Quote:
Originally posted by GarthB
At first, I thought, "Why dredge this up again, Peter?". But it became quickly obvious: For the same reason the National Inquirer will never let Elvis die or Bill Clinton go impotent.
The devise works so well, rather than be offended, Warren will probaly do it homage by using it to his own advantage on a piece down the road.
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Nah! I wouldn't give Peter or his wacky ideas that level of credibility!
Peter always starts his epics with a plausible yet false premise. In this case his flawed premise is that what people write on the Internet is somehow a true reflection of how they would actually perform in a game. If that were true, Freix would have called the plate in the last MLB All Star game!
I have a real life example of the fallacy Peter perpetrates with his assumption. A great but now deceased umpire friend of mine couldn't pass a written rules test to save his life. He became extremely nervous, and broke out in a cold sweat, any time someone put an exam paper in front of him. By Peter's reasoning he should have been equally nervous and poorly performed under pressure on the diamond. Needless to say he wasn't. In fact the reverse was true. He was unquestionably the best official we had at that time - ice cool in a crisis and able to rule correctly under the most intense pressure. He was also universally respected for his calm, almost effortless game control until the day he died in a mining accident.
Peter knows that I am angered and disgusted by officials who personally attack other officials while hiding behind the relative anonimity of the Internet. That is true whether or not they post under their own name, because most of us will never meet our fiercest Internet rivals in person. That should not be an excuse to abandon the ethic that you don't personally criticise a fellow official, especially in a public forum.
To draw the illogical conclusion that I would react in the same way on the diamond is just fantastic nonsense. The circumstances are entirely different. For one thing, when I am calling an actual game I almost never hear what is said outside the wire, regardless of who says it. I had developed an extraordinary level of elective deafness on the diamond long before I started calling NSW State League (AA-AAA Minors equivalent, at its best). If I hadn't then I certainly wouldn't have been selected for two Australian Championship series, or plated the championship final of the Commonwealth Cup (Australian Senior Provincial Championships).
Even if I
did hear such abuse, I can assure Peter that I wouldn't react
during the game. I've heard a darn sight more creative abuse from a lot closer quarters than that and never missed a beat! OTOH, I couldn't guarantee the offender's personal safety
after the game. We Aussies have a long tradition of allowing men to settle their personal differences in the time-honoured fashion.
Of course it wouldn't go that far, assuming Peter's entirely implausible example were ever to become reality. The very idea that Aussies, who pride themselves on their tradition of mateship, would sit idly by while two idiots with American accents standing out like a pair of bullock's nuts loudly and personally criticised
any Australian official is just far too preposterous to imagine.
Cheers