By Jake McCormick
Brett Favre will go down in history as one of the worst quarterbacks to every play professional football in the NFL.
What are you thinking after reading that statement? I can feeeeeeeeeeeeeeel your anger. It gives you focus. Makes you stronger.
I’d have to be a complete moron (Sarah Palin), an uneducated crazy sportswriter (Skip Bayless), or detest sports to actually believe that statement. Would it be worth it to actually respond to that with your initial emotional thoughts on the matter? No, because you’d come across as an equally dumb reactor to a situation instead someone of stepping back and understanding the origin and context of the claim.
That’s part of the reason that I feel bad for WFTV Florida reporter Mark Boyle for mentioning the Milwaukee Brewers as a potential candidate for relocation to Orlando. Brewers fans have understandably been irked by even mentioning the prospect of a move south for the Crew, and I was as mad as anyone when I first heard the claim. But my guess is that Boyle mentioned Milwaukee simply because inserting one the two more reasonable choices in Florida might anger potential viewers, whereas no Florida news station really cares what people 1,000 miles away thinks of them.
The Brewers finished ninth in attendance last year and currently reside in one of the best baseball towns in America. Their Miller Park lease will not expire until 2030, and the team has a brighter future under Mark Attanasio than it ever had under the Commish. Boyle probably didn’t care to do much research for an afterthought portion of the story on a Congressional candidate, and quite possibly knows very little about Major League Baseball. He wouldn’t be the first reporter to do so.
I worked with a photographer in college that refreshed CNN.com once every half hour to check for international news updates. He exceeded the $10 limit for Non-denominational Nick gifts at the end of one semester by buying his person an Iraq War photobook. Seriously, this kid was like the Nick Burns of international news. He’ll correct your pronunciation of Ayman al-Zawahiri, and then he’s gonna make fun of you!
After he came back from shooting a football game, he had problems describing what was going on in the photo. He knew less about sports and their terminology than I do about Depeche Mode. If this was the case for WFTV, that’s their bad for picking someone unfit for the job.
Since there’s a better chance of Mel Gibson becoming the U.S. ambassador to Israel than the Brewers packing up and leaving Milwaukee, there are other options that wouldn’t have spurred as sharp of a backlash that the station has been getting from the state of Wisconsin. The funny thing is that the two best choices reside in Heaven’s Waiting Room.
In 2009, the Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays finished 29th and 23rd, respectively, in attendance in 2009. Combined, they drew only 301,620 more people in 159 games than Milwaukee did in 81 games. Even though both teams have tasted playoff success in the 2000s, their stadiums are emptier than a Black Eyed Peas song. Florida is simply a state not conducive to a full MLB schedule because it’s way too hot, it’s filled in transplanted senior 
citizens, and both teams are less than 20 years old and lack the “old timer aura” you get when visiting St. Louis or even Kansas City.
Bringing another baseball team to Florida would be a complete waste of time and effort, especially since there have been talks of the Marlins relocating to Las Vegas or Portland. Think about it. If those two cities are better options than the sunny beaches and crime-riddled streets of Miami (I watch the First 48 Hours a lot, so I would know), surely that state can’t handle another team.
Sometimes stupidity and ignorance need to be called out in an appropriate fashion, and Boyle and WFTV deserve some sort of reader/viewer/Brewer backlash for failing to fact check a simple assertion. The reality is it probably doesn’t matter much to them either way, and Wisconsin can rest easy tonight knowing the Brewers will be striving for success along I-94 for a long, long, long, long time.