This morning on the radio I heard Tony Bruno touting Khalil Greene as "a lock" for the Rookie of the Year award. A fan called in and said, "What about Jason Bay? I keep hearing that Khalil Greene is a lock but no one seems to be paying attention to Jason Bay of Pittsburgh."
Bruno and Mike Gubicza tag-teamed on the caller and put him down pretty harshly (though Bruno did concede that the Pirates have some great young players and fans should be excited about next year).
They argued that Bay and Greene's offensive production is "close enough" that it's a wash. After all, Greene plays shortstop. The caller emphasized the fact that Bay's defense has been great (LF in PNC is much harder to play than RF). But they pooh-poohed that with "we've all seen Khalil Greene in the highlight films so many times." Further, they argued that the fact that Greene plays for a team in the chase for a playoff spot "will weigh heavily on the writer's minds." Yet they ridiculed the caller's suggestion that Bay is being overlooked. "Usually it's the West Coast teams that are overlooked," Bruno said, from his studio in Los Angeles, "because the games begin at 10pm."
So on one hand he admits that Greene's greater exposure from playing in more meaningful games will "weigh heavily" on the writers, but then he denies that Bay has been overlooked because, after all, he plays for Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh is on the east coast. Seriously, how many people get the Pirates on television? How far does KDKA travel in this landscape of hills and mountains and valleys? How much attention do the Pirates get in publications like Sports Illustrated or USA Today's Sports Weekly? And how often do the good people at Baseball Tonight open the show with that meaningful game between the Pirates and the Brewers? (If that makes you laugh, consider that every game is the most meaningful game of the season for someone, somewhere, whether it's the 12-year-old fan who attends only one game a season or the family of the starting pitcher. If you want to laugh at that 12-year-old kid go ahead, be a jackass; just because the Pirates games don't appear significant to fans outside the region doesn't mean they don't matter to fans inside the region.)
Jason Bay sure seems overlooked to me because we've been regarding him as a ROY candidate since early July. At the All-Star break, he garnered no attention when people talked about the ROY. They said Ryan Madson, Antinori Otsuka, Kaz Matsui. In August, we were even more sure Bay was the likely ROY because his steady and outstanding production, offensively and defensively, created a lot of distance between him and the other names mentioned as candidates in the mid-year speculation articles (note all those other candidates played for huge markets or winning teams). We've been saying Bay all the way and his candidacy never gained traction in national media outlets. Then, around mid-to-late August, Greene got hot and now it's September and he's being touted as a lock. Where was Khalil Greene before the All-Star break? How did Jason Bay fail to be considered as in the lead for the award at any point in the season? Don't tell us Jason Bay has not been overlooked; he's deserved attention since early July and he's still waiting for it. Don't tell us that outfielders don't deserve consideration; we know at the All-Star break that national writers who pay no attention to the Pirates were considering a setup guy and a middle reliever before our steady Canadian outfielder.
None of this would bother me if the California-based Greene partisans would back off the smug and hyperbolic gloating that their boy is a "lock." If Bruno wants to rant like this to a Southern California audience, that's all fine and good, but I'm driving around in Pirates country and I have to listen these ill-informed pundits acting like they know more about the Pirates than the caller defending Jason Bay?
The good news is that Tony Bruno and Mike Gubicza won't have votes. And, I doubt too many baseball writers spend a lot of time listening to these blowhards.
The national baseball people should be a little less cocksure about what they know and what they don't know about teams like the Pirates if they give a damn about being respected all over the country. Sports is sports and yeah, lives don't hang in the balance. But as Pirate fans I think we have good reasons to complain when the national media shows step on our feet and tell us to like it.
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