By Will Weiss
Bronx Banter Correspondent
We’re at the point in time where the media’s day-to-day coverage includes unnecessary game stories, the occasional feature, the building up of a player who’s succeeding, thereby setting up the inevitable fall, and of course, injury updates. On YES, every game will be treated as if it’s Game 7. On radio, John Sterling will tell stories and occasionally mention what’s going on in front of him as it pertains to the broadcast. Standard-issue stuff that tells us the season has started. And judging from posts on this site and others, ESPN’s Red Sox love/anti-Yankee tilt is in midseason form.
I wanted nothing to do with that this week. The Mets dominated the back pages while the Yankees’ performance – save for A-Rod’s game-winning grand slam on Saturday – relegated them to “other team” status.
I was struck by a different story. Three friends, my wife and my mother sent me an article about a New Jersey math professor named Bruce Bukiet, who developed a formula projecting winners and losers in the major leagues, based on teams’ starting lineups. Not surprisingly, the computer spit out a 110-win season and a 10th consecutive AL East title for the Yankees. The formula is essentially a means to help gamblers, and the article says as much. It even points to Bukiet’s “detailed projections” on a corresponding gambling site.
I enjoyed this paragraph near the top of the piece:
“So far, Bukiet is on track. The Yankees won their season opener against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on Monday.”
(My editorial reflex would have eliminated that graph, considering that the next section details the formula. Plus, basing a 110-win season on a comeback win over the Devil Rays is as convincing as projecting Daisuke Matsuzaka will win the AL Rookie of the Year, Cy Young Award and Triple Crown because he stifled the Royals in his Major League debut. Oh, wait…)
Sentences like that occur in many places, and as a reader and a fan, it’s a bit off-putting. When I read lines like that, I begin questioning the writer’s credibility. How do you, as fans and readers, react to that? Does it bother you? Do you let it go? How about if you hear announcers trip over themselves or say something off-base on the air? What do you do then?
