To the millions not lucky enough to have a father in your life...

You will never be able to play baseball.

Fox just said so, during a syrupy Field of Dreams ripoff feature that tells you that the only way you can learn the game is from your father.

Could they be any more insensitive?

 

Fuck them . . . my mother taught all of us how to play. My (step)dad can't throw a baseball to save his life.

What a bunch of morons. Now I'm hostile.

 

I learned everything I know about baseball from Kevin Costner movies.

Probably telling that so far 3 women have posted here, so maybe it's a guy thing to learn from the dads.....but my dad hated baseball--hated sports, actually--and I ended up teaching him. Took him to his first baseball game at Wrigley six months before he died....Dale Murphy hit a homerun, Dad got a free Budweiser floppy hat, and it remains the greatest baseball memory I will ever have.

 

No worse than the morons on the US Open on NBC who keep taking sbout "how much so many of these great golfers owe to their fathers who taught them the game" ...like athletes are the only people who ever learned anything from their fathers.

I'm with you chickie, I'm starting to get pissed at this stuff.

 

Actually, my dad taught me how to hit. My parents' home is on an acre plot of land and we had enough space to build our own ball diamond (it didn't have much of an outfield but it was our own ball diamond and all the kids from the neighbourhood came to play). He put the first bat in my hands, took me to home plate and taught me how to swing. The first time he took his arms from around me, I swung the bat and drove a liner back at my brother, the pitcher. I hit the ball so hard he didn't have time to react and the ball went straight into his nuts.
He was pissed but I turned around and there was my dad with the biggest, goofiest and proudest smile on his face.
Dammit, I'm crying now.

 

I'm just trying to calculate how many hours went into producing Earl & Tiger footage that will never be seen this weekend.

 

Don't worry, 21, they've already started priming the pump for some Padraig Harrington/father emotion.
"After all, it's only been a year since Padraig lost his father, so tomorrow will be a very emotional day for him."

 

Well, that doesn't have anything to do with whether Harrington's dad taught him golf. Sorry, but Father's Day is a ready-made story line; they just have to find the golfer it best fit.

 

I'm not talking about those whose fathers weren't athletically inclined. Or the girls who played.

I'm talking about those who never had a dad, or who never knew who he was.

Somehow, many of those guys managed to find themselves in the big leagues anyway.

And without getting demographic or offending anyone, I'd bet many of them are African American or Latin American. Yet dinosaurs like Fox, despite the increasing percentage of non-white, non-American players in the majors, insist on this kind of 1940s, "Dad, let's have a catch" crap. I guess it's easy; God forbid they put any effort into it.

Anyone want to venture a guess on what percentage of guys in the big leagues today actually played catch with their dads?

 

I was the best pitcher on my little league team and my father died when I was five. Eff them. Gimme 10 minutes to warm up and I'll strike out their whole broadcast team, sans McCarver. I'm throwing at that smarmy bitch's head.

 

Give Fox a break. The Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, so they can't use the Curse of the Bambino storyline.

The White Sox won the World Series in 2005, so they can't use the Shoeless Joe Jackson storyline.

The Cubs will never again compete for anything resembling a World Series, so they can't air shots of black cats at Shea Stadium, ground balls skipping under Leon Durham's glove or Steve Bartman listening to the game on his headphones as 35,000 people plot murder.

Airing gratiously grating shots of dad playing catch with son is their last great lazy storyline.

(FWIW, my dad taught me the game in the backyard and learned to bat left-handed during our wiffle ball games so that he wouldn't scar his wussball son. Thanks dad!)

 

Haha. Fox is funny.

My dad never taught me how to play the game. In fact, he hates it. My grandfather taught me how to play when I was younger.