Mike Francesa always de livers, never disap points. He always — and I mean, always delivers on listeners’ conditioned expectations to hear him expose himself as a big-time big-timer with nothing to support his positions beyond his enormous self-regard.
In other words, just because Mike Francesa knows nothing about a subject never prevents him from being the last-word authority on that subject. What some (many, most?) hear as ignorance, Francesa speaks as enlightenment.
Wednesday, Fran-say-so delivered an impassioned condemnation of World Cup soccer’s U.S. TV rights holder, ESPN. For a moment, I thought we were on the same frequency, but then. . .
He first sounded a jingoistic alarm to all red-blooded American sports fans: ESPN’s deserved reputation for excessive self-promotion (look who’s talking!) and its bent toward global branding will cause ESPN “to shove the World Cup down our throats.”
Well, OK, I don’t disagree, but how can ESPN make folks watch a soccer match if they don’t want to watch a soccer match? Or is it that Francesa doesn’t want to bother watching the World Cup, but suspects and fears that he won’t be able to totally ignore it?
Regardless of the TV rights holder, the U.S. is home to tens of thousands of pre-existing soccer fans who are psyched for the Cup. Alas, though, it’s too late for Francesa to save these poor souls from themselves.
Next, Francesa lectured on how soccer doesn’t work on TV here, how ESPN must abandon live World Cup play to present commercials.
What a blowhard. The last time ESPN/ABC lost live World Cup play to commercials was 1994.
What’s that? The dog ate Wednesday’s tape? Not again! Bad dog!
Also, Wednesday — every day there’s so much to choose from — there was this “Thanks For Taking My Call” episode:
Six seconds after “Mark from Howell” politely asked Francesa to “hear me out,” Francesa interrupted him then spoke for the next 50 seconds. Serves Mark from Howell right.
YES, Curry a strong addition to Yanks’ pregame
Jack Curry has been YES’s best addition since it dropped Giuseppe Franco. His Yankees pregame sessions almost always include two or three TWKs (things worth knowing) about the Yankees or their opponents. Curry doesn’t try to dazzle; he tries to inform. To that end, he’s dazzling.
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Dom LaVarco, Caldwell, N.J.: “The only reason I didn’t want the ‘Big Game’ — Super Bowl 48 — in N.J. is that for the next 3½ years we’ll have to listen to sports radio hosts wonder if it’s gonna be cold here in February.”
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Thursday, when Jayson Werth struck out to complete the Mets’ three-shutouts sweep of the Phils, Gary Cohen might’ve reacted with a natural response, some sort of reflective astonishment, “How about that?” Instead, he went on a forced, didn’t-fit screaming jag, as if the Mets had won the pennant with a home run, or as if he were auditioning to replace John Sterling.
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Several of bowling’s biggest names — Walter Ray Williams, Pete Weber, Johnny Petraglia, Norm Duke, Parker Bohn — will be at Great Adventure in Jackson, N.J., June 11 and 12, for the PBA’s Team Shootout that will be taped for ESPN airing, June 27. Admission to the event is free. PBA.com for details.
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Alhough it lately might seem that way, Floyd Landis, admitted liar, hardly is the first in and around world-class cycling to accuse Lance Armstrong of drugging; he’s only the latest.
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Michael Kay was right: No hype, no exaggeration; his YES “CenterStage” session with Mike Tyson is frightening and riveting.
And it also was strange to hear many in the studio audience applaud some of Tyson’s statements, perhaps because there’s no other established group response to some of his answers.
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Reader David Distefano notes that Marv Albert‘s signature call has changed with the game from, “Yes!,” to, “That’s a two-point basket; he had a foot on the line.”
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Norman Esiason, to the Principal’s Office: On WFAN, last week, Boomer Esiason had fourth-grader/Brad Benson fun with the name of new Mets’ pitcher, R.A. Dickey. Geez.
Meadowlands Super Bowl is all about naming rights
At last count, the NFL’s “Great news, local football fans!” con job attached to Tuesday’s Super Bowl 2014 vote wasn’t swallowed by as many saps as the NFL had hoped. Too many realized that a Super Bowl here has zero to do with local fans but plenty to do with the Jets and Giants landing a bigger ticket fish for naming rights to PSL Stadium.
Besides, why would those who have been priced out of Jets and Giants games celebrate a Super Bowl coming to the stadium they can’t afford to enter for regular season games?
Dave Neugebauer, a reader from Glen Head, noted the detachment: “So nice that Super Bowl PSL will be played in NY/NJ. What year does that mean, anyway?”
By the way, if the NFL wants to reduce the chance of freezing weather messing with its championship game in February 2014, it could start the game at 1 p.m., right? After all, early afternoon and in bright sunshine is when that “Ice Bowl” NFL championship began, not at 6:45 p.m. Sure, a 1:05 kickoff. Fat chance.
Too bad Michael Jackson couldn’t be around to entertain at Supe 48’s halftime. He could’ve worn two gloves.
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Tuesday on SNY, Keith Hernandez nearly used the “D-word;” he nearly acknowledged that baseball had/has a significant PED — the D is for drugs — problem.
Gary Cohen and Ron Darling spoke of how the Phillies’ Raul Ibanez didn’t become a slugging star until he was 30, his first full season with the Royals. Yet, Cohen and Darling continued, at 37 and after a big start last year, Ibanez has either been injured or in a power slump.
Hernandez took it from there: “I think we’ve all, during that period, of the mid 1990s to 2005, where a lot of athletes were playing longer, I think those days are over. I think we’re seeing more aging, now.”
He’s getting closer.
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Last week, here, it was noted that the expression “trash talk” is older than most realize, that Dobie Gray, in his 1965 hit, “I’m In With The In Crowd,” sung about “Spendin’ cash, talkin’ trash.”
Now reader David Mosler informs us that George Eliot, in her 1872 novel, “Middlemarch,” began chapter 45 with, “The trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate . . .”
That paragraph, incidentally, ends with a description of defamatory gossip as “ignorant puffing” — perhaps the earliest reference to sports talk radio.