Cal-cified

If you missed it, tonight's pregame was devoted to Baseball's top 10 Most Memorable Moments popularity contest. I wasn't particularly surprised by the choices-I thought the fans would pick the D-Backs 2001 championship since it was still lodged in their short-term memory-, but my friend Mike had a scathing email, that gave me a chuckle:

Sheesh, that was even lamer than I anticipated. Cal Ripken?!? Nolan Ryan?!? Kirk Gibson???
Where's Bobby Thomson? Where's Fisk? Heck, where's Canseco getting hit in the head by a fly ball or Bret Saberhagen throwing Clorox? (And how can you have something like this without Kevin McReynolds anyway?)
Unbelievable that Rose gets a huge ovation but people think Barry Bonds is a bad guy. Bonds is 10 times the man Charlie Hustler will ever be.
And how does it help baseball's image to have two guys who played gangsters, Andy Garcia and Ray Liotta, do the intros?
Nice moment: the fans chanting "Bar-ry" when McGwire was introduced.
BTW -- what song did Natalie Cole just sing? I thought they said she would do the National Anthem.

I did think more memorial moments were left out (Thomson, Maz in '60, Ruth's "Called Shot", Fisk's HR in '75, Mays catch in '54, Don Larsen's perfect World Series game, etc.). I especially like the goat plays like the Mookie Ball, Merkle's Boner, Snodgrass's Muff, and Mickey Owen's passed ball, but they are probably too negative for this campaign.

It was basically a popularity contest to sell videos, but at least baseball is trying to promote itself. And what better way to do so then with its history.

(I have some notes on the pregame that I put in my game 4 notes.)