We often wonder whether TV’s shot-callers actually examine their decisions after they’re made. And if so, why are they allowed to continue to be shot-callers, or even assigned to such a position in the first place? That same wonder then transfers up one flight toward the executive suites, and begins again.
Why was it determined by ESPN that Sunday night’s Red Sox-Yankees telecast would be only for those, starting in the pregame show, who wanted to know everything — even the theoretical — about the current pitching condition of Yankee starter Masahiro Tanaka?
For crying out loud, from the moment ESPN sent it to Yankee Stadium, analysts Curt Schilling and John Kruk would have had us believe that no one tuned in to watch a game, but to attend a Tanaka theme party. His two-seamer, his four-seamer, his splitter, his velocity, his north-south movement as opposed to his east-west.
By the second inning, the overanalysis had become inevitably contradictory until it became background noise — like a chorus of household appliances nearing their end. Only now, with the Yankees up, 7-0, the need to fill and kill time with talk had doubled.
Say good night, Gracie.
So whose idea was it to turn a telecast of a ballgame into a Tanaka forensic exam and lecture? Did they watch this telecast? If so, how did they like it? Are they the same ESPN baseball shot-callers who gave us Joe Morgan, who weekly shared his total recall of things that never happened?
And if they are the same shot-callers, why?
Speaking of shot-callers, Sunday night’s game, played in 40- to 50-degree weather after a 70-degree afternoon, went 8½ innings, yet still ran 3:26, ending at 11:35 p.m. The Red Sox had their home opener the next afternoon.
As consumer goods and customer relations go, this game had zero upside. It was another episode of MLB’s blind greed in allowing TV to purchase the rights to do whatever it wishes to baseball (see: prostitutes/clients).
There was a time when MLB’s shot-callers wouldn’t have allowed such preventable, absurd circumstances both as a matter of common sense and decency, and the knowledge that a media, relied upon and even obligated to stand up for the best interests of fans, would force them to suffer, by name and title, shame-dipped slings and arrows.
But people in such high places no longer have to worry much about that. Consider that while MLB’s national networks, ESPN, Fox, TBS and MLB Network, annually load up on “Insiders,” they’re far too inside to embarrass commissioner Rob Manfred, or Bud Selig before him, on anything so trivial as choosing obvious rights over obvious wrongs.
In other words, fat chance that ESPN’s MLB “Insider” Buster Olney, who worked Sunday night’s telecast, would even jab at Manfred for allowing this latest betrayal of logic in exchange for ESPN money.
Still, Manfred couldn’t have attended Sunday night’s game when he was a kid because, as a matter of common sense and decency, MLB didn’t schedule Sunday night games. And the commissioner who even listened to such a proposal would have been duly shamed.
Now? It’s easy to be shameless.
Keith has solid grip on what’s impossible
For years, Keith Hernandez has told us that 1) we just witnessed the impossible, and 2) he has full knowledge of what’s impossible to know. Tuesday on SNY, we got both in one game.
1) Hernandez regularly tells us that a righty batter attempted a drag bunt. While that’s impossible — the batter would have to be moving in opposite directions — after the Mets’ Wilmer Flores, right-handed batter, laid down a bunt, he identified it as a “drag bunt.”
When Gary Cohen then asked, “Is that a drag bunt?” Hernandez said, “No, not technically.” Can’t think of a better reason, then, to stop saying it.
2) With the Mets up two runs in the ninth, Lucas Duda made a great diving play at first to get the first out. The next batter, Jeff Francoeur, homered. From that moment through the postgame wrap, Hernandez claimed that Duda saved the game because Francoeur’s home run otherwise would have tied it.
How Hernandez knew that regardless of changing circumstances that home run was a matter of factual pre-determination — that moment in time would be duplicated — he didn’t say.
From The Land of Lost Tapes: On Wednesday, Professor Mike Francesa’s latest authority-based lock pick was the Spurs, in a must-win for a second-seed, over New Orleans, that night. Sitting Bull’s expertise in such matters is such that he apparently had no idea that New Orleans needed to win just to make the playoffs! Anyway, the Spurs, down 15 at the end of the first quarter, then coasted to an easy loss.
But Francesa’s best was his expertise on horse racing. Interrupting a caller about this year’s Kentucky Derby, Francesa claimed Seattle Slew “Never, ever had a horse in front of him — never! Ever! Not in his whole life!”
Of course, that would have meant that Seattle Slew was undefeated, which he wasn’t — never, ever, not in his whole life. In 17 starts, he won 14, twice finished second and once finished fourth, by 16 lengths.
It could be worse. Francesa could be a health inspector. Or the navigator on your car’s GPS.
Killing time with time-fillers on SNY
Too much of SNY programming seems designed to fill space between Mets telecasts.
On Monday, SNY’s Doug Williams reported this from the Coliseum after Islanders practice:
“They have at least two games to play [at the arena] in the first round of the playoffs, and I asked Kyle Okposo how much he cared about maybe pushing that beyond the first round, playing more games at the Nassau Coliseum.
“And he said, ‘Obviously, we want to play as many home games as possible but right now we’re just focused on this series.’ ”
Williams then sent it back to SNY’s “SportsNite” studio. Older but wiser, viewers now knew that at least one of the Islanders wanted to win the coming playoff series.
Imagine that. Or to quote Williams quoting Okposo, “obviously.”
If our correspondent came back with that, we’d be too embarrassed to air it. Then we’d have a chat with that correspondent. But maybe SNY felt that was a good, strong report — or the best he had.
Or perhaps the only purpose of sending a reporter to the Coliseum was just to show us that it did. In that case, bingo!
Wednesday, to a full-screen graphic, SportsNite anchor Michelle Yu, after the Mets swept the Phillies, reported that the last time the Mets swept a home opening series “was back in 2012.”