RIP--Andy Rooney

[JimH5]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57319150/andy-rooney-dead-at-92/?tag=cbsContentWrap;cbsContent

 

I really enjoyed watching and reading him. I would have liked to have met him, but that would have made him even crankier, which would have been great.

 

He lived a good long life, and carried himself with honor.

[hawing]

I'll bet he'd be cranky if he knew that I learned of his passing via the Internet.

[PrinceEatMeat]

RIP Andy

[Funketown]

Ali G made him very cranky (I think this is SFW, but maybe NSFW).

 

[dannyjnoonan]

I'm sorry to hear of his passing, but Andy Rooney wasn't a very good guy. At least his public persona was not that of a good guy over the past 20 years or so. I actually think it was his 2007 column about baseball that really turned me off. I just tried to google it and couldn't find it, which makes me think it's been taken down from his site. But I happened to have saved it, so here's the text of the original column [with my own comments in brackets]. This one goes beyond bitter and senile to me. It's racist. It's elitist. It's poorly written. It's full of lies. It's just so so negative. Here it is:

 

Baseball has never been my game. I never liked it as a kid, probably because I could never throw a ball very well. My friends said I threw like a girl and that's enough to put any young boy off a game. As I've probably told you — after over 4,000 columns it's sometimes hard to remember what I've said before — my father took me to a Yankee game when I was about 10 years old and Joe DiMaggio struck out three times.

 

[Andy Rooney was born in January of 1919. Joe D came up in 1936. So either "about 10 years old" means 17-and-a-half at the youngest, or he's lying about seeing Dimaggio play when he was a kid. Also, Dimaggio struck out 369 times in 1,736 career games. That's about once every five games. I'm not saying he never struck out three times in one game, but it probably didn't happen more than once or twice. He also hit 361 home runs, so the odds of Andy Rooney seeing Joe Dimmaggio strike out three times in one game are roughly the same as the odds that he saw him clout three dingers in one game.]

 

My disinterest in baseball as a kid has lasted all my life. I'm still not interested in the game. I don't watch it on television or follow it in the newspaper. I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but today's baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me. They're apparently very good but they haven't caught my interest.

 

[He actually wrote that in something that was going to be published]

 

I also think baseball needs some rules changes, too. For example, the player who starts the game as pitcher should have to play all nine innings without a substitution. A pitcher hardly ever plays more than a few innings and then the manager replaces him with someone who isn't as good.

 

[i just don't get why anybody would read a column he wrote about anything and take it seriously. If he doesn't understand baseball, why is he writing about baseball? Baseball hasn't been like that in 100 years. This is like saying a running back should have to play every down. And obviously, relief pitchers aren't always worse than starters. They're just different.]

 

I think baseball managers dominate the games more than the players do and more than coaches do in other sports.

 

There are 30 major league baseball teams, but sometimes it seems as though the New York Yankees are the only team that ever wins the World Series. There have been 102 World Series since 1903. The Yankees have been in 39 of those and they've won 26. Five teams have never won a World Series. What in the world keeps baseball fans in those cities coming to games?

 

[This was in 2007, so lets list those five teams: Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, Houston Astros, Colorado Rockies and the Seatle Mariners... and the Washington Nationals, Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. That's 8 teams. Even more than five teams have never won the world series. Maybe Andy is on to something here. I wonder if any football teams had never won a Superbowl as of 2007? Lets see, there's the Vikings, the Falcons, the Lions, the Bills, and the Seahawks. That's five. But there's also the Chargers, the Eagles, the Browns, the Bengals, the Saints, the Cardinals, the Panthers, the Jaguars, the Titans and the Texans. That's 15. There is obviously more parity in baseball than in football (or basketball) by any conceivable measurement. It's not so much that Andy gets this wrong. Lots of people get this wrong. It's that he did ZERO research to come to his conclusion. But he gets to say whatever he wants on TV and in print once a week for a huge sum of money.]

 

The figures they keep giving us on broadcasts of baseball games are batting statistics, the amount being paid the players, the number of fans in the stands. There are other statistics I'd like to hear more often. When a player comes up to bat, they can tell me what his batting average is but I'd also like to know how many times he's struck out. Tell me how many different teams he's played with. Which player on either team has made the most errors? What's the average IQ of a baseball team compared with the IQ of a professional football team?

 

[First of all, "how many times a player strikes out" is a "batting statistic" and broadcasters tell us this all the time. Second of all, I'm sure the average IQ of a baseball team is much higher than the average IQ of crusty old 60 Minutes "journalists."]

 

It seems like a major mystery that baseball has never caught on in other countries the way it has here.

 

[baseball is the most popular sport in The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Japan, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, South Korea, and Taiwan. The USA had just gotten stomped in the World Baseball Classic when this article was written.]

 

There are baseball leagues in several countries but their citizens' interest is mostly in soccer

(football as they call it).

 

[Wait, they call it "football"? How's Japan's "football" team?]

 

Cricket is popular in some countries, but it makes hopscotch seem exciting.

 

It's easier to understand why our football game isn't played in other countries. Football is complicated. It takes a lot of practice and it's expensive. All players need for a soccer game is a ball and a pair of shorts and shoes. It's harder for a bunch of kids to get together Saturday morning and go to a vacant lot to play football than to play either soccer or baseball.

 

[i know you guys aren't going to believe this, but sometimes my friends and I get together and play football. We've been doing it for years. Lest you think I am some snobby rich person, I swear that all it takes is a ball and a pair of shorts and shoes. And sometimes a coat and mittens in these parts.]

 

Some of the best times of my life were playing football, and some of the best friends I made were fellow football players in high school and college. You're more dependent on teammates in football than in baseball and a bonding takes place.

 

[How can he possibly know this? He stated that he's never played baseball and that he throws like a girl.]

 

In a football game, you're dependent on the players on either side of you. In a baseball game, you're pretty much on your own.

 

[Well, unless you get a base hit and don't want to be left stranded on the base. Or you throw to first to get a player out and you want the first baseman to catch the ball.]

 

Basketball is a better team sport to me than baseball, but size means too much in basketball. I never got taller than 5-foot-9 and didn't make the basketball team in school. I ended up as the backstroker on the swimming team. I was a good swimmer but hated doing laps for practice. The water was always cold and after half an hour in the chlorinated pool my eyes were red and my skin wrinkled. It took the fun out of swimming.

 

[i'm not quite sure what he's talking about here. He started out talking about team unity and now he's talking about chlorinated eyes. It's almost as if Mr. Rooney is crazy.]

 

Considering the fact that who wins or loses any game makes no difference whatsoever in our lives, it's interesting how important a game can seem to us sometimes. The greatest sports loss of my life was a high school football game. We were undefeated and the game was the last of the season. It ended in a scoreless tie and we were crushed by what seemed like the worst defeat of our lives.

 

[This has nothing to do with his theme. It's just some nonsense.]

[patrickgpe]

found this, 5 memorable rooney rants, RIP Andy

 

http://www.hollywoodrepor...andy-rooney-rants-240884