Deep in the heart of Take Forest, at the peak of Mt. Take, lies the source of all takes.
This morning the internet briefly kerfluffled over a (now-deleted) blog post, summarizing a Fox Sports Daybreak radio hit, bashing ESPN MLB announcer Jessica Mendoza. The cached version is here, but drink deeply:
Mike North: “I’ve got to tell you something folks. You know, I’ve been called every name in the book doing this job since the early 90s. Good names, bad names, and everything in between. I’ve been called everything from a pillar in the community to a guy who’s the best who did it in Chicago’s history to a racist and a sexist. I’m going to just tell you right now what everybody else doesn’t want to say, except maybe the regular fan who you see on social media: Jessica Mendoza is the worst baseball announcer who has ever announced the game of baseball. Now, if you want to call me a sexist, go ahead. But I’m an observer, and I’ve been observing and listening to baseball announcers for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And I’ll tell you right now I don’t care if you’re Cassidy Hubbarth, I love Cassidy, Christine Brennan, Michelle Beadle, these are all people I respect, Ann Meyers, Cheryl Miller. You want me to go on? Pam Oliver. Because apparently I have to tell everybody nowadays - because of the PC crowd - the females I like before I can criticize one. If Jessica Mendoza continues on I believe someday they’re going to have to replace her, unless the rating are okay, but I don’t care. What I do now is I shut the sound down to watch that game; she’s just not a good announcer. If she was a man, she’d be (fired like) Tony Kornheiser or Dennis Miller. OK? And that’s the God honest truth about it. Period. End of Story. I listened for an inning last night, and I had to shut it off.”
Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap. It is a shoddy, unargued take—it does not explain why Mendoza is bad beyond saying she is bad—but that is not the point. The point is firing off your take, sitting back, and letting chaos reign.
They did not have the stones to stand behind their take, deleting it after the slightest pushback, but that’s not why we’re here. My friends, I present to you Fox Sports Daybreak, an internet radio-only morning-drive show, and oh my god, just scroll down their front page: It is the greatest collection of takes ever gathered under one roof.
(Update, 4:00 p.m.: At some point this afternoon, Fox Sports Daybreak deleted a bunch of these blogs. No longer is anyone a “pig,” there are no more “tools,” “clowns,” or “thugs,” and LeBron James is no longer urged to slap Kyrie Irving. Fox Sports Daybreak does not have the courage of its takes’ conviction.)
Please note that calling the Blazers a YMCA team qualifies as the most lukewarm take on this page. This page is incredible.
We have only scratched the surface. Come deeper with me, into the take mines, from whence only the purest takes are found.
The takes, they do not stop.
The takes, there are too many of them!
Buried...under...the takes.
I am dead. Killed by the takes. Remember me fondly.
We should have known. We should have always known that Fox Sports Daybreak would be Take Ground Zero. Radio guys are already the hottest takers around, drive-time guys the most elite. Put them in a Fox Sports uniform, and you’ve got a veritable Murderer’s Row of takes. You can’t pitch around these takes; there’s no easy out in the lineup.
Fox Sports Daybreak has reached that rarified air, where the takes come so fiercely and unceasingly that it ceases to matter whether the take is right or wrong. We are beyond value judgments. There is only the take. Truly, we have ascended to Take Nirvana.