Is Fox Kidding?

W.F. Slinger...big fan of Fox's broadcast team.

Another game, another night filled with laughs. Seriously, Fox should scrap all their sitcoms and simply use the brainless bantering of Tim McCarver, Joe Buck and now Ozzie Guillen to draw viewers looking for a comedy fix.

First there's Guillen during the pregame show before the start of Game 5 of the World Series. Usually I only understand about half of what he's saying, but I did manage to hear the part where he answered a ludicrous question posed by host Chris Rose of whether Derek Jeter is the greatest Yankee of all-time.

I literally LOL 'ed when I heard that one, but Guillen actually took the bait and responded by saying yes. In fact, he threw in that Jeter is even better than Babe Ruth or anyone else who has ever worn the Pinstripes (Erik Karros nearly followed suit, but at least his answer was based on "how Jeter carries himself as a Yankee" even though I'm pretty sure I've heard a few times that Ruth saved baseball).

Hmm. I think he's refering to the guy who hit 714 home runs and re-wrote all the record books. If not, maybe he means the guy who was one of the great pitchers of his era and had a 3-0 record and a 0.74 ERA in the World Series. Oh wait, they're the same player?!

Nobody is better than Ruth and certainly not Jeter, whose career stats (while playing during the greatest hitting era ever) are arguably not even as good as retired Yankee teammate Bernie Williams.

Just for fun, let's look at the stats:

• Jeter: .317/.388/.459 with 224 home runs.
• Ruth: .342/.474/.690 with 714 home runs.

Sorry, Ozzie. I love Jeter too, but all the flip-plays in the world don't make up for that meaty 300-point gap in OPS...

Speaking of OPS, how about Joe Buck chiming in late in the game and talking about it as a "new stat that's in vogue now in baseball." I perked up to listen because I was stunned he even knew what OPS was. I also couldn't wait to hear what he said next.

Buck was talking about Chase Utley and how if you measure him by OPS, he's only behind the legendary Rogers Hornsby all-time for second basemen. So much for "new." The guy basically was born before the invention of the automobile and if he was related to the current Phillies second baseman, he would be his great-great grandfather.

Granted, there are a lot of newfangled statistics that are hard for old-timers to keep up with. But OPS is the simple addition of two longtime stats. It's really not that hard to comprehend...

And then there's McCarver, a.k.a. McLost. He had plenty of gems as usual, but I'll focus on his Cliff Lee gushing. Lee is a great pitcher and has been for two years now, but according to McLost, he's a "different" pitcher with the Phillies.

So I guess that means Lee retooled after going 22-3 with a 2.54 in the American League last season. He wasn't happy with winning the Cy Young Award so he scrapped everything and went back to the drawing board.

Later on, McLost praised Lee for among other things, throwing his fastball both inside and outside. As a fellow ripper on this blog remarked, "It's too bad no one told Koufax that. He would've been tough to hit."