Nail-biter of a game in which neither team seemed to be able to capitalize on some big hits until the Red Sox lucked out in the 8th… alas, for this is one of the few a times in the year that I was rooting against them. I’ll echo my dad’s sentiments and say that the Twins lost it by pinch hitting Monroe for Kubel with bases loaded and one out in the 8th.
But enough about the game itself… sitting here at the northern tip of Michigan, I was lucky enough to watch my two favorite teams because it happened to be ESPN’s Monday Night Game. And boy, did their New England bias come through. In the top of the fifth, the announcers managed to spend the entire half inning prattling on about whether Schilling, Pedro, or Mussina belongs in the Hall of Fame without once commenting on the play going on on the field. Here I was watching the Twins with a runner on first and one out in a very tight game with a limited amount of base runners and the play-by-play guys decided that it was more important to talk about three players (two with Red Sox affiliations, one Yankee) who aren’t playing in the game that’s going on right in front of them. And in the bottom of the inning when the Sox came to bat, suddenly it was all about whether or not Boston could score… despite the fact that they went down 1-2-3.
If anyone wants to know why I occasionally talk about how the Red Sox and Yankees aren’t liked in the middle of the country, this kind of implicit bias is exactly why!
Edit: On Baseball Tonight, the daily webgems have an absurd number of Boston plays. (And I missed the first few, but I didn’t see Denard Span’s catch at the wall in any of those, which was at least as impressive, if not more so, than some of those Boston plays.) But John Kruk is calling them out on the “east coast bias”, so at least someone over there notices.