McKnight: Costas' criticism of Cubs' Strop just wrong

Bum.

That was the word. That was the worst word you could say about a ballplayer. It's impossible to say how old I was the first time I heard it, but I know whom I heard it from.

Brigadier General Robert E. Connor, 3rd Btn. 2nd U.S. Army.

I called him Grandpa.

Having grown up in Cincinnati, my grandfather was a die-hard Reds fan. I say this only to illustrate that the man knew winning baseball. He loved his team. Even at 85 and racked with Alzheimer's, the man could recite the lineup for the Big Red Machine.

It was not a word used lightly, this "bum." It was reserved for the lowest of low. The guys who didn't run out a softly hit groundball into the hole. The guys who jaked it on a ball into the gap, turning a double into a triple. The guys who flat gave in to a hitter and piped a fastball on a 3-1 count after walking the leadoff man.

Bums.

These men weren't booed. They weren't screamed at or cursed. There was nothing disparaging said about his wife, kids or parents. Chances were, if the guy played like a bum that day, he probably knew it already.

I imagine that when my grandfather was younger, there was perhaps more of a kinship between player and fan. If not kinship, then understanding. You could buy a car from a ballplayer in the off-season. Players had jobs just like fans had jobs. They were celebrities, sure, but most had to work like real men once summer ended.

I've never been a booer. I've been party to nonsensical and irrational dislike of a player from time to time (Richie Sexson, of all people), that I admit. But the booing of effort never really struck me as necessary.

Maybe that's because as I grew up bum was all that was needed.

Maybe that's why, when Bob Costas tried making a joke after Cubs reliever Pedro Strop's admittedly awful 18-pitch outing Friday night against the St. Louis Cardinals, I thought about my grandfather.

Usually, I like Bob. I love that he has such a history with baseball. He's the only broadcaster I need every four years when the Olympics become perfect background noise. I don't even mind when he gets preachy before Sunday night football. It's his time to editorialize, and I get that.

I don't mean to overreact or get preachy myself; the Internet at large will take care of that.

It just bugged me. It gnawed at me, what Costas said when Strop left the game.

"We can only ask, or wonder that he is asking, some departed relative for forgiveness for this atrocious performance."

Home run to Greg Garcia, (the first of Garcia's career). Hits Kolten Wong. Gets Matt Carpenter to fly out to center. Deep center. Walks Jhonny Peralta. End of his night.

Clearly, Strop was bad, but there's a better way to say it than Bob did and, apparently, I just couldn't let it go.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

• Connor McKnight can be heard regularly on WGN 720-AM and is a co-host of The Beat, the station's sports talk show on the weekends. Follow him on Twitter @McKnight_WGN