This just in. Thought you guys might be interested in this.
Serg

From:
Kelly McKeown

Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 10:49 AM
Subject: USA Softball Team on David Letterman; August 24, 2004


Oklahoma City, OK— As part of the continued media frenzy following the conclusion of the softball competition at the Athens Olympic Games that has included segments on NBC’s Today Show, ESPN’s SportsCenter and ABC’s World News Tonight, the gold medal winning USA Softball Women’s National Team will be presenting the “Top Ten” list on the Late Show with David Letterman tonight, August 24, 2004. The Late Show airs on CBS at 11:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Unfortunately, I stayed up to watch that. I'd rate that Top 10 a 1.
Whoever wrote those needs to find a different line of work. Made the team look bad!

I'm a big Dave Letterman fan, but I agree: it was an awful "Top 10" segment. The jokes were written poorly and being that the first one was not even remotely amusing, just a statement out of nowhere, it never had a chance to build up. (I don't know the player that "delivered" the #3 joke, but I thought she did it well, with a touch of acting.)

From http://www.cbs.com:

<b>Top Ten Signs You're Not Going To Win A Gold Medal In Olympic Softball</b>

10. Your Religion forbids you from hitting anything with a bat.
9. You could hit .400 and still not be hitting your weight.
8. Only three players show up for the final game because Oprah is on.
7. Because of travel agent,, the earliest you can get to Greece is November.
6. Your starting lineup includes six players from the Montreal Expos.
5. Every time there's a pop-up, outfielder yells, "Run for your lives."
4. Your starting shortstop--the frozen head of Ted Williams.
3. Won't go to third base because you're "just not that kind of girl."
2. Your pitcher leaves in the fifth inning to "beat the traffic."
1. You got nine players, one uniform.

What did you expect from Letterman? Haven't you ever seen his show?

I didn't see it, but in reading the top 10, I thought some of them were pretty funny, so long as you weren't in a mind set that this was supposed to "honor" Team USA.

Of course it wasn't supposed to honor them - it was supposed to poke fun at them, at the Olympics, at other nations Olympics athletes, at some of the "low budget" Olympic "teams," at the whole circus in Athens. There were even a few well-placed shots at MLB in there.

C'mon, lighten up!

BTW, of the "appearances" for Team USA listed in the first post of this thread, the only one that would remotely be interesting from a sport perspective would be on ESPN.

Otherwise, you'd just have either jokes (like Letterman) or empty-headed anchor-babes "interviewing" the team on something the anchor-babe knows absolutely nothing about.

And even on ESPN, I'd expect some truly asinine questions.

I stayed up to watch it to and commented to my DD that they wouldn't show Crystal Bustos on camera!! LOL But we spotted her in the back row.
I got what I expected from Letterman, show the cute players only, etc., but the jokes were a little more lame than usual.