July 15, 2021, by Lindsay Wincherauk
Please stop it.
You are turning off the kids.
You think you are speaking to a large audience, and I’m sure you are. Still, many in the demographic you reach are turning into irrelevant dinosaurs, while at the same time, many in your audience are growing increasingly bored and choosing to get on with life. Stephen, were you trying to jump on the racist bandwagon? Shame on you.
Shohei Ohtani doesn’t deserve or likely care about your misguided bluster, not even for a second. You sound stupid, bigoted, ridiculous.
“But when you talk about an audience gravitating to the tube or to the ballpark to actually watch you, I don’t think it helps that the No. 1 face is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he’s saying, in this country.”
Seriously, fool.
Nobody but a racist would care what language an athlete speaks. Period.
Stephen, you even went as far as to say someone not speaking English is turning off kids—causing them to lose interest in professional sports.
Seriously, fool.
I’m in the dinosaur demographic. I used to be a massive consumer of sports. Like every sports fan, I love a spectacular play—an unbelievable goal, catch, throw, and on and on. And then, I didn’t.
This is where the Sports Media comes in: Your need to fill the airwaves with wall-to-wall- to-wall coverage turned me off, along with trying to comprehend how an athlete’s salary should make the game interesting to me. I’m happy the athletes get paid. I just don’t want
to hear about it. I’m sure most of the world doesn’t care, and quite frankly, is turned off by the amounts they make.
You want to know what turns people off of sports like football, hockey, baseball, soccer, tennis (1) and basketball—especially the kids?
Why would anyone want to participate in a sport when almost every great play imaginable has already been done?
The human body is only capable of so much, isn’t it?
The 100-meter sprint became boring until Usain Bolt defied human capabilities—when he left the stage—what’s the point of watching anymore?
Wall-to-wall coverage, often littered with the greatest plays of all time, turns people off. As for me, I don’t need to look anymore. Unless a player blows up during a spectacular play, why would I? Why would a kid? Why would that kid ever want to play a sport where his stunning play results in some dinosaur romanticizing about Babe Ruth or Gretzky or Michael Jordan or any other athlete who had their time in the sun, and now, some of you, sporting-talking-heads, can’t get over?
Most kids live in the now.
Please stop filling the airwaves with the best all-time plays.
Or place a time limit on them, and then erase them—allow the new generation the opportunity to be the greatest, most spectacular—idols of our time.
Only sports historians care about the old greats. The kids don’t. If you keep talking about the bleeping past—kids will stop playing the games you love, and create their own, only to have you bitch about the games they’ve created. Seriously.
If you want to give sports a chance with the younger generation: Let the past go! It’s Ohtani’s time in the sun. Shut up. Stop being a racist bully. Appreciate him while he’s on top. And then, let him go.
1. Tennis is a fabulous sport. But the challenge with men’s tennis, at least for me, is you follow a player; he makes it through round after round after round. Excitement grows. And then, he loses to Djokovic. Don’t get me wrong, Djokovic is a ridiculous talent, but because of his greatness, like the greatest plays of all time—tennis won’t be interesting again until his time in the sun is up.
Fire me a message on the TALK PAGE of my website: www.lindsaywincherauk.com if you have more suggestions on making our world a better place!