There is almost nothing that ESPN owns, rents or even touches that it doesn’t attach to systemic absurdity. It’s ESPN’s way of saying, “Makes no difference if you tuned in to watch the event we’ve been promoting for months, you’re stuck; we can do anything we please to these telecasts.”
What ESPN has done to Wimbledon is right out of the Fools’ Two-For-Flinching High-Tech Handbook.
Action that normally would occur and be seen just behind the near-court baseline vanishes behind that confounded, thoughtless info and promo crawl, the one that will tell us 15 times an hour whom Mel Kiper Jr. thinks the Bucs will pick in the NFL Draft, coming on ESPN, next month.
At the same time play disappears behind these crawls on shots hit from north to south, those crawls are moving east to west, making for such a distraction you’d think ESPN has been seized by vandals, which, in a way, it has.
As ridiculous as this is, it’s typical of ESPN’s habit-formed disregard for live TV, sports and its viewers/customers. ESPN will spend a year begging you to watch, then — Down in front! — block the view.
Incidentally, yesterday, if that 11-hour John Isner-Nicolas Mahut match had ended with a shot deep to the near baseline, ESPN would have missed it. The final point would have disappeared behind, “Marlins 7, Orioles 5, Final” — a final from a game that had ended 14 hours earlier.
And there’s this: At 61-61 in the fifth set and 10½ hours into the Isner-Mahut match ESPN’s Hannah Storm reached this on-site conclusion: “These guys have no quit in them.”
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Hey, Abbott! Although ESPN’s Sunday night baseball voice apparently missed it, reader Bill Maroney, a Staten Islander exiled to Colorado, did not.
When the Dodgers’ Chin-Lung Hu entered as a pinch-runner at Fenway Park, the opportunity was missed to declare, “Hu’s on first.”
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Although Jerry Seinfeld’s planned presence in SNY’s booth during Wednesday’s Tigers-Mets led to both funny and forced, Seinfeld’s best on-air sports moments this week were serious and, so they seemed, spontaneous.
On WFAN with Steve Somers on Monday, Somers was sending the show to a commercial break when Seinfeld asked what could possibly motivate car dealer and former Giants lineman Brad Benson to wish to be known as a slug through his vulgar, “not funny” ads.
By the way, what, other than money, prevents WFAN from insisting that Benson clean up or get lost?
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Brandel Chamblee, former PGA Tourist and current Golf Channel studio analyst, apparently could take no more of Tiger Woods panderers, starting with GC’s Kelly Tilghman on Sunday night, after the U.S. Open:
KT: “You have to give the guy [Woods] respect considering all he’s been through … ”
BC: “[Interrupting] Not been through, not been through, put himself through.”
Wow!
Tilghman should come with a warning: She’s fronted by IMG, which also reps Woods, and she’s a “TV narrator” in Woods’ huge-selling video game. Still, among TV’s golf voices, her interests are no more conflicted than most.
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James Blake‘s in-game rants at ESPN’s Pam Shriver — playing Wimbledon on Tuesday, he could hear Shriver questioning his desire — made for an unusual variety of ugly.
While Shriver’s voice obviously carried, she wasn’t shouting. What was she supposed to say as he was being crushed in a first-rounder? And, for what it’s worth, Blake’s U.S. Open entourage has had its noisy (rowdy) moments.
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ESPN yesterday took credit for the scoop that its own Bobby Valentine is expected to become Marlins manager. Yet, ESPN has seen to it that even a “scoop” about its own is suspected of having been “borrowed.”
* ESPN, as per reliable rumor, is considering a live “SportsCenter,” 24/7, to be seen on ESPN or ESPNews.
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The NFL Network, tomorrow, 8 p.m., will show Jets-Colts Super Bowl III, Joe Namath’s “guaranteed” victory.
It’s NBC’s four-plays-missing version, with Curt Gowdy and former Giants Al DeRogatis and Kyle Rote.
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When you (if you) learned that Michael Bradley, son of Team USA coach Bob Bradley, would start at midfield for the United States in the World Cup, suspicion of nepotism arose, yes?
But Bradley, through three games, has been the best two-way player for any team.
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Slaves to Fashion: Sunny, humid, 90s, Sunday afternoon, the Mets — team colors blue, orange and white — wore their black jerseys.
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ESPN 1050 updates, this week, reported that if the United States beat Algeria it would be “the first time in eight years” the U.S. team advanced in the World Cup. Wow, eight years! But, as reader Nick Hoagland, among others, noted, that’s typical of ESPN’s mindless application of data. The Cup is played every four years, thus 1050 could have reported that the USA is one for its last two.
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Memo to Mets’ radio man Wayne Hagin: We wouldn’t care if a fastball pitcher were clocked at 95 or 96, but when there’s a knuckleballer, such as R.A. Dickey, “Fastball, a strike” calls don’t cut it. Dickey’s “heater” was in the low 80s on Wednesday, something worth mentioning.
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Heads-up, feel-good video from YES on Tuesday in Arizona, capturing the response in the Yankees dugout and the reaction from his family in the stands after new Yankee Colin Curtis‘s first big league hit, a two-run double.
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After it was noted here that Alexis Thompson on Golf Channel was called a “young 15-year-old,” reader Louie Rey writes that he, in fact, knows an old 15-year-old. “She’s a Pomeranian.”
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Some lout wormed his way onto Chris Russo‘s Sirius XM show on Wednesday, then asked, in the crudest terms, if he performs a certain sexual act. After dumping the creep, Russo said, “I don’t, by the way.”
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Stay tuned for more inside info about the arrest and indictment of Lawrence Taylor as told to Mike Francesa by his on-the-case New Jersey law enforcement sources following Taylor’s arrest and indictment in New York.