Other than your first seven words I totally agree.
Howard Cosell was loathsome to my mind and ear, but for some folks their taste is...
Harry Carey was a piece of work too.
At least on Sunday Night Baseball, Morgan never met an opinion he didn't try to twist into a fact. He never liked Ernie Banks, for example, and took that feud to the booth.
This is a story I've told in the past, but it bears repeating:
It was during a Sunday night game on ESPN that Morgan went on a long-winded, utterly insane diatribe about the outfield basket in Wrigley Field, the one intended to keep drunk morons from falling out of the bleachers and onto the field. Anyway, Morgan starts babbling that during his playing days, "everybody" in baseball referred to that basket as Banks Boulevard, because Ernie Banks hit "so many of his homers into that basket."
Follow along, class, and see if you can figure out the problem from these ideas:
- Ernie Banks was on the Cubs' roster from 1953 - 1971. He hit 512 home runs during that time.
- Of those 512, Morgan insisted that a lot of them landed in the basket at Wrigley Field.
- Therefore, without the basket, Banks wouldn't have had anywhere near 512 home runs.
However:
- In 1970 and 1971, Ernie only played in 111 games for the Cubs. This is important because:
- The basket wasn’t installed at Wrigley Field until May 1970.
- Banks hit only eight home runs at Wrigley Field in those two seasons, and one of them was in April of 1970, well before the basket went in.
Therefore:
- Of Ernie Banks' 512 career home runs, the most that could have landed in the basket is a grand total of
seven. (And Banks' 500th home run, one of the eight hit in Wrigley Field during those final two seasons, didn't land anywhere near the basket, which gives us
six.)
- Some quick math tells us that six of 512 indicates that, at the very most, just over one percent of Banks' career home runs could have possibly ended up in the basket.
So, obviously you can see why Morgan insisted on calling it Banks Boulevard, because the facts certainly bear it out.
and 
, I have gotten over it and I wish them well. I hope they waddle to home-plate many times, that was a Ron Cey ref., gawd I'm gettin old.
