People Who DVR Sports Are Just The Worst Kind Of People

The Wall Street Journal has the tale of one writer who refuses to learn anything about his Giants' playoff games until he can get home and watch his recordings. I hate this man. Won't you hate him too?

Let's set aside the improbability of not being able to watch or listen to a baseball game while you're at work. (Really? You can't find a stream online, or just pop in some headphones and listen to the radio broadcast? I've had real office jobs before. It's not that hard.)

But WSJ writer Amir Efrati insists on not knowing a thing about how the game's going, so he can watch it in the evening and be completely surprised. Just wait until you read how miserable this makes his life and the lives of those around him.

Step One: Email friends to remind them not to send updates or reactions.

Step Two: Approach every known Giants fan in the office and beg for silence.

Oh, you fucker. If I got an email from someone specifically telling me not to talk to them about a huge sporting event going on right now, the first goddamn thing I would do would be to tell him exactly what's happened in the game.

Step Five: Take a break from Pandora, listen to the Yahoo Inc. earnings call because Carol Bartz is probably the only CEO who could distract me from wondering whether the Giants' Matt Cain is locating his pitches well.

Step Six: At day's end, order cab for office pick-up. Before getting in, tell cabbie not to say anything about the game. Listen to iPod, avert eyes from San Francisco streets.

You can listen to Pandora, so it's not as if you work in a prison cell with no contact with the outside world. And if I'm the cabbie, I pretend not to speak English and immediately put on the local sports talk radio station.

I walked into a Trader Joe's two Sundays ago only to get blindsided by a radio broadcast of Game 3 of the Division Series against Atlanta, which played on the store's public address system. I angrily heard that the Giants were leading 1-0, though thankfully the announcer didn't say which inning it was. I sprinted out of the store and waited for a half hour in the car as my wife and a friend bought our groceries.

At what point while sitting alone in a parking lot do you start to realize this has gone from "cute little quirk" to "crippling sociopathic tendency?"

I'm not going to suggest that any of us do something to foil Amir Efrati's complex plot to remain ignorant. I will, however, point out that the Giants game starts at 8pm Eastern, and the Journal's writers' email addresses are [email protected].

A Giant Media Blackout [Wall Street Journal]