Maybe Imus Shouldn't Try to Watch Baseball

After making the initial mistake of asking Imus how he was doing (“I have cancer, Tim. I’m not doing well at all”), Tim McCarver, the lead baseball analyst for Fox Sports, disclosed another mistake he had made more than 40 years ago.

While listening to Imus’s interview with Jerry Weintraub yesterday, McCarver, a former star baseball player, was reminded of his own Elvis Presley encounter back in 1969.

“He invited me and my ex-wife to his floor at the Hilton Hotel, and I turned him down,” McCarver said, sounding almost embarrassed. “It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done!”

Agreeing that, yes, it was, Imus observed it was no wonder McCarver and that wife split up. “You wouldn’t go meet Elvis!” he exclaimed.

While Imus finds baseball entertaining, he is hesitant to watch with regularity because he doesn’t understand all the rules, and the games, which sometimes go on for more than four hours, are just too long to capture his fleeting attention span.

“You’re an American citizen,” McCarver protested. “You’ve got to love baseball!”

There are some aspects of the sport that Imus needed clarified, and McCarver was just the guy to do it. For starters, the new rule that batters cannot step out of the batter box is, in McCarver’s opinion, a “cosmetic rule” that was thought up to shave a couple of minutes off each game.

Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter was singled out in a Yankees-Red Sox game this week for doing just that, which McCarver said was a good way to get the attention of all of baseball. “I think that was an overreaction to that particular problem, if people deem that a problem,” he added.

Imus also does not understand why batters try to take pitchers to a 3-and-2 count. “From a hitters standpoint, that’s what you’re supposed to do,” McCarver said gently.

These childlike explanations led Imus to conclude, “I might be too dumb to watch baseball. I should be a hockey fan.”

Fox’s baseball coverage begins tomorrow at 3:10ET, when the Yankees take on the Tampa Bay Rays in Florida, with McCarver and his partner Joe Buck calling the game.

“I’m cranky, so I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t mean it,” Imus began. “I love you and Buck.”

-Julie Kanfer