Why the hell are the Gold Gloves being announced tonight?

The Gold Glove awards this year are entirely based on a statistical formula, much to the chagrin of  Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, who felt that voters would have judged him on his reputation and given him a 10th victory, even though he didn’t rate out among the top three defensive catchers in his own division this year.

Or something like that. There’s a case to be made that basing defensive awards on statistics over a 60-game sample size is just as ludicrous as having a vote when none of the voters saw more than one-third of the league in action this season. At least the numerical calculation provides a level playing field for the candidates, though, so the logic in doing it this way does make sense.

What does not make sense is that the Gold Gloves will be awarded on television, in an ESPN show at 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday.

They seriously couldn’t have done this on any other day? There’s no NBA and NHL right now, and college football games are being canceled left and right. 8:00 on Election Night? Really?

Polls start closing at 6 p.m. Eastern in the eastern portions of Indiana and Kentucky, fully wrapping up in those states an hour later, when most of Florida’s polls close, along with Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Vermont. Voting wraps up at 7:30 Eastern in North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia, followed at 8, just as the Gold Glove show goes on the air, with the rest of Florida, Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and parts of Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas. And Arkansas polls close at 8:30 Eastern.

Even though it’s going to take a while to count votes, especially in the close states, putting anything on TV on Tuesday night that you feel has any value as programming is broadcast malpractice at best, and subversive to an informed democracy at worst.

If this is an admission, finally, that the Gold Gloves are a waste of everyone’s time and we shouldn’t pay attention to them, well, great, that’s been on the table since Rafael Palmeiro and his 128 games as a designated hitter stole the award at first base from Tino Martinez in 1999. But we all know it’s not that. Instead, ESPN and Rawlings have chosen the dumbest possible time to announce the winners of the dumbest award of the year.