Notes, quotes, anecdotes, antidotes and Billy goats:
Ever take a long car ride with a pal? There’s an understanding that the amusing stuff spoken needs no unnatural responses, no forced laughter, no acknowledgment that the listener “gets it.” You’re both far too familiar with each other for that.
Besides, a smile, at most, does it.
That’s my enduring gripe with the SNY Mets’ crew, Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez and floating story-teller Steve Gelbs. They too often erupt in unnatural phony laughter, often to prove to audiences that they “get it” and too often followed by Cohen’s insistence to get in the last word, even if it deflates mildly amusing exchanges.
The ensuing “Hah, hah, hah!” sounds coerced, like the work of a cattle prod.
And viewers are left to ask themselves, “Do they really think that was that funny?
Forced laughter, as seen and heard on NFL studio shows and just about everything on ESPN are a turnoff. Impossible to hide or abide, they needlessly insult viewers.
The Phillies’ longtime broadcasting team of Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn, both deceased, made for great company even during lousy games because they were funny on the down-low, never adding their own laugh tracks.
Either you “got it” or you didn’t. Then they’d move along. They’d save their genuine laughter for the genuinely funny. Imagine that.
So a new MLB rules question: Runner on first is a threat to steal. But the pitcher has used his two allotted “disengagements” in the form of a throw to first or stepping off the rubber.
Now, with the likelihood of the runner at first easily stealing second increased, the pitcher, with little to lose, throws over to first — catching the runner going and trapping him in a rundown.
Now the systemic fun begins: If the runner is tagged out, he’s out. But if he safely returns to first for any of several reasons he’s rewarded second base on a balk — the third pitcher disengagement even if it had almost nothing to do with the play or the plan.
And no doubt a delay will follow for the umps to figure it all out then, if they can, explain it to the managers. Well, alrighty then!
Memo to WFAN: No cheering in the press box
At nearly 40, it might be time for Evan Roberts to grow up. There he sat, Tuesday on his WFAN/SNY simulcast, wearing his Mets sweatshirt, a Jets helmet in front of him like his security blanket.
This wouldn’t bother me other than the fact that Roberts portrays himself as a professional broadcast journalist with legit journalistic credentials.
After all, there was no higher-minded lecturer on media ethics over WFAN than Mike Francesa. Yet, he paraded around town wearing a Jets jacket to add to his delusion that he was an integral part of the team’s front office during his ex-pal Bill Parcells’ Jets’ run.
Kinda like when he falsely claimed that the Pentagon contacted him to improve Army football.
Speaking of Francesa, if his over-the-air absence may leave you the impression that he’s any less narcissistic, conceited and megalomaniacal, hit up the Twitter handle @backaftathis to hear his podcast salute to Jim Nantz following this, Nantz’s last NCAA Tournament.
It’s not as much a tribute to Nantz as it is a tribute to Francesa for being Nantz’s friend, thus the reason for Nantz’s success. Even by Francesa’s shameless standards, it’s twisted.
Quite the coincidence: So the same week the Saudi government cuts oil production, driving up gas prices here, its government-enriched pro golf tour team is invited here to play in The Masters.
Reader Vincent Gugliuzzo suggests that tensions are running so high, “the pairings should be according to weight class.”
On CBS, viewers are given roughly five seconds to read, consider and apply a vertical graphic giving the NFL QBs last 10 passes, whether it was completed and for how many yards. It’s a waste of everyone’s time — a needless, ill-conceived distraction — yet has been sustained over at least the last 15 years.
But of course, no bad TV idea can escape duplication, thus YES, Sunday, vertically posted Yankee starter Jhony Brito’s first nine pitches — type, speed and results — allowing viewers about five seconds to read, consider and apply.
With basketball self-sentenced to surrendering its appeal as a team sport, leave it to TV — this time CBS — to keep feeding the destruction.
Sunday, CBS ran a full-length special focusing on 3-point and slam-dunk competitions — among high school kids.
So Fox’s MLB studio show finally moved out add-nothing ex-slugger Frank Thomas to make room for Derek Jeter.
One problem with that: Jeter was a very guarded, say-little, take-the-money-and-run type as a player. After years of such self-conditioning, I don’t expect better from him on the air.
Home Shopping Network: The Marlins, in their three season-opening games against the Mets, wore three different uniforms.
Say, who won Terry Bradshaw’s Super Bowl prize of $1 million?
Nike, ESPN sending wrong message
I’ve learned that very little happens by accident. Thus, nearly 35 years ago when social activist and know-it-all Spike Lee was chosen to star in Nike commercials declaring that hideously expensive, foreign and cheaply manufactured Air Jordans should create a stampede of “all you homeboys bum-rushing to get some.”
Wonder who that message was aimed at.
You could reasonably predict then that mayhem — muggings and murders — would follow as a pair of sneakers were and still are seen as urban status symbols. And retailers then — and still — will tell you that Nike feeds the frenzy by keeping supplies low thus demands and prices high.
To a similar end, the college town of Storrs, Conn. was, until Monday night, never considered likely to host a sports-related riot, one in which students “celebrated” UConn’s national title game victory.
Lamp posts were knocked down then used as battering rams to break the windows of commercial establishments, fires were set, and a car was overturned. All as a demonstration of unrestrained, ahem, joy.
Storrs is close to Bristol, Conn., home of ESPN where each college basketball season adult college basketball experts appear on national TV to throw their pandering support behind demonstrably dangerous court-storming as a great student-body tradition, a sudden rush and crush of thousands of human bodies — many now taking selfies — as a matter of entitlement.
And just as it’s a short trip from Bristol to Storrs, it’s a short trip from celebrating a big win with a court-storming to celebrating with a riot that led to 15 arrests, 16 injuries and tens of thousands of dollars in vandalism.
So Providence guard Alyn Breed, recruited from Georgia, was arrested, Saturday, charged with domestic abuse and waving an illegal gun at his ex-girlfriend in a 5 a.m. episode.
It didn’t make a whole lot of news as, short of murder, stories of college recruits carrying illegal weapons and/or charged with domestic abuse have become a dime a dozen. Student-athletics as usual.
