John Fortuna, Jersey guy and baseball fan — the latter despite MLB’s urgings to cease and desist — last week was in Florida, where he decided to attend the Mets-Cards game.
He bought a ticket, $30 — spring training tickets, with fixed-income seniors in mind, not long ago cost $5, $10 max — and having arrived on the early side, he headed in to catch batting practice.
That’s when he was stopped. He hadn’t bought a ticket that included batting practice. Huh? Only for an extra $5 could he watch BP. For an added $25, the Cards have a special, on-field “Batting Practice Section.”
Again, what once would have been out of the question as a matter of common sense, common decency, good-faith business and time-certified tradition, had arrived. With MLB’s blessings, teams now charge extra to watch batting practice — before spring training games.
And shameless greed is spun with great pride. The Cards’ website boasts of charging to watch pregame batting practice as welcomed news for fans!
We’ve noted here that the greatest enemy of boxing, once among America’s favorite sports, has been boxing people, specifically those who regard greed as a requisite attachment to otherwise attractive matches.
Boxing’s “visionaries” have taken a fan base built on three and four generations and neutered it, then skinned and sliced it until they’re left to fight for feasting rights to a carcass.
And it’s not just the promoters and the TV cut-takers. In the case of the coming Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao bout an outrageous Pay-Per-View price of $90-$100 has been tacked. And it’s the fighters who should be ashamed.
Pacquiao, one of six kids, grew up so poor in the Philippines he dropped out of school, then left home at 14 because his mother could not afford to feed him.
Mayweather grew up in drug-infested blight in Michigan and Jersey: “When I was about 8 or 9, we were seven-deep in one bedroom and we didn’t have electricity. When people see what I have now, they have no idea where I came from.”
Gotcha, Champ. So then why $90-$100 in HD — to watch him fight Pacquiao? Why, with each boxer making in excess of $140 million, will it be the biggest ticket boxing PPV by nearly $40?
Anyway, Monday’s Duke-Wisconsin final on CBS won’t tip until about 9:20, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, given the attention of more than half the nation’s population, with work the next day, will be imperiled by sleep. If it began at say, 8:30, neither coast would be deprived of its ending.
But there’s more money to be made if the game appears in prime time in three U.S. time zones, thus whether you’re awake at the game’s end is beneath the NCAA’s concern.
However, if you and your kids or grandkids would like to watch batting practice before a spring training game …
Classless: UNC scandal details look ugly
Interesting Final Four pregame show, Saturday, on C-Span 2: The authors of “Cheated,” about the two decades of academic fraud on behalf of University of North Carolina athletic teams. Among the revelations from Mary Willingham, former UNC “learning specialist,” and UNC professor Jay Smith:
UNC’s African-Americans studies department created nonexistent courses in which football and basketball players received an average grade of A, thus keeping their grade-point average above the C- sports eligibility line.
Some UNC recruits read at a third-grade elementary school level.
Rashad McCants, who helped UNC win the 2005 NCAA Tournament and later played in the NBA, actually made the academic dean’s list, “after a semester in which he had done no academic work.”
UNC’s fraud was regularly reliant on the cooperation of Jeanette Boxill, a professor of ethics.
Faculty whistle-blowers were punished by UNC.
And head coach Roy Williams says he had no idea.
Imagine having a ticket to the big game and you’re seated beside an overbearing, thoughtless, indiscriminate bozo who keeps distracting you with info you already know or don’t care about.
With Wisconsin up, 21-14, Saturday, 10:30 left in the half, TBS/CBS stupid flash graphics: “Wisconsin on 12-3 run, last 3:08.”
For crying out loud, with 10:30 left in the half, Wisconsin was on a 21-14 run!
Disagreeing with King Mike ‘feudal’
Keith Olmbermann finishes a modest second to Mike Francesa informing the public that he’s an egocentric, me-firster who doesn’t play well with others. Francesa now regularly makes it on-air clear that he holds his Fox Sports 1 and 2 bosses and colleagues in contempt for not treating Our Highness as their King.
TV’s incapacity to provide Francesa with the respect due royalty has led to his regal exile, in order, from CBS, MSG Network, Ch. 4, YES and now he’s working on his good-riddance slip from Fox. But given his enormous self-regard, Francesa thinks Easter is overrated.
Now talk turns to another area of Francesa’s superior expertise, the NFL draft. Remember his inside-info tout of Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater as the sleeper QB in a draft — for which Bridgewater was ineligible?
And with Monday’s Opening Day, “Let’s Be Honest” last week was sticking (stuck) with his 2009 expertise: Daniel Murphy will never hit big league pitching. Career .290 BA? Next caller!
Hip Fool of the Week: Kansas State president Kirk Schulz, who, as per that ugly, dangerous K-State court-storming after beating Kansas, told ESPN’s Andy Katz that he not only condones court-storming, he encourages it as “a cool part of college basketball” … provided, of course opposing players, coaches and refs aren’t involved.
In other words, if there’s to be any mob-rush trampling, only K-State fans, students, players and employees should be victimized!
Does Schulz not know that a kid from the winning high school team was paralyzed and neurologically impaired in a court-storming? A student in a wheel chair was dumped to the court in a storming? How’s KSU fixed for liability insurance?
Remember, it takes “eye discipline” to “score the basketball.” Saturday, ESPN Radio-NY’s Dave Rothenberg noted a Kentucky player “has spatial awareness.”
Based on ESPN’s “coverage,” the most important element of Thursday’s Stanford-Miami NIT final — otherwise an exciting OT game won by Stanford — was that ex-Miami enrollee Michael Irvin received the attention he demanded for watching from the stands as if he were an attention-starved lunatic.
Last week, while playing the Islanders, Columbus wore black uniforms. Naturally. What else would the Blue Jackets wear?