Robservations: Sometimes there’s just ‘snow’ justice
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Oh, the weather outside is frightful,
and the sports staff’s getting spiteful.
‘Cause there’s no place for us to go,
thanks to snow, thanks to snow, thanks to snow.
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It’s funny. When I took my first baby steps toward becoming your friendly neighborhood sports writer, the one thing about working in this area of reporting that I liked the most was the predictability.
Here’s how I used to explain it to the “newsies.” In sports, you don’t have to go out looking for stories. They send you schedules at the beginning of the year, and you know where your copy is going to come from.
Then, of course, something happens to foul everything up. Like a sudden rainstorm on the day of a pivotal baseball game, or — in a more relevant vein — a two- to four-inch snowfall that calls off everything.
Thanks, Lisa Patton, Lelan Statom, Ron Howes and the rest of you weather-types out there. Thanks for throwing a big monkey wrench in every sports section in the country.
• At any rate, on to the more pressing issue of justice.
Ask Steve Mariucci, for example, how much justice there is in the world. I’ll bet his answer will be, “not much.”
Mariucci was fired from his position as the San Francisco 49ers’ head coach Wednesday, after losing to Tampa Bay 31-6 in the second round of the playoffs.
Never mind that he’s 57-39 since being hired in 1997 to coach a San Fran squad that wasn’t living up to the expectations of its ownership. Never mind that two weeks ago his squad pulled off the second-biggest comeback in NFL playoffs history when they pulled the rug out from under the New York Giants.
No, none of that means much, because of clashes with the Niners’ owner — a doctor named John York whose only proven football knowledge is his firm belief that if you marry the sister of a rich NFL owner, you’ll end up with the team when he gets in trouble with the law.
But now that you look back on it, Mariucci should have seen this injustice coming. After all, the man he replaced, George Seifert, won two Super Bowls before he was sent packing.
• Want one more example of a lack of justice? Look no further.
Alan Selig (I refuse to call him “Bud” anymore, because as a baseball fan, he’s not my buddy) is now a hero, after baseball owners unanimously approved his plan to make the All-star game meaningful again.
Under Selig’s plan, which still has to go before the players’ union, the winning league in the All-star game would get home-field advantage in the World Series, meaning the mid-summer clash of AL and NL stars would no longer be, to use Alan’s words, “a meaningless exhibition game.”
Hello? Wasn’t anyone else watching back this summer, when Selig himself made it a meaningless exhibition game, by letting it end in a tie? I’m telling you, making him out to be the game’s saviour now is a prime example of “no justice.”
Of course, I’m only talking about baseball because there are no games to go to tonight. So maybe around here we’re learning that there’s “snow justice” in the world.