Monday, August 16, 2010

Final Comments On Dibble


Since I was out of town for Rob Dibble's infamous comments about the women talking behind home plate, I thought I would join the masses and add a few comments of my own, considering there will be no Bryce Harper news until 11:59:59:59 pm this evening.

I am one of those who enjoys Rob Dibble on the broadcasts. Yes, he's a homer. Yes, he's abrasive. Yes, he can be offensive. But I like those things about him. He brings a hometown voice to the broadcasts, despite the fact that he has no ties to the organization, and he certainly can't be any worse than Ray Knight.

That said, Dibble's comments were out of line. He absolutely wouldn't have made the same comments about two men behind home plate at the game. He would automatically assume that the men were talking about baseball. That automatically makes his comments sexist. There are many, many women who watch, write, photograph, and care passionately about the Nats and baseball (see: Cheryl Nichols at Nats News Network and Jenn and Rachel over at Nationals Fangirls just to name a select few).

One must remember while watching Dibble, though, that this is the exact reason that MASN/the Nats give him a pay check. He has the ability to get people talking about the Nats, even if it's not about the on-field product. Let's be honest, the only time the Nats get 5 seconds on a national network is when Strasburg is involved, although Harper may make that 10 seconds soon enough.

While Rob Dibble's comments were out of line and his apologies were less than stellar, I'm not convinced that he truly thinks that women don't care about baseball, or that all they care about is shoes/shopping. His comments were an inappropriate result of an off-handed comment during a boring part of a game with boring/irrelevant teams going head to head.

Perhaps some people find themselves calling for Dibble's head because they don't like his style on the air and this was an excuse to get him out for good. Maybe people were truly this outraged to be talking about the incident days later. One thing is for sure, Dibble apologized and it's time to move on.

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