I enjoy listening to people, in general, who have a sense of history. More impressively, people who know how to read history and keep it in proper context when consulting it for contemporary issues. After all, being intellectually disciplined can be challenging. If you don’t focus, you can go off on so many tangents and sound like an inchoerent fool.

In the sports medium in particular, if a pundit knows history, it tells me they care enough about the sport they follow and are prepared to convey interesting information to the listener.

Then again, I may be a tad bias about the subject; I’m a History major. So whenever I hear an expert who didn’t know something about a sport that I knew, it raises an eyebrow. In fact, it’s downright annoying. A person in the media, with all the access to everything they’re privy to, should not know less than me.

The other night during the World Series disputed between the Phillies and Yankees , Game five I believe it was, the smooth and excellent Joe Buck along with his partner Tim McCarver presented a trivia question to fans. Cutting to the point, they asked which team from the American league was second to the New York Yankees in terms of World Series titles. Like many fans I’m sure, I thought this was a gimme. The answer was the Philadelphia/Kansas City/Oakland Athletics with nine titles (and 14 WS appearances); five of which were won in Philly and four in Oakland.

But, apparently, Buck and McCarver professed to not know the answer. Now, either they were playing dumb to fill air space or they genuiely didn’t know. If it’s the latter, what the dilio? Shouldn’t they know trivia like this?

I’m not saying they should all be like Bob Costas, Vin Scully, Dick Irvin or Liam McGuire but really. Is it too much to expect our gatekeepers to sports media know basic information readily available in an ESPN fact book?

What do you think? Am I being reasonable with my demands?