Who will win the World Series?
I’m not, by any means, a sports expert. I spend as close to 24 hours as I can every day thinking about/reading about/studying/watching baseball, but NO. I am NOT any kind of expert. I’m just a fan with a mild case of Nerditis and a couple of blogs. That no more makes me an expert than any other fan, or most other baseball writers. Joe Posnanski wrote a while ago about how silly it is that he has to pick NFL outcomes and scores every week. People think he’s got some kind of magical insight that average fans can’t have, an 8-ball of stats and scores that only sportswriters are able to see.
People make that assumption about me, too, though probably to a lesser extent. In one of my classes, we spend a while every week talking about current events, including sports stories. The teacher always - ALWAYS - calls on me, out of a class of around 50 kids, to detail the week’s sports stories. I’m a sports writer, she reasons, so I must know what’s up. And yeah, usually I do know what has happened in major sports; I’d be out of work in a hurry if I didn’t.
But please don’t come to me looking for future outcomes. Odds are good that I can’t predict with any greater accuracy over time than you, your mother, or her next-door neighbors who never watch TV. Reading extra Deadspin every day doesn’t make me better at knowing who’s going to win the World Series; I can’t counsel anyone on which team to bet on.
Buuuuuuut….I’m a polite girl. I would never say the things in the previous paragraph to someone’s face. People do ask me, in all sincerity, to share some special insights and “expert” predictions. I always politely deflect the question. “All I want is a 7-game series,” I tell them. “Philly winning tonight at Tampa was a good start.”
Bam. Question dodged. If I never make a cut-and-dried prediction, then by golly I can’t be wrong! Man, I think I should be a baseball “expert” on TV!!