Photo by Scott Ableman via Flickr

As part of their attempt to make this year’s edition of baseball’s World Series something more interesting than the four-game Yankee coronation it will be, ESPN has decided to break out the ole ‘Team of the Decade’ evergreen and take it for a hack-driven spin. At the wheel is Jayson Stark who, among other key points of over-hyped and downright false interest, insists that the winner of the 2009 MLB crown will help us fans to understand “what this World Series REALLY means” — that if the Phillies can figure out a way to beat those pin-stripped bastards then the Red Sox (full disclosure: my Red Sox) will officially be crowned the team of the oughts. In honor of Stark’s wanton use of self-contradiction (seriously, go back and read this thing; it’s the perfect argument for mandated high school rhetoric classes), and ESPN’s continuing habit of false-quali/quantification, we here at Unfit would like to offer you our own poorly formed look at Baseball History. We call it: The Reason Why the Washington Nationals are the Team of the 2000s.

It All Starts With Poutine

The Unfit sports department has informed us that baseball gurus rely heavily on statistical analysis to provide insight into the game. We feel that this attempt to scientifically understand what is, after all, nothing more than a game, is nothing short of ridiculous. Instead, we’d prefer to rely on something more generally digestible. And what is more generally digestible than food? By food, of course, we mean french fries, and when these tasty, greasy delicacies are covered in cheese curds and gravy, we’d argue that no other brand of food (traditional or Unfit-defined) can come close.

It is our further belief that any sports franchise born in the land of poutine (which is, for you unfamiliar heathens out there, what French Canadians like to call french fries covered in cheese curds and gravy) inherits the spirit that the stuff inspires in its people. Namely that of intestinal fortitude. And since the Nats franchise was born in the land of poutine, its staff (and that means everyone from the lowliest hot dog slinger to the lowliest general manager) must therefore have been infused with the power of poutine (if only by association). That, friends, is the sort of solid foundation one could only hope to build a successful team on.

Jocks Can’t Spell: A Most Solid Proof

Of course, a solid foundation does not a $630 million stadium make. To fully complete the building of a franchise destined to be named the Unfit Franchise of the Decade, an organization must be able to prove its true sports-worthiness. Unfit’s crack research team has determined that the best way to prove true sports-worthiness is to use the ancient measure of 1980s television high school social status, a key dictate of which states that no true jock shall have knowledge of the world. Translation? If your team can spell, you suck. Thankfully, the Washington Nationals can’t spell. And, as such, the franchise goes a long way toward proving its athletic prowess.

Okay, Fine: Scientific Proof

Unfit correspondent Josh Rosenblatt reminds us that baseball is a “game of statistical failure” — and he’s right: As has been pointed out many times, a hitter has only to do his job 3 times out of every ten to be considered a master of his sport. And, as we all know, for there to be a master, there must be WAY more sucky performers (you know, the exception that proves the rule thing). If those WAY more sucky performers are the rule, then are they not what could be considered the personification of the purest form of baseball? So what if a team consisted of nothing but sucky perfomers or, as in the Nats’ case, had a collective performance that was so sucky, it nearly surpassed the suck of every sucky suckitude ever sucked in the whole wide world of suckball? That, friends, would mean that the team had achieved something monumental. To adapt Hindu mythology (via Robert Oppenheimer): They are become baseball perfected.

How’s that for statistical analysis?

The Greatest Gift: Returning the Sport to the Masses

As is evidenced by the booze-swilling, beer-gutted likes of Babe Ruth, baseball was always a reachable sport; something little Joe Sixpack could see his own booze-swilling, beer-gutted self participating in at an exceptional level. At least until Jose Canseco began all a-blubberin about how the sport was infested with drug-enhanced supermen. Now, thanks to all the hormones and abnormally large biceps, little Joe Sixpack is, when he wants to think semi-realistically, reduced to hoping he can one day spark a political tempest. Unless, of course, he’s a fan of the Washington Nationals: In Natstown, anyone can (and probably would) be better than the product on the field.

Which is to say that the Nationals are singlehandedly returning baseball to the masses. A success that neither of the over-rated teams playing in this year’s World Series can lay claim to.

In December of 2003, the New York Times reported on what would be a controversial advance for the 2004 Major League Baseball season. “Major League Baseball officials tried to turn [umpires] into scientists using the Umpire Information System, a technology made by a Deer Park, N.Y., company called QuesTec,” wrote Hugo Lindgren. And though the QuesTec devices would never be used to call balls and strikes, baseball executives would use them “to measure the overall reliability of its human umpires” — effectively creating a technological check on an umpire’s strike zone. The most human component of the game — a sometimes arbitrary enforcement of a key, otherwise-neutral factor was, after more than a century, facing the prospect of becoming standardized. It was an early manifestation of what will almost assuredly be a key sporting debate over the next few decades: If the technology exists to really, truly make the calls that can turn a team or player into or away from glory a neutral factor, why not replace those eminently fallible umpires, referees, and line judges with as many computer-based devices as possible?

More recently, the drama caused at the U.S. Open by Serena Williams would seem to argue for some kind of breakthrough in tennis-umpiring technology; if the line judge that so pissed off Williams had been an invisible hard drive, one could argue that the confrontation that handed the match to her opponent would have never taken place. And as perfectly calibrated and emotionless as such a machine might be, it would also — thanks to all of that — erase what so many of us like watching sports for: the unpredictable outcomes. Obviously, computerized officiating would likely have very little effect on, say, something like the BYU over Oklahoma upset that sent shockwaves through the college football world on the first weekend of the 2009 season. Nor is it likely that iRef would have stopped the Golden State Warriors from beating the Dallas Mavericks in the 2007 NBA playoffs. But it would iron out a few other kinks, without which sports fans would lead less rich lives.

Game three of the 1975 World Series: Carlton Fisk, Fred Lynn, and the Red Sox against Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, and their Big Red Machine. Before Fisk’s iconic home run wave, he was involved in another game-winning play — only there, he wasn’t on the victorious side. The Wikipedia run-down goes like this: “In the 10th inning, Cincinnati Reds hitter Ed Armbrister laid down a sacrifice bunt, and then collided with…catcher…Fisk who was trying to field the ball. Fisk committed a throwing error on the play after colliding with Armbrister, which led to the Reds’ winning run. [Umpire] Barnett declined to make an interference call on Armbrister, despite Boston’s pleas. Barnett’s failure to call an interference was criticized by some as wrong-headed and indefensible.” And, in this Red Sox fans’ eyes, they were — and it most certainly impacted the course of the series. But (and this is, admittedly, easy for someone who’s only ever seen this series on tape to say), it is part of the game.

Besides, not only does this stuff eventually even out (thanks, Joe West), it adds an element of unpredictability to the event. If the Sox had won in ‘75, it would have been a surprise: The Reds had won 108 ballgames, featured an imposing line-up, and were squaring-off against a Sox team that was short on quality pitching and, for the series, a key hitter in the recently injured Jim Rice. But it wouldn’t have been a totally unpredictable happening. On the other hand, no one — no one — could have figured on Armbrister, Fisk, and Barnett.

Let’s face it: Most of us watch sports for the drama — the storyline. And though we’re sometimes satisfied with the unchecked slaughter of a blow-out, if we’re honest with ourselves, most sports fans would prefer to be perched on the edge of their seats, ringing our sweaty palms about the smallest of margins. (There’s a reason we call the close ones great games.) When those impartial judges add to our anxiety — or worse, single-handedly bury our team — we hate it. We call for blood. And we are rewarded with the rush of adrenaline that we were after when we turned on the television. A balls-and-strikes verification system might ensure fairness, but it also makes things that much more boring.