Tim McCarver Remembers 2001, And It Was Good

Okay, so this game’s practically out of hand so it’s hard to blame the broadcast for going off the rails a bit.

But when the subject of Moneyball: The Movie came up, things went from bad to worse in a hurry.

First, Ken Rosenthal paraphrased some lines from the movie.

Pro Tip: If you don’t know the lines exactly, don’t bother. There is nothing on the whole planet more boring than someone paraphrasing movie lines. Nothing.

Then -- and this had to have been queued (cued?) up, so maybe it’s not the score’s fault -- this bizarre thing happened:

Tim McCarver: It’s funny, Joe. With the series that Nelson Cruz is having, how Moneyball, that book and movie, has kind of changed the language in baseball. Used to be that a guy like that was a ‘money ballplayer’. But since Moneyball, ‘money-ball-players’ equal on-base percentages. So we’ve gone from clutch to on-base percentages.

While McCarver was going through that obviously planned litany, we were treated to this awesome graphic:

Look, I get what McCarver’s saying and it’s not a completely uninteresting observation. It’s something you might toss out there in passing and hope someone’s mildly amused. But to prepare a graphic memorializing it?

And the punch line came when Joe Buck allowed that he’s not seen the movie yet. Which can only reinforce the commonly held opinion that he really doesn’t give a damn about baseball and can’t wait until November when he can get back to focusing solely on the sport that he loves.