LET’S call this, “Aaaargh! A Midsummer’s Night Scream.”
It doesn’t let up, not for a minute. This has been a record-shattering baseball season. Never have New York viewers been presented with more fantastic nonsense and more fractured, Chris Russo-like commentary – all delivered with assured certainty, as hard facts.
And Fran Healy isn’t even in the mix.
Wednesday night on YES, they didn’t even wait for a lull; the inanity began in the top of the first. Making matters worse, it was led by Al Leiter and Paul O’Neill, fellas we’d figured were inoculated against this epidemic.
White Sox third baseman Joe Crede had made his second nice play when O’Neill said that many folks in Chicago feel Crede should be a Gold Glover.
Leiter then dismissively said, “The Gold Glove has definitely become a popularity contest, and always has been.”
At that point, Michael Kay tried to keep the topic sensible. He noted that last year’s Gold Glove third basemen – Mike Lowell in the NL, Eric Chavez in the AL – are now both in the AL. Kay might have added neither is so “popular” he’d be a lock for any award either didn’t, to a large extent, earn.
And he might have rhetorically asked how popular Boston’s Frank Malzone was that from 1957 through ’59 he won the first three AL Gold Gloves for third basemen. How popular is temperamental Tigers pitcher Kenny Rogers that, since 2000, he has won four Gold Gloves?
Surely, arguments can be made Gold Gloves can be awarded on reputation and even by habit. But strictly and always a popularity contest? Heresy!
Had Jim Kaat been present, he might have begged Leiter’s pardon.
Kaat won 16 Gold Gloves, 14 in the AL. In 1966, he made three errors – while leading the AL with 305 innings pitched. In ’71, he made one error in 260 innings. Kaat didn’t have to be popular. And he was widely considered the Brooks Robinson of pitchers.
Then again, the dialogue on YES tends to drift toward delusional when Kaat’s absent.
Did I just write, “Brooks Robinson?” Funny, I should mention him, because the nonsense was just getting started and Robinson became the focus.
“I’ll tell you what,” said O’Neill, “when you’re playing in the World Series and you get national attention, people see how good you are.”
Kay tried again: “But Gold Gloves are voted on by managers and coaches.” Good point.
But O’Neill wasn’t through. “You look back in the mid-1970s, when Brooks Robinson had that tremendous World Series against the Reds; I mean, he was a great fielder, but that changed the way people looked at him because he did that under a World Series light.”
What!?! That Reds-Orioles World Series – it was 1970, by the way – didn’t “change the way” people looked at Robinson, it reminded them that he’s still the best. Before that Series, Robinson had already won 10 Gold Gloves. And he’d win six more.
Well before 1970, Robinson was the national gold standard among third basemen. And O’Neill was talking to a New York audience that in some significant number knew that. New Yorkers regarded Clete Boyer and then Graig Nettles as very good, but we also knew that Robinson was on the top shelf, by himself.
Not that the insanity is restricted to the verbal. Randy Johnson, this same night, had a no-hitter into the seventh. The first batter singled. Jorge Posada came out to chat. The next batter walked. Pitching coach Ron Guidry headed out. Ahh, this, we wanna see.
How would Johnson, a notorious steamer, respond to a second advisory trip to the mound in as many batters?
But we never saw even a second of Guidry’s interaction with Johnson. Throughout Guidry’s visit, YES posted a full-screen Hyundai promotional billboard. And Kay, instead of watching the mound, had to read the ad copy.
The night before, Billy Wagner entered to start the ninth with the Mets up, 3-2. Wagner allowed a hit and a walk. Hmmm. But then he got the final out with a strikeout.
On SNY, Gary Cohen hollered that Wagner “Slams the door!” on the Padres. Slams the door? What? Wasn’t Wagner the guy who opened it? Good grief.