It’s The punchline to the old solar-landing joke: “So we’ll go at night.” … Except now there’s a flight scheduled every night.
It remains astonishing how networks, and at great expense, are driven to prove that anything the other networks can do they can do even worse. Everyone takes a shot at reinventing the flat tire.
TBS, throughout these MLB playoffs, has been unable to perform the simplest task: Providing an instantly discernible, right-now score, inning-and-count box in the corner of the screen. Those chimp-simple but pertinent numbers have been turned into a colorized, follow-the-dots, diamonds-and-dashes brainteaser eventually solved through squinted eyes and reasoned guesswork.
“Let’s see. Over there’s a tiny number 6 above an itsy-bitsy arrow, and to the right of that yellow thing, are some teensy-weensy dots. … Hmm. I think it’s 6-0, second period, one team either has a timeout left or is in foul trouble.”
TBS wants three-man booths? Who doesn’t? Excess long ago replaced logic, just as live TV now wants to be radio. But is there no one to remind these fellas that there’s no reason to discuss everything and anything until viewers’ hearing either dulls or drives them to the bell tower to give Quasimodo a hand?
The TBS crew assigned to the Yankees-Orioles — Ernie Johnson, John Smoltz and Cal Ripken — quickly established itself as another non-stop baseball lecture series when we only signed up to watch a game. It’s also another crew that encourages us to ignore what we see — often several times in replays — to instead believe what they said we saw.
Monday, Ichiro Suzuki scored when he avoided the lunging tag of catcher Matt Wieters, who had caught the throw up the third-base line. Ichiro first missed the plate, but then dived back to put a hand on it before Wieters, also diving, could tag him. It was that clear, that simple.
Yet, Smoltz, then Ripken, went into a spiel from which they concluded that Wieters botched the play.
“I’ve often wondered why, as a catcher, you don’t lay on the plate,” followed by the suggestion that Wieters should have just “waited for [Ichiro]” at the plate.
What both said Wieters should have done, was, in this case, physically impossible. Wieters would have had to make the catch, then done a 180, then, from a dead stop, beat Ichiro, already running hard, to the plate in order to “wait for him” or just “lay on the plate,” blocking Ichiro from it.
Wieters not only did the best he could, he did the only thing he could. Or perhaps he should have remained at the plate the entire time in order to tag Ichiro with that spare ball catchers hide in their back pockets.
The stat graphics during TBS’ latest postseason run thus far have been culled from the standard TV collection of indiscriminant, context-barren, satire-proof nonsense.
Twice, during Monday’s telecast, TBS posted this about Andy Pettitte: “First postseason start since Oct. 18, 2010.”
So what? That was the last time he could start a postseason game! He didn’t pitch last season! Why not go with, “Pettitte’s first postseason start since his last one”? Or, “Andy likes carrot cake, but if they don’t have it he’ll go with the black and white cookie.”
This interactive “Social Dugout” thing that TBS has been pitching is clearly intended to 1) gauge the number of nitwits watching, or, 2) solidify the notion that TV rights are available to anyone if the money’s right.
I’m not creative enough to make this stuff up, folks: Saturday, as seen during Tigers-A’s, “Which team will commit the most hits?” and Wednesday, during the eighth inning of O’s-Yankees, “How many pitches will be thrown?”
Ya mean in this half-inning, or at the Idiots’ Picnic?
Yesterday, during Giants-Reds, the question was “Will there be a lead change?”
The score, at the time, was 0-0. Yep, rocket ship to the sun, every day at dusk.
Teams’ cost for tix prices is empty seats
The Yankees yesterday sent a mass email begging folks to buy tickets to last night’s game. “Old” Yankee Stadium never had a problem selling out playoff games — and it sat 7,000 more.
The Jets, having PSL’d their way through a 20-year waiting list, now play to lots of empty seats. And no matter how much the Jets discount what they can’t sell, they can’t compete with the secondary-market pricing that their own greed created.
Same with the Yankees. They can’t beat the heavily discounted resale prices that the team’s avarice created. Pigs get slaughtered!
The good news: Yankee Stadium parking, during the playoffs, was only hiked $10 — to $45!
You never teach your best customers to live without you. And unless teams radically reduce prices to minimally logical levels — especially for the better-to-best seats — that empty look will worsen.
Funny, how TV folks never mention what viewers plainly see, such as empty up-front seats at Yankee games. Ever hear a TV guy/gal working a Jet or Giant game even say “PSL”?
* What did the Jets expect from Mark Gastineau on Monday night, after handing him the stadium microphone? If they were surprised by his slurred, incoherent rant, they must know him by name only.
Carroll “Beano” Cook, Pittsburgh-based college football freak whose growling for years was enjoyed on ESPN, died yesterday at 81. In 1981, after the Iranian/Islamist hostage crisis, MLB gave lifetime passes to the 52 freed Americans. Cook’s snarling take: “Haven’t they suffered enough?”
In 2006, the Cardinals, with the 13th-best regular-season record, won the World Series among eight eligibles. This year the Cardinals, one of 10 qualifiers, can win it, tied with the Tigers for the 11th best record.
By now, WFAN must have a warehouse filled with missing Mike Francesa tapes. Before Wednesday’s Game 3, he belittled callers who preferred Raul Ibanez’s bat to Alex Rodriguez’s. Later that night …
How is it CBS’ Phil Simms is able to make football sense without talking Pigskin Latin? Monday night on ESPN, after Texans RB Arian Foster broke through for a long run, Jon Gruden exclaimed, “It’s not just the zone stretch!” Hmm.
TBS’ Bob Brenly yesterday scolded Teddy Roosevelt for his excessive celebration after winning the Presidents’ Mascot Race at Cardinals-Nationals: “Act as if you’ve been there before!”