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There’s nothing sadder than fans complaining about media bias

Joe Buck

I am thankful for the wild card, division series and the non-Fox LCS each year because they remind me that we’re actually kind of lucky to have Joe Buck.

No, he’s not a particularly wonderful baseball announcer compared to many around the game, but he’s considerably better than some of the other ones on national broadcasts. By the time the Fox-broadcast LCS and the World Series rolls around and Buck is on the scene it feels like we’re improving some. And heck, he’s familiar after all of these years. There are a lot of guys I’d rather have call big games, but given the slim pickings we have in this regard, Joe Buck is quite tolerable as an exercise in enjoying the product of reduced expectations

But not everyone is even as charitable as that. Some Royals fans have decided that Joe Buck is biased against their team and have started a petition to have Fox remove him from their games:

It was announced today that Joe Buck will be calling the ALCS games on Fox and Fox Sports 1. As a Royals fan who was forced to endure his love for our opposing team, more specifically, their pitcher, we find this to be untenable.

For example, on October 29th, 2014, Joe Buck said Bumgarner 87 times, Giants 56 times, San Francisco 24 times, Kansas City 13 times, and Royals 8 times.

Our opinion is clear and simple, why not have someone that will call the game evenly and without a preconceived love for either team?


The only thing dumber than these sorts of petitions is the claim by fans that announcers (or writers for that matter) are biased against their teams.

For one thing, it isn’t true. Really, no one cares about your rooting interest, chief. Certainly not as much as you do. Your life may be so narrow and sad that your team matters to you more than anything in the world, but the rest of society doesn’t think about them that much. And when they do think about them they don’t gin up enough emotion about it to actually hate them. You’re just imagining it.

Indeed, when someone says "[person] is biased against [my team]” I instantly translate it to “I have a pretty severe insecurity/persecution complex and, while I’m not fully conscious of it, my belief that people have it in for that which I love serves to validate my myopic and sad fixation on the professional sports team from my general geographic area.” The media isn’t biased against your team. But they do pity you when they stop to think about you.

There’s also the fact that, even if Joe Buck or other person did hate your team, it doesn’t really matter. I know there are a great many sports fans who think that what an announcer says has some sort of impact on the outcome of sporting events -- RIP to all of those no-hitters jinxed by commentators doing their job and noting that a no-hitter is underway -- but there are a great many people in the world who believe all manner of dumb things. This may not be the dumbest, but it’s way closer to, say, believing in the tooth fairy than it is to thinking anything reasonable.

If you don’t like Joe Buck, turn the sound down. Or mute him altogether and synch up the radio broadcast to the TV. Or just do what I do and try to tune him out. Any of those approaches are far more effective -- and far less reflective of a pathetic person -- than railing against his bias or demanding his removal from your team’s games.

But maybe I’m just biased.