Ah, Scooter. How we’ve missed you.
As mentioned in our post last week (we’ll blog more prodigiously from now on, we promise*) FOX had a media call with MLB announcers Joe Buck, Tim McCarver and Mark Grace to talk up the FOX MLB Saturday “Game of the Week” which started on Saturday (go figure). Here are the goods from the press call:
Buck Will Convince You He’s Not A Homer Or Die Trying: “The Cardinals are not going to have the year that they had last year and win the Central. There’s no way. Considering how they finished — the Astros were pounding down on them at the end of the year and almost caught them — and I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is a better division. Is it one of the best divisions? I’d say no. But I think it’s getting there because Milwaukee’s got a lot of young talent if they can learn how to win as a group. Pittsburgh’s got some young talent. I think they’re still a year or two away. The Cubs should be better theoretically. And then you’ve got the Astros and the Cardinals, the two teams that have always been there at the top two spots the last handful of years. I think they’re going to be challenged more now than they have been in years past. One of the two teams I think will end up winning the division, but they’re going to get a lot more pressure from the teams below them. Especially for the Cardinals. If they don’t get younger and infuse a little more talent into this lineup, and depending on how bad Chris Carpenter’s elbow is which has flared up on him after his first start, they could be overtaken this year and certainly in the years to come because they’re just not keeping up with the young talent that’s everywhere else.”
McCarver Not So Sure About The Social-Issue Stuff: “It is disturbing, No. 1, when you look at baseball and you see the dearth of black players compared to 40 or 45 years ago. I think if Jackie Robinson were alive right now, he’d be very concerned. … I’m not really sure as whether the black players today aren’t impacted to Jackie Robinson also, but not as much as they were back in those days. … Baseball’s losing a lot of young athletes to football and particularly basketball in the inner cities. I think the RBI program has done a lot to try to rectify that problem. But that’s the reality of today is that baseball is losing a lot of its athletes. It’s as much a social issue as it is a sports issue. I don’t know the answer to that problem.”
Grace On The Cubs Nearing 100 Years Of Losing Lovably: “It couldn’t have gotten to that number without me. I have 13 years of responsibility there, so I’ll be the first to jump on that. There’s been a lot of people saying, ‘Gosh, they haven’t won it since 1908.’ And I think that’s unfair. Anybody can have a bad century. They went out and spent a lot of money. It’s tough not to like the Cubs’ chances when they went out and spent the kind of money they spent. The question I have about it is, ‘Did they spend it in the right places?’ The Cubs are going to hit. There’s no question they’re going to hit. That hasn’t been the problem with guys like Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez in the middle of that order. Did they spend in the right places? They gave a king’s ransom to Jason Marquis and Ted Lilly. If you ask me, those guys aren’t eye-popping starters by any means. Are they serviceable? You betcha.”
*Not a legally binding promise