Setting Goals

The lead story on MLB.com this morning as I write this intro is “A Goal for All 30 Teams in September.”  The subtitle, apparently, is “1 goal for each team with 1 month to go.” 

The subtitle, which appears when you click on the link, redundantly repeats the title, unless someone used the subtitle to clarify the article was about 30 goals, not one goal shared by all 30 teams.

Will Leitch is the author, paid plenty of money (I hope) to write for a national audience. We should assume he is a more accomplished writer than I am.  I am paid nothing to write to an audience of about 0.00000025% of the nation.  Well, not precisely nothing.  I get some compensation. Like the opportunity to catch Will Leitch in an off-moment, writing an article mainly to fill pixels for voracious and not-all-that-discriminating baseball fans avoiding household chores. 

(To clarify: Will Leitch is the one writing to fill pixels. Not me. Never me. Never never never never me. Never.)

Leitch might not be responsible for redundancy in the title, since the headline writer might have been his editor. But he is responsible for this:

A.  His goal for the Toronto Blue Jays (currently 72-62, 4th in the AL East, 13 games behind the Rays, and 5 games out of the second wild card) is “Get into the AL Wild Card Game.”

B.  His goal for the Seattle Mariners (currently 74 – 62, tied for second in the AL West 8 games behind the Astros and a game ahead of the Jays for the second wild card) is “Just stay over .500.” 

I found that kind of irritating. The M’s would have to go 7 – 19 to fail to finish above .500. Come on, Will. At least try. 

Sure, the Jays’ run differential is  +120, while the M’s is -52. But Will Leitch lives in Georgia, where the climate differential might be worse than -52, and I live in Oregon, where it might be better than +120.  Should I disrespect Leitch for that, treat him like a Loser who can barely dream of finishing above .500 when he’s 12 games up with 26 to go?  

Of course. 

… Not!  Of course not!

I totally meant to write “Of course not.”  The sentence just kind of stopped all on its own. Bad sentence!

But it wouldn’t be kind of me just to rant about Leitch’s east-coast (well, ok, including Illinois where he grew up and St. Louis, for whose baseball fans he co-hosts a blog) myopic biases.  If my disagreement with him is really going to be a gift, as God intended disagreements to be, I should make something constructive out of this unfortunate episode.

So in today’s update I will offer a constructive contrast: goals as they should be for each EFL team, and goals as they might be if the author, in the midst of a careless mental glitch, insulted the team.   I’d call the careless goal the “Leitch Goal” but then I’d have to call the constructive goal the “Mock goal” which might throw the entire project into confusion. So let’s just call them the “Glitch Goal” and the “Model Goal.”  

(No, “glitch” does not rhyme with “Leitch.”  Or so I’m told. So naming it the Glitch Goal is not in any way a sly reference to Mr. Leitch. You are so suspicious. Seriously. )