OFF BASE: Michael Kay and Gary Cohen (inset) often hurt their broadcasts by talking in absolutes and overestimating the value of statistics. (YES; NY Post: Charles Wenzelberg (inset))
Perhaps because it’s late in the season but it’s getting tougher to listen to some of this stuff. Even the orange juice is finding it hard to keep its concentration.
Monday, 6-4 Yankees, top of the ninth, two out, two on, two strikes to Toronto’s Colby Rasmus. “[Rafael] Soriano does not wilt in these situations,” Michael Kay firmly asserts to his YES audience. Whew, what a relief, huh, Yankees fans?
Kay often speaks in absolutes that don’t compute. “This series is over!” he jubilantly declared after the Yankees’ come-back win in Game 1 of the 2010 ALCS. Texas won it in six.
So, after declaring that “Soriano doesn’t wilt in these situations,” Rasmus clobbered the next pitch for a homer.
Then Kay followed that with, “A rare blown save for Soriano.”
Rare? Mmmm, no. For what such stats are worth, it was his third, this year. Last season, he blew three in just five opportunities. He blew three of 12 one season with Atlanta, four of six the season before. He lately has been good, but blown saves, for him, are not rare.
Next night, Mets-Phillies on SNY; Ryan Howard batting against Chris Young. “Howard has struggled vs. Young,” says Gary Cohen, “just two-for-13 in his career.”
Come on! If such a sample were significant — was even worth mentioning — why was Howard batting cleanup. How many times did Young walk Howard? How many line-drive outs?
Three pitches later, Howard hit a grand slam. That made him three-for-14 against Young, thus, while still “struggling,” he was struggling a bit less.
Still, for pure Yankee pride and joy (Pride and Joy are the official dish and laundry detergents of the New York Yankees) there’s Ol’ Unreliable. Sunday, John Sterling got his/our week off to a strong start when he applied his signature, one-size-fits-all call to a Nick Swisher home run, ending with “Gone!”
In fact, though, Swisher had hit a one-hopper against the wall in right.
Monday, Sterling stayed hot, reporting that, “A lot of home runs in Yankee Stadium go to the short porch.” Who knew? Think it’s like that in other ballparks?
But Tuesday, he reported something I’d never before heard from a baseball broadcaster: “Jeter grounds it foul behind home plate.”
Derek Jeter hit a grounder behind him? I suppose that’s possible but I’d come to think of grounders as being hit somewhere in front of the batter. Perhaps Jeter was facing the backstop when he swung.
Whatever, couldn’t wait to get home to see the tape of Jeter hitting a grounder behind him.
What a disappointment! Jeter only fouled it back; tipped it into the dirt.
Ahh, Sterling. But what can ya do? It’s like the airline stewardess who asked the passenger if he’d like breakfast. “What are the selections?” he asked. “Yes or no,” she said.
* The local radio wind continues to swirl, shift, then swirl some more. This week’s surprise, a second one-year extension of WCBS’s Yankee rights — through next season — adds likelihood to a major move into the New York market of the new CBS Sports Radio Network.
By this time next year, there could be an AM or FM station here dedicated (owned or rented) to CBS Sports’ national programming, while CBS prepares a long-term deal for that station to carry the Yankees. Sources claim CBS is shopping for an N.Y. station.
At the same time, the Mets will be in position to benefit from a bidding war between incumbent WFAN (also owned by CBS Radio) and ESPN-NY, which Saturday shifts exclusively to 98.7 FM. (Spanish ESPN Deportes-NY begins on 1050, Sept. 7.)
Then there are possibilities that could create shared programming between WFAN and CBS Sports Radio and cable’s CBS Sports TV Network, essentially creating an all-day rival to both ESPN’s radio and TV. Regardless, this latest extension of WCBS’s Yankees rights indicates how eager CBS Radio is to keep them from ESPN.
And Clear Channel Radio, which recently purchased WOR-AM, claims interest in local sports rights.
The only thing almost certain is that about this time next year will begin open season on Yankees and Met rights, and big changes likely will follow.
Rules for Dez are nothing new in life
What’s this fuss about the “rules” the Cowboys reportedly attached to Dez Bryant? No strip clubs, no late-night boozing, et. al. Those aren’t new; they’re the same rules issued to husbands before golf trips to Myrtle Beach.
* Like the way reader Joe Weinert thinks. Instead of big-time football colleges suspending players for the first one or two games — traditional pre-determined, pre-paid home blowouts — suspend them for the last one or two games of the regular season.
* Love those way up high shots of Yankee Stadium on YES. No better way to show, rather than only describe, exactly where all the fielders are playing.
* Michael Kay has agreed to a multi-year extension with ESPN Radio-NY. … Still curious to know why Roger Clemens didn’t choose a doctor to inject him with Lidocaine.
* Reps from the Football Championship Subdivision, until 2006 known as NCAA Div. 1-AA, are debating a new name, one that’s easier to speak and remember, while not casting a second-class light. Hmm. How about the OAC, as in the Occasionally Attend Class Division?
* Per ESPN’s new long-term extension to carry MLB, reader Bruce Weber, Raleigh, NC, asks a good question: “How can these networks continue to pay double and triple the previous rights fees?” Answer: Consult your cable/satellite bills.
Jets hit a new low in customer disservice
Need more proof the sports world has gone nuts?
1) The charge to park at PSL Stadium for Sunday’s Panthers-Jets exhibition game was $50!
But since the PSL Era began, the Jets, more than the Giants, have systematically done the last thing that any business can afford to do — teach steady customers to live without you.
And now that the Jets have done just that, sales reps are begging those customers to return.
2) Allen Pinkett, the former star Notre Dame RB and current t analyst on ND’s national football radiocasts, this week told a Chicago radio station that ND would win more games if it only recruited more “bad citizens” and “criminals”
What’s that? Yes, he was serious.
He figured that ND was too short on thugs to still successfully compete with college giants.
Pinkett, who was pulled from tomorrow’s ND-Navy game in Dublin, later issued an apology for his “poor choice of words,” but the most perverse part is that he may have been right.