

The commentator was excoriating the Liverpool defense, saying that they "should have stomped on the balloon so that it could not impact play." Huh? You really want your fullbacks trying to catch a slippery balloon rather than mark their men? I mean, I would have a word for the Sunderland event management, who allowed the balloon to get on the pitch to begin with. (To take the argument ab absurdio, an unscrupulous team could deliberately release balloons when their offense makes a run on goal.)

Could the referee have stopped the Sunderland attack if he had noticed the balloon? Should he have? (I'm guessing not.) Have you ever seen something like this before?