Thursday, June 21, 2012

"Nothing. It all goes black."

Some of you may remember that, right after the Sopranos finale aired - spoiler alert: he dies - a story caught on around the Internets that, in an earlier episode, Tony had supposedly claimed that when you die, you see "Nothing. It all goes black."  It was a great twist  that added some clarity to a mildly ambiguous ending, with the single problem being that it was verifiably false.  It never happened.  It seems odd that some many people picked up the story and ran with it when simply rewatching the episode in question would have disproved it.  But they did.  And so goes the Internet.

That's sort of how I felt reading this piece from the usually quite solid Erik Malinowski tonight.  The thesis of the piece is that Todd Helton momentarily "forgot" how to play first base because he hadn't attempted to step on the bag on a play that would have prevented the game-winning run from scoring.  Except ... there's a video there.  And if you watch it, you see that nothing like that happened.  Helton has his foot on the bag, there's an errant throw, Helton appears to catch it with his foot on the bag (thereby successfully completing the play and ending the inning), but his foot slips off due to his momentum stretching for the ball, Helton immediately steps back on the bag, but the runner is called safe (wrongly, in my view).  

This is not the sort of sensationalized piece you see a lot on Yahoo! Sports or MSNBC where an innocuous quote is taken way out of context to create the appearance of controversy.  This is simply a case where I have no idea what Erik was watching.  It sure didn't seem to be the video he posted with the story.  

I don't know why I felt to compelled to reply in the piece, or here, and you're probably feeling pretty foolish for reading this far.  But I think there's a decent chance Erik watched the wrong video, or that he's broken into some of AJ's private stash. 

Update: Here's a better TV comparison

3 comments:

  1. Your passion intrigues me, WhynotstartYunieveryday.

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  2. Theodore Donald KerabatsosJune 21, 2012 at 2:12 AM

    I typed up a comment basically calling Erik an idiot for using the words "staggering forgetfulness" to describe that play. Helton's foot was off the bag. He was trying to slide it over to the base but because the throw was high and to his right, he couldn't get his foot over there in time. Pretty routine.

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