It’s true.  In the age of Twitter and social media, we’ll complain about anything.  A-ny-thing.  Even in the great and historical moments in life, society, and sport we’ll find something to nitpick about.  If Abraham Lincoln came back to life and led this country into a new era of togetherness and prosperity, we’d wonder why he was wearing that goofy hat.

Nowhere was this trait of modern culture more evident than last night’s World Series Game 7.

Ace Madison Bumgarner came on in relief for the Giants and pitched 5 scoreless innings to secure a 3-2 victory that won San Francisco their 3rd World Series title in 5 years.

Bumgarner’s 2014 World Series statline is one of the most extraordinary things we’ve seen in baseball’s modern era:

21 IP, 9 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 17 Ks, 2-0, 1 SV.

Bumgarner came on in relief in Game 7 of the World Series… on the road… on 2 days rest… in a 1 run game… and pitched a flawless 5 inning save.  He now has the lowest ERA in the history of the World Series.  As Tom Verducci said in the booth after the game, “We’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it again.”

And yet, some people found fault in the Fox announcers – Joe Buck, Tom Verducci, and Harold Reynolds – for heaping too much praise on Bumgarner.

It starts with NFL on Fox comedian (and Royals fan) Rob Riggle, who didn’t exactly toe the company line with this tweet.

I could understand the frustration as a Royals fan, you’re watching your championship hopes are gradually getting chipped away into hopeless nothingness by one of the great individual performances in the history of the sport.  You’ve got to be angry at somebody… but what are the announcers supposed to do?  Are they supposed to watch Bumgarner pitch the game of his life on 2 days rest in GAME 7 OF THE WORLD SERIES and say, “yea this is ok, but he’s no Mickey Lolich!”

Twitter was filled with this line of thought last night.  It’s sad that we live in a time when you can’t say nice things about someone without hearing that you want to “get a room” with them.

https://twitter.com/BethPiggott15/status/527662602789199873

https://twitter.com/carolynhamburg/status/527653834546757632

Do you know why the Fox announcers were bestowing all of that praise and adulation upon Bumgarner’s shoulders last night?  Because he deserved it.  All of it.  And more.  There aren’t words that have been invented yet in the English language to fully capture the otherworldly awesomeness of what he did in putting his team on his back to win a championship.

I get it, we all find things to complain about.  It’s easy to do.  We all do it.  (And yes, I realize that this is quite the dose of irony given that was originally why this website was called “Awful Announcing.”  However, AA founder Brian Powell did way more than just talk about bad announcers with news, information, interviews, and broadcast schedules that brought this site to prominence in the late 2000s.  Hopefully we’ve continued that legacy as we cover all of sports media today.)

But we also need to take a step back and realize when we actually have things worth raising a hand in protest about and when we need to just enjoy the moment as human beings.  If you weren’t a Royals fan and had a vested, die-hard interest in last night’s game you had to appreciate what Madison Bumgarner did in this year’s World Series because you may never see anything like it again.  I’d hate to miss out on cherishing and soaking in a historical moment like that because I was so mad that Joe Buck was too appreciative of the moment in commentary.  Perish the thought.

This is one of the unfortunate truths of the internet culture in which we currently reside and our extremely polarized world.  Be thoughtfully critical of something and you’re labeled a “hater.”  Give someone due praise and you automatically must want to “get a room” with them.  In other words, we’re not allowed to have normal, human emotions that are positive and/or negative without something being horribly wrong.  There’s a lot of middle ground between Buzzfeed and Gawker.  Let’s explore it together, America.

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