Would Frank Deford please shut the #>(& up?

Most of the time I'm fortunate enough to miss the Wednesday morning elitist diatribe in the name of that old-time sports religion, but my timing was off today. I happened to be listening when the bloviating of Frank Deford, the voice of wealth and privilege and self-satisfied liberalism, was beamed across Amerika from the NPR affiliate in Greenwich, Connecticut. I was too slow to change the station to the classical morning favorite on WOSU, so I perversely listened to the old fart from that bourgeois bastion of western civilization Sports Illustrated pontificate on the evils of baseball players' pants.

Is nothing sacred? Those disrespectful youngsters wear their knickers too long! And if they're not too long, they're too short, and if they're not too baggy, they're too tight! Don't these youngsters know that they should dress exactly as Mickey Mantle dressed in 1956? Why? Because Frank Deford had a peak experience in 1956 that defined for all time the Nature of the Game. According to whom? According to NPR Commentator and former senior editor at Sports Illustrated Frank Deford, who gets to use big words like contemplate and asinine, that's who.

While I have a counter-conniption in the driver's seat of my Ford Ranger, I realize that it's just another old coot paid to talk on the radio so that other old coots can slug down their morning coffee and say "Damn right, whipper-snappers got no respect," or alternatively in my case, "Who the #>(& do you think you are, Mr. Rich Connecticut Blowhard?" So the programming decision to keep airing the comments of the former senior editor every Wednesday accomplished its purpose of provoking a reaction in another sentimental old jock somewhere west of the Hudson River.

If I was really paying attention, I would listen only on the days when John Feinstein, who actually has something to say, talks on the radio. And I'm nostalgic myself for the days when Bob Edwards, himself now purged from the airwaves, had a weekly conversation with Ron Rapoport, a real reporter, of the Chicago Sun-Times, a real newspaper. Spare us the condescending commentary, it only snowballs into other old farts ranting in their trucks and blogs about the idiot who gets paid for ranting on the radio.