I’m A Yankee Fan, But Will Flemming Wasn’t Wrong About Jazz

The Red Sox broadcaster watched Jazz swipe two bags with Boston essentially waving the white flag and lost his shit. He called it bush league, said Jazz was playing the game the wrong way and then went too far by talking about drilling Austin Wells and suggesting somebody should fight Jazz.

Was that smart? Hell no. Flemming made the mistake of saying the quiet part out loud. You’re the broadcaster, Will. You have a microphone. Thousands of people are listening. Maybe don’t provide the play-by-play for baseball retaliation. That’s amateur hour.

But here’s where everybody needs to calm the hell down: Flemming wasn’t wrong about the baseball. He was wrong about broadcasting what should have stayed unspoken.

There’s a difference. And somewhere along the way we’ve lost the ability to understand that difference. Everything now requires outrage. An apology. A statement. A clarification of the statement. Then an apology for the clarification.

Jesus Christ. Sometimes a guy gets pissed off and says something stupid. Flemming apologized afterward. Fine but he shouldn’t have.   

Maybe:

“I shouldn’t have said that on the air.” Done. Because what exactly are we pretending happened here?

The Yankees were beating Boston 7-1 in the eighth. The Red Sox weren’t even holding Jazz on. The game was cooked. Jazz took second. Then he took third.

Was it legal? Absolutely. Was Aaron Boone giving him the green light? Yes, but that’s just bad managing. Was it necessary? Give me a break. That’s where baseball etiquette comes in.

Not everything that’s legal needs to be done. Baseball has always had a language underneath the language.

Guys know. Dugouts know. Managers know. Fans know. You don’t need a committee meeting to figure it out. You need a look. A nod. And then you handle your business within the game.

That’s what Flemming apparently forgot. Nod and handle it. Every Red Sox player in that dugout should have been thinking exactly what Flemming was thinking. Every one of them. But the Red Sox didn’t do a thing and I find that weird. The rivalry is dead. 

Flemming had the microphone and decided to narrate the inner monologue. That’s the stupid part. The thought wasn’t shocking. Saying it publicly was.

And spare me the pearl-clutching afterward. We have become so terrified of offending somebody that grown adults apparently need emotional bubble wrap every time somebody says something harsh.

This is Yankees-Red Sox. What the hell are we doing? These teams aren’t supposed to exchange friendship bracelets. They’re supposed to dislike each other. They’re supposed to get pissed off. They’re supposed to remember things. They’re supposed to have some damn pride. That’s what made this rivalry great in the first place.

And let’s remember something else: Flemming is a Red Sox broadcaster. He’s passionate about his team. He watched his club getting embarrassed by its biggest rival and watched Jazz dancing around the bases while it happened.

He reacted. Poorly? Sure. Humanly? Absolutely. Hell, passion is why Bleeding Yankee Blue exists. I didn’t start writing this blog because I wanted to carefully workshop every sentence until nobody on planet Earth could possibly be offended.

I started it because I love the Yankees. Sometimes I get pissed. Sometimes fans get pissed. Sometimes broadcasters get pissed. That’s sports. We’ve sanitized enough of society already. We don’t need to sanitize Yankees-Red Sox too. And Yankee fans need to be capable of admitting when our guy looks like an ass.

I like Jazz. I love the energy. But stealing two bases up six runs in the eighth inning when the opponent isn’t even bothering to hold you?

Come on, Jazz. That’s a bitch move. And I don’t care if Boone gave him the green light. Boone was wrong too. Being a Yankee fan doesn’t require me to pretend everything a Yankee does is wonderful. Baseball deserves more respect than that.

There used to be an understanding in sports that you beat somebody, shake hands and move on. You didn’t need to humiliate them just because technically there wasn’t a rule preventing you from doing it.

And if somebody crossed that line? The other team remembered.  A nod. Message received. We’ll remember.

That my friends is baseball.

So yes, Will Flemming screwed up. He had a microphone in front of his face and forgot that some things in baseball aren’t supposed to be broadcast to the world.

Amateur move. But stop pretending the guy committed some unforgivable sin because he got pissed off during Yankees-Red Sox. And stop pretending Jazz didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

He did.

The Yankees won 16-1. They beat the hell out of Boston. That should have been enough. Sometimes winning is the message. You don’t need to underline it, circle it and draw a middle finger next to it.

Jazz should’ve stayed on the bag. And everybody else? Stop being so damn soft.  It’s baseball.

Act like you’ve been here before.