Losing My Perspicacity October 11, 2024

Good morning and Happy Free Friday! Welcome back to Losing My Perspicacity.

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Today, Stephen A went and made Sue Bird mad; the Trop is not looking so good after Milton; is it really a baseball fight if no one gets shoved? The Valkyries name their head coach; and Dr. Rick is headed for Hot Ones.

Here we go.

Sue Bird (rightly) calls out Stephen A Smith

In my opinion, the most satisfying sports moment of the year was watching Monica McNutt hand Stephen A. Smith his ass on his own show. Keep in mind, this was an Olympic year. Let’s all take a second to remember how that went.

It’s good for my soul to watch this clip every few days. Stephen A. has had some truly idiotic takes over the last decade (domestic violence victims having to take responsibility for their own abuse was an all-timer), but trying to set himself up as some kind of champion of women’s sports, when he only started talking about the WNBA this year along with all the other Caitlin Clark stans, is right up there. God bless Monica for saying what every WNBA fan who saw that clip wanted to say.

Of course, being humiliated on national TV wasn’t going to stop Stephen A. from harping on about WNBA viewership, and now he’s gone and made Sue Bird angry. Ruh-roh.

Here’s what Bird had to say about Stephen A and his partner, Shannon Sharpe, bringing up lower WNBA ratings since Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever have exited the playoffs.

It’s a fair question and one that probably most sports talk hosts would be asked by management. When I worked in sports talk radio, I got called into my boss’s office not once, but TWICE because I said something about a team whose games my station broadcast, and the owners of the team didn’t like what I had to say. And it’s not like Stephen A. is breaking some big investigative scoop or anything. He’s literally been yelling about Caitlin Clark all year. “No one watches women's sports” has been the refrain from men in the media for as long as I can remember; no one is breaking new ground here. “No one is watching the WNBA without Caitlin Clark” is just a slight variation on that theme.

Yes, WNBA viewership is down from the last playoff game Clark played in. So what? What is the league supposed to do about it? Give the Fever a free pass into the Finals so Clark’s fanbase continues to watch?

A 100 percent increase in viewership from the previous year seems like something to celebrate, not denigrate. Keep in mind that the WNBA has been around for 28 years. The NBA was founded in 1946, and several teams were on the verge of bankruptcy in the early 1980s, when it was more than 30 years old. In 1981, 16 of 23 NBA teams finished the season in the red. In 1990, some 27 NBA teams were still losing money. Let’s spend the next 30 years investing in the women’s game like owners did in the NBA and see what happens.

I’m not entirely clear on why so many men in media have glommed on to the “No one would watch without Caitlin Clark” narrative or what point they are trying to prove. We could just as easily point out that the average viewership for the NBA Finals in 1993, the last year before Michael Jordan’s retirement, was 27.2 million viewers, but the following year, with the Bulls and Jordan out of the picture, it dropped to 17.9 million. What’s the revelation supposed to be here? That Michael Jordan was a huge draw? Okay. I think we all knew that. No one used those numbers to back up some weirdo grudge about the rest of the NBA.

I’m relieved, after all the vitriol lobbed at the W’s players this season, that we appear to have a relatively drama-free Finals on our hands, without all the racial animus that (some of) Clark’s fans have been spewing towards Black women on other teams.

For those of us actually interested in basketball, the Lynx took Game One of the Finals in OT, 95-93. Napheesa Collier hit the fade-away jumper that put Minnesota up with just 8 seconds left on the clock. Breanna Stewart nearly sent the game into double OT, but her last-second layup attempt fell wide. Courtney Williams led the Lynx with 23 points, Kayle McBride had 22, and Collier added 21. Jonquel Jones led the Liberty with 24 points.

Game Two is Sunday in New York.

Milton tore the roof of Tropicana Field

The footage of the damage is unbelievable.

And it’s even eerier at night.

Obviously, the more important news is that no one was hurt at the Trop, and far more devastating damage to people’s homes took place elsewhere. While MLB fans love to make fun of this particular stadium, the footage is sobering and a reminder of how powerful Milton was. Before the roof was torn off, Tropicana Field was being used as a temporary shelter for the National Guard, first responders, and citizens who had nowhere else to go.

If you want to donate, or if you live in the area and want to volunteer, WaPo has a pretty good list of how we can all help.

This isn’t even a fight!

If you’ve been following me for any period of time, you might know that baseball fights are among my favorite things in the world. So when I heard (while watching Game One of the WNBA Finals) that the benches had cleared in the Yankees/Royals game, I got pretty excited and ran to social media. Only to find this:

There wasn’t even any pushing and shoving! No one even threw a punch!

D- baseball fight. I give the bullpens a B+ for how quickly they got out to the infield. Sorry to waste your time and your rapid reaction, boys.

Oh, and the Yankees finished off the Royals and advanced to the ALCS.

The Golden State Valkyries name their head coach

Natalie Nakase will helm the newest WNBA team in its inaugural season. Nakase was an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Clippers from 2018 to 2020, and has been with the Las Vegas Aces since 2022.

The Valkyries will start play in May of 2025.

We also got a bunch of W news from Commish Cathy Englebert today:

Antonio Brown gives us another gem

Accused rapists flock together, I guess.

Dr. Rick blows up

Look, I usually consume Hot Ones in 30-second clips that pop up on Instagram, but I will watch THE HELL out of Dr. Rick’s episode.

I can’t remember where I heard this, and it may be apocryphal, but someone told me several years ago that the reason insurance commercials suddenly became funny was that some huge advertising firm lost their beer accounts, so they moved all their “beer people” over to making insurance ads. This was right around the time Flo from Progressive showed up. True or not, I’m going to choose to believe it, because there are few things I look forward to more than new Dr. Rick commercials.

The first one was probably the best:

The guy wearing a windbreaker indoors and reading a book about submarines kills me every time. But this is my personal favorite:

Something about the way the woman flinches when he throws the sign in the trash is absolutely hilarious to me.

Anyway, long live Dr. Rick. May your mouth go numb early and the milk be copious.

Have a great weekend. See you all on Monday.