Take on Fatso

You'll hear every talk show, morning show, news show and big show
discuss a large egomaniac today and not for the reason's you'd
suspect. Mike Francesa, the host of WFAN's afternoon drive show for
the last two decades, went off on a diet-coke induced tirade yesterday
about some marginal baseball player taking two days off to be with his
wife and new baby. Of course, Fatso -as he's commonly known- had his
facts wrong about the total time Daniel Murphy would be taking off but
facts have never gotten in the way of a good rant for Francesa. He
argued that he was at work on the same day that his son was born and
was there the next day after his twins were born, even though they
were in the NICU, foundry recalling that decision with pride.
Nothing like making the entire NYC listening audience know you are a
pompous self-serving a-hole.
The entire argument pits the 1950's against the 2014 mentality when
father's would not be in the delivery room and a nurse would care for
the mother and newborn and it's all justified because that is the way
it was. This is from the same guy who doesn't believe in "da
twitta", the effect of Fantasy Football or portion control. It's
like he's stuck in a MadMen timewarp with his insistence than a father
offers nothing for a newborn or a woman who just went through
pregnancy.

But the real issue here shouldn't be whether a father should take a
few days off, it's why anybody would care about a baseball player
doing it. The season is endless, there are 162 games per year and
nobody will remember any of them, especially of you play for a team
expected to win 75 games. Daniel Murphy isn't fixing the giant hole
in Curtis Granderson's swing, Matt Harvey's elbow or Fred Wilpon's
IRA. He's a .280 hitting second baseman with no pop, he's far from a
gamechanger bit even if he was, guys take days 10 games off per year
for less of a reason than the birth of a child, most of the time
because they are hung-over or still wasted.