Educating the Unclean Masses

In his latest Sportsnet gem, Scott Carlson dismisses Frank Thomas as a “base clogger” and trots out the old baseball truism: “Games lost in the first month of the schedule are infinitely harder to make up in the last month”.

Geez, collective Toronto media. I know you deal in rhetoric. But why not just say “he’s really freaking slow”, or “a good start is important” instead of making up ridiculous shit that a four-year-old would choke on.

But it gets better- then he decides to take a shot at the callers to the Mike Wilner postgame show (who as we all know range from the hysterically insane to, well…me):

(By the way, there’s an urban legend going around — mostly on the post-game call-in show — that Thomas was a notoriously slow starter. That, in fact, is a myth. Over his 18-year career, he’s a .281 hitter in the month of April. The only three seasons where he started slow were his last three. Remove those from the equation and Frank is a .298 career hitter in the month.)

Really! Those dunces! Spreading cockamamie ideas over the airwaves based on recent history, interviews and observations instead of numbers from the 90’s. But hold on, that’s not actually where I first got that incredibly inane idea. Where was it…where was it…oh, wait, I remember. It was YOUR OWN FREAKING SEASON PREVIEW, SCOTT:

(Frank Thomas) is a big question mark. ‘The Big Hurt’ is a notoriously slow starter (.231 at the end of May last season, .303 the rest of the way) and it took him until the fourth last game this spring to finally go yard.

Especially delicious is that he actually uses the exact phrase that’s he’s now rolling his eyes at the ignorant masses for repeating. Busted! Hoisted! Boo-yeah!

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