Posted by Mike on 10/24/2005, 5:57 pm

Regarding Tim McCarver's analysis in the Sunday night World Series game between the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros: Correct me if I'm wrong but Timmy's anal-ysis of Tadahito Iguchi's lead-off of second base was somewhat inane. Iguchi chose to employ a technique of taking several steps back, outside the baseline. Perhaps this was due to the ground conditions due to the rain or to have a better angle on Biggio dogging him. He was ridiculing Iguchi's method saying good base runners eventually get back in the base path, or some such nonsense. Buck actually countered nicely by saying Iguchi was well schooled in baseball having played several years in Japan. I get the sense McDufuss in pro NL or perhaps doesn’t like the out-of-the-box Guillen, or maybe doesn’t like Japanese imports like Iguchi, who by-the-way, is very fundamentally sound. Anyway, Timmy then tries his impersonation of a rocket scientist butchering something to the effect that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I believe Buck helped correct his misstatement. Well Timmy, actually in baseball, the shortest distance would be best measured as the point from where the player is taking a lead-off and the next base. Later in the game an Astros base runner was doing exactly what Iguchi had done, again slightly outside the base line to the outfield side, and Timmy never makes mention. This type of information could be useful if McBlather would explain why Iguchi and said Astro were employing this technique and perhaps suggesting it was the conditions and also play fair if he is going to ridicule and cite all players using such a technique, if in fact it even deserves criticism. Strikes me as yet another example of McBlowhard having to fill better served silence with useless or poorly aimed over anal-ysis.