“Were it not for the miraculous eighth-inning comeback in Game 1, the Yankees would be staring at elimination right now.”
I’m always a fan of Yankee elimination, but it really doesn’t matter who’s involved. The quote was a journalistic observation offered at the end of game three of a best-of-seven series. What matters is the absence of logic, the absence in fact of any critical mental faculty in a man who has been given a national soapbox upon which to abuse his megaphone.
What this simpleton is attempting to argue is that within a series of events that stretch over a period of days, the removal of a chunk of those events from an early sequence involving a near-infinite number of contingent decisions on the part of man and nature would have had no effect on the present outcome. No, none but those that encompassed that magical eighth inning where the Yanks pulled it out after Tinkerbell sprinkled fairy dust on the time-space continuum.
This kind of crap spews from sports blowhards who make actual livings each and every day on the airwaves. It’s said that those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach gym. The logical extension goes thusly: those who can’t manage to reach the locker room urinal with their limp peckers in junior high gravitate to sports journalism.
If only that ball had been called a strike in May, the home team would’ve won in five in September. Here’s another thought, Sophocles: if that ball had been called a strike, the pitcher would’ve gone free agent and taken a sweet deal with the Braves, your team would’ve ended up in the cellar after a dugout brawl involving someone’s model girlfriend during a team slump, and your mother would be a lesbian. Oops, I think I’ve fallen prey to my own argument. Please let me just state right now for the record that it’s fine for Yankee fans to be gay.
Logical fallacies flow from the lips of sports commentators so often it is a wonder cockroaches aren’t quite in charge yet. Maybe they’re just waiting for some critical organizational threads to come together last week.
Listen, Coach, pick a point in time. From thence onward life will weave an intricate tapestry of contingency. Think of the often remarked-upon puff of wind from a butterfly’s wings. If your lesbian mom had hiccupped at the opportune moment, you would not have missed the F Train to Yankee stadium last Thursday. You would’ve missed the boat entirely. You would’ve been a girl name Rhonda, who could kick your ass in any sport you choose. Except, see, you can’t choose because your sperm came in last this time around.
More importantly, Rhonda would understand the concept of cause and effect.
