Birds singing, children playing, and Tim McCarver's abrasively monotone voice...Ah, the sounds of a summer Saturday afternoon

Situation: White Sox-Red Sox, bottom of the 5th. Podsednik slaps a line drive off the glove of Cora at short for a leadoff single, Iguchi to the plate. Podsednik steals second. Later in the at bat, Beckett hangs a breaking ball inside to Iguchi, who purposefully jams himself to send a weak line drive toward second. Loretta throws out Iguchi, Podsednik to third, Thome to the plate. Beckett throws a wild pitch, Podsednik scores, bases empty. Next pitch, Thome homers to center. One out, two runs in.

Predictably, after the Iguchi at bat, McCarver and Joe Buck give the Unselfishly Moving the Runner speech. McCarver even adds:

"I believe, [very sage-like] the time will come soon that a groundball to the right side to advance a man to third will count as a sacrifice."

1) Wow, great. Who cares. A statistical distinction that will affect, like, two percent of all at bats. Not even.
2) The comment completely escapes the significant question. That is, why should Iguchi even worry about advancing the runner there? Further, why should any hitter aim to do that?

Say Iguchi gives no regard to the guy at second. Instead of jamming himself to move the runner, Iguchi smokes that juicy hanger as far and hard as God's good graces allow him. Perhaps Iguchi's hand-eye coordination lets him down, and he pops it up. Or maybe he crushes the ball but right to the left fielder.

But by unnaturally aiming toward the right side, Iguchi could just as easily have popped it up or fouled it off or...whatever. The "unselfish" thing is not nearly fool-proof, nor is it even unselfish. Why is it unselfish? Because he gives the next guy in the order a marginally better chance to drive in the run rather than hogging that RBI for himself, while--oh that's right I almost forgot--giving his team an out?

The intentional out is just another one of baseball's ridiculous sacred cows. It was probably brilliant strategy in the dead-ball era and can still appear brilliant in isolated cases. But when one considers the alternative scenarios--and their respective probabilities--the base-for-out tradeoff proves more to be death by conservatism.

Oh, by the way...here's how McCarver assessed the sequence after Thome finished rounding the bases (but not before making a hokey Ortiz-Thome/Ali-Frazier analogy):

"It's rare that you see a team score according to both of their strengths like that in the same inning...Both manufacturing the run and using the long ball."

Unsubstantiated drivel? Cliche on top of cliche on top of cliche? It's just another day at the office for Tim McCarver.