Joe Morgan Bites The Hand That Feeds Him

There are two things I know for sure:

1) Joe Morgan was a terrific baseball player.
2) Joe Morgan is a terrible baseball analyst.

To his credit, he did have a 19-year career in the majors and is bound to know something about the game. He also has a propensity for making quixotic statements and sweeping generalizations when presented with complex issues, yet has won two Emmys for his color commentary. This is a man who once said "You can't compare things with statistics," yet is ranked as the 15th-best player in baseball history and the greatest second baseman of all time by prominent statistician Bill James in his Historical Baseball Abstract.

His unpopularity among baseball's sizable sabermetric community--the Moneyball acolytes--is well-documented. And while this isn't a blog that centers around Morgan-bashing or sabermetrics (God knows there are enough of those), well, everyone needs a hobby.

Overheard during Sunday night's Yankees-Red Sox game, concerning Alex Rodriguez's recent tabloid scandal:

"I think when you're following people around, that's getting too much into their private lives. Hollywood celebrities, they're used to it with the tabloids and everything. But baseball players are not used to their private lives being public."

I'm pretty sure that star athletes--especially ones that play in New York--have been national celebrities since the days of, oh, George Herman Ruth.

Also, the notion that one of the highest-profile players to ever play baseball would not expect his entire life to be scrutinized is pure hogwash. It's not like this is the first time this has happened to A-Rod. He's been under a microscope the moment he arrived in the Bronx; hell, that's why he has turned into a seemingly emotionless automaton. I'm actually relieved that the dude was caught coming out of a strip club. Plus this happened in public, in broad daylight. There are no photographers popping out from behind the sink every time he uses the bathroom.

You could even argue that the evolution of ESPN's increasingly excretable MLB coverage is partially to blame for Rodriguez's woes. There is more discussion of marginally interesting human-interest "storylines" than of the issues and concerns that directly impact both the game in question and the sport as a whole. To wit, I learned one thing during last month's Braves-Phillies Wednesday night broadcast: Jarrod Saltalamacchia has a long name. I swear they would not shut up about this insignificant detail, bringing it up in almost every inning as Chris Berman tried to shit out one of his contrived puns/nicknames for this guy.

Unfortunately, Joe is not going away, a testament to the value of his "sweep complexity under the rug" style in an industry based on finding the broadest, least offensive appeal possible. Folks, there's nothing less offensive than good, old-fashioned hot air.

Archive of Joe Morgan Chat Transcripts [Fire Joe Morgan]
Blog Archive: Joe Morgan Tags [Between the Lines]