Something’s on the shake over at YES.
David Cone’s deal with the network is up. YES wants him back to work Yankees telecasts, but Cone hasn’t yet given YES his answer. Cone, always a front-and-center Players Association operative as a player, might be seen as a good fit high in the restructured MLBPA.
Should Cone depart YES, the replacement name we’ve heard is Tino Martinez. YES, however, says it’s all “too speculative to address.”
Disney ‘sail’ began ESPN downfall
Roy Disney, the nephew of Walt, died this week at 79. In 1997, Roy Disney, perhaps unwittingly, served as both a warning signal and symbol for what ESPN would soon become and then remain.
Sunday morning, July 13 of ’97, the year after Disney bought ESPN, an ESPN producer called from Bristol. He said that he and a bunch of “SportsCenter” staffers were very upset and he wanted me to know, before I saw the 11 a.m. SportsCenter, what was going on, and that neither he nor his staff had anything to do with it.
A piece would air about the Trans Pacific Yacht Race, LA to Honolulu. Even on the slowest sports day, ESPN had never before paid any attention to this event. Why now?
Because the winning yacht was owned by Disney executive Roy Disney. The orders, according to the ESPN producer, had come from the very top, from the office of Disney boss Michael Eisner: Footage of the race, emphasis on Disney’s yacht, is en route. Show the footage or die. The producer said he was worried that SportsCenter’s journalistic integrity might again be so egregiously compromised. He said he hoped this would just be a one-shot deal.
More than 12 years later, ESPN’s content is predicated on cross and self-promotion; SportsCenter, among other ESPN entities, often appears as the ESPN/ABC/Disney Shopping Network, its hosts and anchors as sales clerks.
And ESPN producers don’t bother to call to lament violations of news standards and ethics on behalf of ownership. It’s like prison food. After a while, everyone gets used to it.
Jose, can you see?
Jose Reyes, 27 in June and a major leaguer since 2003, seems eager to sustain his reputation as a knucklehead. Reyes, in town on Wednesday, was seen on the YES simulcast of Mike Francesa’s radio show. Wearing a wool ski cap pulled down low, throughout the (indoor) studio interview, Reyes looked like a squeegee man who used to stand outside the Lincoln Tunnel.
Yeah, I know, you can’t judge books by their covers and clothes don’t make the man. But they can offer a pretty good clue. Is there no one — his agent, someone with the Mets — who can provide one of the team’s best known players with some basic social guidance, especially in public?
By comparison, new Yankee Curtis Granderson yesterday met the media in tie and jacket.
CBS stat useless as usual
Half the stats posted during football telecasts don’t even belong in the data bank because they’re irrelevant. Late in Army-Navy with Army going on fourth-and-eight, CBS issued this alert: “Army 7-for-13 on fourth down, this season.” As if such a stat was applicable at that moment, or any moment. With Christmas coming, posting “Mauve is Verne Lundquist’s favorite color” would have been more useful.
* According to Charles Barkley, he was desperate to provide Tiger Woods his expert celebrity advice and counsel, but Woods must’ve changed his cell phone number. My guess would be that Woods’ phone has caller ID.
* Bud Selig has named a 14-member panel to examine baseball’s on-field matters. Funny, as the CFO of Baseball, he needs no help. But as Commissioner of Baseball he needs lots. . . . Meantime, MLB claims to be concerned about the profound and growing imbalance of financial power among teams, yet it sells Yanks-Red Sox to ESPN2 for a one-game series, Opening Day, a Sunday night game. MLB exploits its Have Teams for every drop they can squeeze.
* It’s all such a farce. Sunday afternoon NFL telecasts are loaded with erectile dysfunction commercials, ads for ultra-violent video games and vulgar promos for TV shows. Yet, an NFL/United Way ad that is slipped in asks us to do right by kids by making sure they get plenty of exercise. Sure, send them out to play during the commercials.
* Byron Scott has joined ESPN as a studio analyst. ESPN has so many studio analysts that soon, instead of seating them around a table, they’ll use bleachers. . . . YES’s Villanova-Fordham broadcast at 2 p.m. tomorrow from the Meadowlands, will be called by 23-year-old Ryan Ruocco, another Fordham/WFUV graduate. He’ll work with understated (thus underrated) Jim Spanarkel.
* So how does this work? ESPN is appalled by the in-house Steve Phillips sex scandal, it’s outraged that some freak videotaped Erin Andrews undressing and that the video made the Internet, yet ESPN has no problem hiring Snoop Dogg, a pornographer with a record for drugs and weapons possession, and a rapper of raunchy, women-degrading lyrics, to star with ESPN talent in promos. Makes sense.
– Tomorrow’s Michigan-Kansas, ESPN at noon, will be attached to a “Go Green” theme, all sorts of mini-features about conserving energy, specifically electricity. ESPN does its part by having Chris Berman host Monday Night Football pregames and halftimes.