The East Coast Bias- Sports

Out here in the glorious paradise we call The West Coast you sometimes hear people refer to The East Cost Bias. More often than not you'll hear this talk during the college football season in reference to the rankings of the teams. The complaint is that the East Coast sportswriters pay little to no attention to the teams playing out west and as a consequence do not factor them into the equation of who the best teams are.

During the past six or seven years we have seen it fade somewhat. In part this has been in conjunction with the dominance of the USC football program. Some of it also has to do with the the influence of the modern media age and the prevalence of satellite/cable television and channels such as ESPN.

Yet there are those provincial folks who haven't figured out that there is a big and often more exciting world to be a part of. The grouchy old bear constructed one of the silliest posts I have ever come across in which he pushed a flawed argument about the supremacy of sports calls.

I have written about the joys of listening to Vin Scully. In my post Walking With the Dead I even spoke a bit about how Scully ties into some special memories for me. But regardless of that conflict of interest I still find the Cub's assertions about a hockey call to be laughable.

Scully is both elegant and eloquent. He is a master at using just a few words to paint a beautiful picture. And within the last 20 years or so few moments can be matched up against his call of Kirk Gibson's homerun in the 1988 World Series. The text of the call doesn't do it justice, but here it is anyway:

"All year long they looked to him (Kirk Gibson) to light the fire and all year long he answered the demands. High fly ball into right field. She is gone! [pause] In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

Just beautiful