Is Mad Dog retiring today?

[roger_that]

Chris Russo vowed publicly to retire if the D'Bags won the NL (vowed when they were down 3-2). Will he?

[metirish]

Looks a bit mischievous to me

[Fman99]

Why now, why not ten years ago?

[Frayed Knot]

Remember that it's only bad publicity if they spell your name wrong.





I didn't hear what led up to this pronouncement (not a satellite radio subscriber and so haven't heard him in many years) but in this case

I really didn't have to. Like many of his brethren in the sports yapping world, and even more so than most of them, Russo puts far too

much emphasis on home field/court/ice advantage. So while he probably believed that Philly had an edge because they were the better

team, he's also starting from the POV that any team losing a Game 7 on their home turf is a rarity.

He's wrong of course, particularly so in baseball. But, like I said, he's part of the time-honored position in his profession of citing home field

as the reason when the home folks win while ignoring it and placing the blame elsewhere if and when they lose.

[MFS62]

=Fman99 post_id=139904 time=1698237293 user_id=86]
Why now, why not ten years ago?

[kcmets]

I took 'Other.'



He'll say something like, "If you saw my wife's monthly Amex bill you'd

know there's no way I'm retiring any time soon."



If he addresses it at all. DVR set for High Heat today at 1 PM Eastern.

[roger_that]

We're all such cynics.



Does no one in the world think that Russo is an honest man?

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

Russo's agent likely reminded him that he has a contract…..

[roger_that]

So far all he's tweeted is "this hasn't gone as planned." No shit, Sherlock.

[roger_that]

On High Heat, he dismissed it as "a throw-away line," and asked "Will I retire? We'll see," cementing his reputation as a know-nothing douchebag blabbbermouth of the very top echelon.

[nymr83]

I haven't listened to him since he was on WFAN so whatever, I guess he hasn't changed at all

[metsmarathon]

the mlb network radio station is my go-to for background noise whenever i'm driving alone.



unless he's on. then i can't change the channel quick enough.

[Edgy MD]

I think the audience would do well by retiring from his shtick at their end.



I'm amazed at the slices of media we assault our brains with. That guy has his own Sirius channel? Really?

[kcmets]

I think it's funny how he's so many sports fans favorite piñata.



The man is a living sports talk legend. Do I routinely watch or listen

to him? No, he gets on my fucking nerves most of the time. But geez

his character and schtick has earned him tens of millions of dollars

flashing his brand and so long as advertisers are paying up he must

be doing something right.



And he's not 1/10th as stupid or clueless as many people claim.

[metsmarathon]

no, i think he's very smart. at least in terms of sports entertainment. i think it's hard to tell exactly how intelligent he is about baseball, mind you, because he espouses so much nonsense that it's hard to pick through it all. it's just that he's truly unlistenable.

[roger_that]

hard to tell exactly how intelligent he is about baseball, mind you, because he espouses so much nonsense that it's hard to pick through it all.

Not that hard. He pays a lot of attention, because that's his job, but while I haven't listened to him in years, since he was on FAN with Franscesa, who can make anyone seem smart and sophisticated by comparison, he spouts so much gibberish that he really can't be much more perceptive than he seems.



And he seems to be a stupid idiot.

[Edgy MD]

I'm not speaking of him specifically, but I don't think the logic of "He pays a lot of attention, because that's his job ..." really holds. The world is full of media personalities who don't really have a clue as to the subject they are supposedly covering.



It's also got no shortage of public officials who are ignorant as to the facts behind the policies they are making.

[roger_that]

By "pays attention," I mean merely that he watches a lot of sports, remembers the names of players, can recite many events from the past, and so on, because that's what he's paid to do. Certainly in some senses he's more "knowledgable" about sports than you or I, though not necessarily about baseball and certainly not about the Mets, but his brain is filled with all sorts of data about football, basketball, tennis, golf that I am very grateful not to have cluttering up my head.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I remember saying this about Mike Francesca many years ago. He knows a lot of facts, but that doesn't mean he's smart.

[Lefty Specialist]

I haven't listened to him in any format for 20 years. I've retired from HIM.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I haven't either. I abandoned WFAN in 2005 when my drive to work got longer. They were tolerable for a 20-minute drive, but anything more than that was maddening.

[Frayed Knot]

I'll give Russo this, he probably pays More attention to baseball than just about any sports-yakker with a national platform.

Now maybe that's not saying much as national sports talk now essentially consists of: 'We interrupt this football talk to bring you football talk'.

Many in that business are either indifferent to, or ignorant of, baseball while the rest openly despise the sport and the fact that they're forced to

acknowledge its existence on occasion. But Mad Dog genuinely likes baseball, enjoys talking about it, and is up to date on what's what and who's who.

It's likely the reason (or at least A reason) why he landed a slot on MLBN despite not being a baseball-only guy.



Does that make him 'smart' about it? Depends on how you define it I suppose.

I mentioned up the thread somewhere that he's big on home field as a factor and that could be expanded to say that anything one could call an 'intangible'

is going to rate highly with him. Not surprisingly he's not a fan of analytics [neither was his ex-partner as the two fo them tag-teamed on Michael Lewis

to savage MONEYBALL despite neither one having read it] and will get into heated arguments with 'stat-heads' on MLBN. Not the arguments I'd make but

I'd stop short of saying that makes him stupid and certainly not ill-informed.



Mostly over the years I've found him to be exasperatingly and often times comically stupid on just about any NON-sports topic to the point where I'd wonder

at times if he could actually tie his own

[roger_that]

"I'd wonder

at times if he could actually tie his own"



Well, he could at least complete his own posts.



I actually own a hardback book of his, 100 Dumbass Sports Arguments, or something close to that, in which he puts forth a large sample of his style of arguing. You can practically see the spittle flying off the page.



Pretty sure I picked it up for free somewhere. I'd be appalled if I paid more than a nickel for it.