Always a lightning rod for controversy, political pundit Rush Limbaugh took his divisive opinions and directed them at the professional sports world on Tuesday.
The right-leaning (understatement of the year) shock-jock opened up a can of worms when questioning the discipline of everyone from Seattle Seahawk’ teammates Marshawn Lynch and Doug Baldwin to baseball players not running out a routine ground-balls.
Here’s some of the transcript from Limbaugh’s radio show on Tuesday.
…The kind of discipline I’m talking about, look at Marshawn Lynch crotch grabbing, that’s one thing. This other guy Doug Baldwin scores a touchdown and pretends to drop his pants, take a dump on the football.
In baseball, you have players that do not run out ground balls to first base. You got players routinely will hit a long fly ball and stand there at the plate watching, posing. It won’t go out, it’ll hit the wall, and instead of ending up at third base for a triple, they’re barely making it back to first base on what should have been an automatic double.
This came immediately after Limbaugh called Michael Bennett the best player on Seattle’s defense. So we can just assume that he doesn’t know a whole heck of a lot about the NFL in general.
As it is, Rush’s statements make us wonder about where he was going with this. Sure it shows a lack of discipline to impact your team on the field by committing dumb penalties—see Baldwin’s actions in the Super Bowl—or not run out a deep fly ball in baseball.
We aren’t too sure anyone would argue that point.
But Limbaugh’s next “hot take” leaves a lot to be desired.
If I didn’t run a ground ball to first base (in high school), I got yelled at, chided. I mean, this is not how we play the game. You get a ground ball, you never know, gonna throw it away, you dig and you get there as fast as you can.
Don’t sit there and preen and think that you’re ball is gonna be thrown out. Get to the professional level. And I wouldn’t think these guys would need to be coached. I don’t understand professional football players who behave in immature — well, I do understand, that’s the point, but why it’s not coached, why it’s put up with by the coaches.
The latest example of an individual attempting to correlate his high school days to the professional ranks. This had Al Bundy written all over it. More than that, the idea that any type of lack of discipline comes from coaching is absurd. Committing dumb penalties within the game, sure. With that said, are coaches supposed to act like parents to these professional players? Again, this is the case of someone far removed from the sports scene attempting to use a personal experience from decades ago as some type of correlation to what is happening in the professional ranks today.
Then again, ignorance seemed to be the theme of Limbaugh’s rant…
I understand, “Well, the players are getting all the money, and if the coach says, ‘Hey, Marshawn, stop the crotch grab.’ Marshawn, ‘Screw you, buddy. If one of the two of us is gone, who do you think it’s gonna be? It’s gonna be you.'” I’m just using him because he’s a recent example.
Raise your hand if you think Seattle’s front office would choose Marshawn Lynch over Pete Carroll. Yeah, we didn’t think so. That’s NOT how it works in the professional sports world today. Unfortunately, those individuals like Limbaugh attempt to make a point by utilizing a completely false pretext.
There are good points made here, but these are points that individuals closer to the game itself need to take on. Not a political pundit ranting to a specific demographic on the radio.
Unfortunately, that’s just a part of the media-driven climate that chooses yellow journalism in lieu of informing the people. Limbaugh has an audience, it would be nice for him to use that in a positive way.
Photo: National Public Radio