I was kicking back, as they say, with my housemates Tuesday night, watching the Red Sox go up 3-0 in the World Series. Gups was trying to convince Nimit to be Mr. T for Halloween. Mike and Nimit were making fun of Gups because he's a Yankees fan. I was making fun of Mike because Curt Schilling has changed his sexual orientation. And everyone was making fun of me because I hadn't been aware that FOX had previously used my brilliant Star Wars-to-sports-conversion idea for my last column for one of their idiotic pregame montages.
Indeed, it was fun times all around at the Emery manor. The Sox were winning, and when they weren't, we were counting Joe Buck and Leon Budweiser commercials.
There was Buck's agent convincing him to pick up Slamma-Lamma Ding Dong as a marketing phrase. There was Leon, telling a teammate to pass him in the batting order while he was celling it up in the on-deck circle. And there was Leon in a right field sky box, talking to a reporter while behind him in the commercial were girls wearing Slamma-Lamma Ding Do - WAIT A MINUTE! This wasn't a commercial! This was actually happening! At the game! Instead of the game! I was missing pitches for this!
For a second, I really thought it was some sort of in-game commercial, like when the announcer has to say "tonight's game is brought to you by Cialis". And if I was confused, you can bet Tim McCarver was - he's still getting over the Yankees' loss and the fact that Bronson Arroyo's first name isn't Brandon. Real life Leon was even acting out his commercial persona, ignoring the reporter while he chatted on his cell phone about money, and letting us know that he was tired from running from police because he looked so good it was illegal.
For those of you who somehow haven't seen the ever-prevalent Budweiser commercials, they involve the announcer Buck and Leon, a self-centered athlete whom is nonetheless "true." Just like Bud Light! I know the last time I had an ice-cold Bud Light, I thought to myself, "Man, this tastes true!" The commercials would be sort of funny except that they're probably a realistic portrayal of half of all professional athletes. Budweiser should have just gotten Terrell Owens to play the part.
And Tuesday night, this portrayal of everything that's wrong with sports had come to life. Talk about blurring the line between advertising and reality. Was FOX subliminally tricking us into drinking Bud instead of Coors? Or has Leon turned into enough of a pseudo-celebrity (? la Orlando Jones and the 7-Up commercials) that FOX thought we'd be interested in chatting with him during at-bats? Did anyone drink more 7-Up because of Orlando Jones?
All I know is we were seeing this instead of the game, and that's outrageous. Not as outrageous as The Boston Herald trying to compete with The Boston Globe by running a blown-up picture of that poor bloody girl after the Sox beat the Yankees. But still, pretty outrageous, especially considering that it's not an isolated incident. After all, Tuesday night we learned about the exciting lives of Larry Walker's brothers Harry, Barry, Jerry, and Scary. During Game Two, FOX basically gave Tom Hanks free advertising for his new movie. And for the last two weeks the network has been giving us 80 percent game footage, 20 percent shots of Red Sox fans covering their eyes, wincing in fear, and getting their skin eaten off by vultures.
Fellow Tufts Daily columnist and Massachussets native Tim Whelan said that he saw about ten people he knew in the stands in Game Five of the ALCS. And he wasn't even at the game; he was home on his comfy sofa in DU drinking a glass of milk. Think about how many crowd shots FOX has to show for someone watching on TV to see ten people they know out of 40,000.
Honestly, I know this is really hard for the TV executives to believe, but when I turn on the television to watch a game, that's what I want to watch. The game. Yet that's not what we're being shown. When did things go so horribly, horribly, wrong? I think it started with Jack Nicholson getting cameos at the Lakers games. I didn't watch "The Shining" hoping to catch a glimpse of Devean George, and I don't watch Lakers games to see Nicholson.
But this phenomenon really turned the corner with Brenda Warner during the St. Louis Rams' surprising Super Bowl season. I could be on my deathbed and still see her fuzzy blue sweater and short spiky hair as she sat in the stands, praying and cheering for former supermarket shelf stocker husband Kurt Warner. Meanwhile, on the field, Warner was throwing 80 yard touchdown passes to Isaac Bruce and Marshall Faulk was juking defenders into Kansas. But apparently we would rather see Mrs. Warner.
Then we had Juan Dixon's brother. When Dixon, one of my favorite college basketball players ever, led the Maryland Terrapins to the 2002 NCAA Championship, half the coverage was on Juan's brother Phil, and how the two overcame their parents' drug addiction and deaths to AIDS. That's a great story. But we didn't need to pretend like Phil was a member of the team. He was shown so much I thought he was the Most Outstanding Player. That's probably the real reason why Chris Wilcox turned pro; he was angry that Phil was getting the spotlight.
Don't get me wrong; the human story behind the game is always more compelling than the stats. Unless we're missing the game to see the human story. And that story is Larry Walker's trout-catching determination. Or Leon hawking Bud on Fox. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go run from the police, because I write so well it's illegal.
