Get off my side, you're making it look stupid!
One of our local newspapers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, is really big on blogs at the moment. Last year, they hired blogger Derek Zumsteg to write semi-regular articles on the Mariners from a sabermetrician's perspective, which were actually quite interesting. This year, I haven't seen hide nor hair of Zumsteg, but they have brought us the blog of the Mariner Housewife. And I have to tell you, this woman is KILLING ME. Her first couple of posts were pretty content-free, but whatever. Then she made the observation that the M's look more lively this year than they did in any game she watched last October. Now, technically, we did play two games in October last year. But I'm pretty sure she meant September, which... for one thing, any baseball fan worth his/her salt knows that the regular season usually ends in September. Also, NOT THAT HARD TO GO BACK AND CHECK THE SCHEDULE. Then she did an entire post about "attractiveness cycles" of teams, which just made me cringe, because when you're a woman doing a sports blog, maybe you want to wait a month or so before you start gushing over the hot guys in their tight pants. (Not that I disagree with her about Barry Zito, or about this year's A's in general. I'm just saying I'd wait a while to confirm half the stereotypes about female sports fans.) But even the gushing wouldn't be so bad if she had anything worthwhile to say about other aspects of the game, but in one of her other posts, she came up with this gem: "I don't pay enough attention to the catcher unless he's catching somebody stealing or dealing with a wild pitch". So... you don't pay nearly enough attention to the guy who is usually the most intelligent and influential player on the field? And yet you call yourself a baseball fan? SHUT UP, MARINER HOUSEWIFE. You are officially dead to me.
I wouldn't get so bent out of shape by this, except that she's probably getting paid for this, and I can probably name five women from my f-list alone who know more about baseball than this chick, and that doesn't seem fair. Plus, at least in my experience, it is not particularly easy to be a female baseball fan, even in a city like Seattle where there's a relatively large percentage. My dad comes with me to a baseball game and the guy next to him immediately strikes up a conversation about the team and the game and the players. Me? I can hardly ever get a male fan to talk to me; he either assumes I don't know what I'm talking about, or he's embarrassed that I do know what I'm talking about. So here this woman is, with an opportunity to make a case for the knowledgeable female fan, and she's just confirming every stereotype. It's infuriating.
Plus, she named her son "Brendan Ichiro." I'm sorry, but if you're going to name your son after a Mariners player, it's Brendan Edgar. IT JUST IS.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I wouldn't get so bent out of shape by this, except that she's probably getting paid for this, and I can probably name five women from my f-list alone who know more about baseball than this chick, and that doesn't seem fair. Plus, at least in my experience, it is not particularly easy to be a female baseball fan, even in a city like Seattle where there's a relatively large percentage. My dad comes with me to a baseball game and the guy next to him immediately strikes up a conversation about the team and the game and the players. Me? I can hardly ever get a male fan to talk to me; he either assumes I don't know what I'm talking about, or he's embarrassed that I do know what I'm talking about. So here this woman is, with an opportunity to make a case for the knowledgeable female fan, and she's just confirming every stereotype. It's infuriating.
Plus, she named her son "Brendan Ichiro." I'm sorry, but if you're going to name your son after a Mariners player, it's Brendan Edgar. IT JUST IS.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.