LEAVE it to these Mets to win 13-0, throw a one-hitter and still look bad in the process.
Saturday, the Mets, one-game back with two left, still played minimalist baseball, still appeared uninterested in running to the next available base, including first. But even in the throes of a colossal collapse, they still performed their home run handshakes – their practiced dance moves, the things they worked hard at – flawlessly.
On SNY, Ron Darling, who had a very good year, was not happy. He wondered aloud why Lastings Milledge would hit a home run to make it 9-0 then do his showboat skit with Jose Reyes before reaching the dugout, in full view of the Marlins. Reyes, early in the game, had stood at home, figuring the chopper he hit would go foul. It didn’t. Darling was not happy with what he was watching.
Neither was Keith Hernandez. “The Mets,” he added, “aren’t loved around the National League.”
On Fox, where the Phils were losing to the Nationals, Tim McCarver noted the bench-clearing hassle Reyes invited with the Marlins, then made sagacious sense:
The Mets have one scheduled game left, against an out-of-it team that couldn’t be expected to much care about winning that game unless something happened to motivate them, to get their juices juiced, to tick them off. And the Mets, Saturday, and during a blowout, no less, had done just that.
And McCarver nailed it. Before the Marlins even scored one of their seven first-inning runs, yesterday, they could be seen along the top step of the dugout. A dead team, they were into it. The Mets, as McCarver predicted, made sure of that.
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With all the college football experts ESPN/ABC throws at us every Saturday, we figured that at least one would have pointed out that on a day marked by “big upsets,” No. 21 Penn St. losing at Illinois, now 4-1, was not one of them. But such light rarely shines. Ever-changing rankings trump never-changing realities, every time.
Several times during CBS’s Broncos-Colts, Phil Simms said nothing after plays, apparently because he had nothing worth saying. But that never stops others.
Maryland, a 161/2-point dog, was beating Rutgers, 20-17, and had the ball late in the third. It had three RBs making good yardage almost every play – they would total 262 running yards – and on ABC, analyst David Norrie, for a second time, said the Terps should try to mix it up, throw more on first and second down. OK, but why?
Just before Jay Payton hit a bases-loaded triple off Mariano Rivera, Friday, both the Yanks’ and Orioles’ telecasts dutifully noted, verbally and in graphics, that Payton is oh-for-six in his career against Rivera. But as reader Mike Marra of New Hyde Park recalled, Payton hit a three-run homer off Rivera in the 2000 World Series. Or should World Series at-bats be disregarded as insignificant?
When Rutgers, down three, stopped Maryland on a fourth-and-one late in the fourth, RU radioman Chris Carlin carried on so hysterically it was hard to discern what he was screaming about. He sounded as if he’d just won a 50-50 raffle. Or had been electrocuted.
NBC golf co-host Dan Hicks would be such a better listen if he’d only drop his habit of decorating simple facts with silly cliches. During Presidents Cup coverage, Hicks couldn’t simply say that a U.S. team is “one up” or “one down.” He had to say, “enjoys a one-hole lead,” or “holds a slim, one-hole lead” or “is looking at a one-hole deficit.” Yeesh.
Because the sell of the next game is always more important than the telecast of the one it’s showing, ESPN/ABC college football telecasts now seem to be under new orders: When a player is on the field, down and injured, cut to a video package of what’s coming up next or tomorrow on ESPN or ABC; to hell with the kid.
SNY, late in the Mets’ season, joined YES in becoming top-heavy with those noxious, bogus ProCede ads. Hard to believe that neither of New York’s baseball networks can do better than Giuseppe Franco.
Seemingly without fail, yesterday included, CBS, every Sunday afternoon during its NFL telecasts, now airs an ambush promo for one of its sitcoms, a come-on that includes a crotch gag that’s always crude and never funny. And the fact that these promos are inappropriate for sports/family viewing is exactly why they’re produced and presented.