Those who fight and run away …
First, former MLB commissioner Bud Selig was permitted to make a mockery of The Game, now Rob Manfred is. So why shouldn’t MLB managers?
It still decentralizes the central nervous system that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, last Saturday in L.A., did the following:
1) Tried to surrender to the Mets despite being down just five runs in the ninth.
2) Was not permitted to surrender due to a new rule that position players can’t pitch unless his team is down six runs.
3) Such a clear late-game capitulation to the enemy made for brief noise or news, then was dropped as the baseball media again provided tacit approval to The Game’s diminished standards.
Interesting, that it was against the Mets who, a month earlier, scored seven runs in the ninth to beat the Phillies, 8-7.
Scoring five runs in one inning is hardly a rarity, like a modest rapper. The Angels did it this past Sunday at Philadelphia (yet still lost), thus this Dodgers’ flagrant tank job deserved some official MLB condemnation if not punishment for a premature submission.
Fat chance. Manfred and company have better things to do than take care of The Game.
There are exclusive pay-wall streaming deals to be made, extra-inning games to be determined by artificial additives, and All-Star Game sites to be moved a thousand miles away as proof of MLB’s pandering to politicians who scream racism as a matter of self-sustaining habit as opposed to contrary evidence.
My suspicion is that Roberts chose to surrender his team in some part because it was in first place in the NL West. Even in June, with the playoffs this season expanded to 10 teams for added TV revenue and more mediocre teams, he felt no active need to try to win a game that had not yet been lost.
Regardless, this was the equivalent of taking a knee to kill the clock, down 10 points late in the fourth quarter. It was an intentional loss.
It stunk last week and it still stinks. But just more spitting into the storm. And another shame on me. If MLB doesn’t care, why should I?
Ferraro has flawless fawning of Rangers’ Fox
In the first period of Game 5 of the Lightning-Rangers series Thursday, the Rangers’ Adam Fox, just 24, made two sixth-sense passes, perfectly hitting teammates in stride with cross-ice passes, teammates likely by now conditioned to expect such from Fox.
Soon after, from his position between the benches, ESPN’s Ray Ferraro captured Fox’s game in a suitable-for-framing take:
“You watch Fox play once, you might be underwhelmed. You watch him play five times and you start to love it. You watch him play 10 times and you say, ‘That guy is a star.’ ”
Once again, TV execs think the secret to their success is feeding viewers the most conspicuous of reprobates to serve as analysts.
Thus it comes as small surprise that colleague Andrew Marchand reports that Fox interviewed ex-DB Richard Sherman, a career antagonizing scoundrel, as an NFL game analyst.
Certainly Sherman qualifies as either a Fox or ESPN hire. Last year he was charged with a pile of crimes, from drunk and reckless driving to domestic violence at his in-laws’ home, before the police, summoned by his wife, arrived to restrain him.
He apologized for his misconduct yet still pleaded not guilty. He eventually bargained to two misdemeanor charges. Just time served and fines. Good start, but perhaps still not enough to make him, like Ray Lewis, the target of a network bidding war.
A ghost appeared Thursday at the Cardinals-Rays game — an 8 ¹/₂-inning number won 2-1 by the Rays and played in a mere 1:54!
Cards manager Oliver Marmol logically allowed starter Miles Mikolas to go all eight, while Rays manager Kevin Cash allowed his starter, Shane McLanahan, to throw eight, relieved by Jason Adam in the ninth.
That was the same Kevin Cash who incomprehensibly blew the sixth and final game of the 2020 World Series against the Dodgers when he removed starter Blake Snell after 5 ¹/₃ scoreless innings in a game eventually lost, 3-1.
The World Series decided by ignore-the-game analytics!
Thursday, Cash managed like a manager, not Professor Frink.
Draymond Green’s wife last week was upset that her husband was the target of vulgar chants from Celtics fans during Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
I’m with you, Mrs. Green, but this is where we’ve landed. What fans wouldn’t chant seated alone they’d gladly join in as part of a mob. This is all part of the NBA “experience,” and Adam Silver has done little or nothing to remedy it.
But Mr. Green has made himself a natural target of such mass malevolence. His coarse, opponents-trashing “social media” messaging and regular on-court misconduct — he’s a career technical-foul machine — provide in-arena verbal vandals inspiration.
And sports events have become no place to bring a kid unless that kid is in need of some social desensitization. Kinda like the kid seen at the end of that video of a Lightning fan being flattened by a sucker-punch Thursday as he left the Garden.
UT’s Beck volunteers a bird
How much further can we fall before we hit bottom?
Sunday, Tennessee outfielder Jordan Beck hit a game-tying double over the Georgia Tech right fielder’s head’s then gave the finger in plain and sustained form toward that outfielder as he headed to second. My dad would’ve disowned me.
But Beck, a Red Sox draft pick listed as an anthropology major — the study of what makes us human — was not even ejected, and Tennessee soon won the game. He later explained, “I was super excited.” Oh, OK. Look for it on MLB Network’s “Best Bird Flips.”
Class Dismissed, continued: White Sox manager Tony La Russa did a weird thing Thursday. With a man on second after a wild pitch, he ordered the Dodgers’ Trea Turner to be intentionally walked — on a 1-2 pitch.
Max Muncy followed with a three-run homer. He then screamed in La Russa’s direction, appearing to shout, “You f–king walk him with two strikes? F–k you, bitch!”
Muncy should be fined the max and suspended. But don’t hold your breath. Either way, he can use that clip as part of his ESPN or Fox audition reel.
Why must ESPN always divide us between racial lines? Thursday’s Texas-Oklahoma Women’s College World Series game was a good one, when ESPN cut into it to present a photo roster of previous “African-American Players in the WCWS.” Given that there was no shortage, what was the point?
Aaron Hicks, tough to root for, may have misplaced his productivity, but he hasn’t lost his excessively self-impressed home run pose. Thursday, after hitting his second of the season, he didn’t arrive back at home plate until early Friday morning.
Memo to Giants manager Gabe Kapler: If your elimination from sight during the national anthem to protest mass shootings could eliminate even one mass shooting, I’d join you.
CC Sabathia appeared as an on-field reporter during last Sunday’s Tigers-Yankees exclusive Peacock Pay More. First time I recall him speaking into a microphone without mouthing vulgarities. And he was not only clean, but funny, especially when he candidly cracked that he couldn’t comment on pitchers running to cover first base as he’d never given it a try.
