Life is like an analogy...

So I'm watching Monday Night Baseball on ESPN which normally I'd watch anyway while I write because A) it's inspiring when writing about baseball and B) it's nice white noise in general. (Don't believe me? Give it a try and see....)

But today, there's a C) it's the Cubs versus the Astros at Wrigley Field and since my collection is set in Chicago, it's imperative that I watch any Cubbies' game I can see (and on the West Coast, we don't get many opportunities).

Unfortunately, something has always bothered me about the ESPN broadcasts regardless of who's playing. I enjoy looking at players' stats and seeing situational stats — i.e. Raul Ibañez is 2 for 8 this year for grand slams in bases loaded situations. That's an important stat to know when Ibañez comes to the plate with the sacks are drunk because it tells us the probability is that Raul hits a grand salami — which will instantly change the game.

So what is it that ESPN does that bothers me? Somehow someone has dictated that the national baseball broadcasts show every single hitter's situational stats for every single count. That's not just obsessively weird, it's absolutely frightening. Who the hell is forced to calculate all those figures late into the night? Because you've got every single hitter on every single team (since every team plays at least one game on ESPN) and those stats change with every single at-bat. So if ESPN has Albert Pujols' batting stats in May, when the Cardinals play on ESPN again in July, some lowly unpaid intern has to recalculate all those statistics.

An example:
Cubs player Jim Edmonds is up to bat.
If the count is 1 ball and 0 strikes (1-0), Jim Edmonds is hitting .226 with 7 HR and 23 RBI
With a 1-1 count: Edmonds hits .240, 7 HR, 20 RBI
2-1: .231, 4 HR, 13 RBI
3-1: .087, 1 HR, 4 RBI
3-2: .132, 1 HR, 5 RBI

And then the 3-2 average goes up because Edmonds hits a double.

But, except for the Cubs' manager and the Cubs' catcher, no one in the entire world needs to know those stats. Not even Jim Edmonds because all he can do is take pitches and hope they're outside the strike zone so he doesn't rack up strikes which would lower his average for the different counts (and, obviously, eventually make him strike out). Edmonds doesn't want to try to hit every single pitch because the probability will always be against him regardless of the stats he posts (remember: in baseball, you're considered great if you can hit a ball three times out of ten).

So out of the entire 6 billion people on earth and the millions of people watching this broadcast, two people and the ESPN intern who adds up the stats, have a need to know this information.

I feel bad for that intern because what a freaking PITA (my new acronym for Pain In The Ass).