When we started this blog, we knew we had to refrain from any explicit language, and keep some relative integrity while still toeing the line and having fun with sports for us to be taken seriously at all. Now, we may be stepping out with Douche of the Week, but we are The Stain, and MTV can use the word, so why not us. Plus, as we have made clear, apparently journalistic integrity is the equivalent of a quality start these days….around average will do. All that being said, we have decided to institute a new weekly column where one of us calls out somebody in sports that simply made us shake our head or laugh at them. This won’t be where you find a Sandusky or Josh Lueke article, those will stand on their own, but more a light hearted douche.

The inagural recipient(s) are the A’s TV announcers. Now, I can’t say for sure if it was infamous catcher Ray Fosse or partner Glen Kuiper, but one said one of the most heartlessly comedic comments I have heard in a long time. Tommy Milone was the pitcher, who despite my personal bias cannot be considered a hard thrower, threw a fastball that probably only hit about 87 mph. Can’t remember the batter, but irrelevant in this story as the pitch was fouled off, and that is when the real story begins. The swing just redirects the ball enough to make catcher Kurt Suzuki to miss it, taking the redirect directly into the….how do I say this delicately…nut sack. (You are reading The Stain, we don’t say things delicately, back off) Suzuki immediate falls to the ground in the fetal position and when watching the replay, even the announcers voices get high. Suzuki gets up after a minute or two and finishes the inning, which is just another two pitches. Now, you know the one thing he wants to do is walk into the tunnel and lay down and pray for the nausea to go away, but he got to bat second in the next half inning. Now, despite all this, he gets a fastball out over the plate and puts a drive on it. The ball carries in pitcher friendly SafeCo Field, but is run down at the warning track…then the Douche of the Week winning comment comes from the booth. “Unfortunately, just an upper body swing on that one. He didn’t get much of his lower body into the swing and that cost him a home run.” Really?!?! I get you are homer announcers, but you are gonna complain about a guy who less than five minutes earlier took a fastball to the junk didn’t get enough lower body into a swing? Any other, and I mean any other, comment would have done there. “He just didn’t quite square that one up.” or “Not quite long enough on that one.” or even “Drives the ball hard, just didn’t have enough there.” (Apply your own gutter scenario to those comments now) But don’t complain that a guy who just took a ball to the balls didn’t get enough lower body into the swing. For that A’s announcers, you are the Douche(s) of the Week.

Bonus Douche: This will certainly be a repetitive feature here, and that would be Don and Jerry on NESN calling the Red Sox games. While they are horrible announcers (not in the White Sox variety, but just in baseball knowledge brought to the game) they are must watch TV. In the third inning of today’s Sox-Rays game, they spent and entire half inning discussing the bird watching club in attendance, wondering what they do at night, bringing up bats, and wondering if bats were considered birds. Meanwhile, there is a baseball game going on in front of them, and they describe none of it…meanwhile Don’s 6ish year old daughter is on her iPhone, tweeting that even she knows bats aren’t birds and that her father is a moron. Bravo NESN!