FOR all the production meetings the TV industry holds, few seem to include firm reminders to announcers to admit their mistakes and say, “I was wrong” instead of sitting there pretending they were right or the audience didn’t hear it, or the fools watching wouldn’t know better, either way.
Anything less than, “I got that wrong” becomes a lose-lose, a credibility killer on the announcer’s end, an insult to the audience.
Saturday, the Dodgers’ Andre Ethier, batting in the ninth with none on against Billy Wagner, struck out on a ball that bounced, then kicked off catcher Brian Schneider.
Home plate ump Tim Welke made an emphatic “safe” sign to indicate that Ethier was not yet out, that the ball was alive. Schneider picked it up and tagged Ethier, who’d started toward first. Welke signaled “out.” Baseball 101. End of story.
Except on FOX, where Joe Buck, a career baseball play-by-player who has demonstrated shocking weakness on baseball rules, made a fantasy-filled mess of it.
With a knowing chuckle, Buck stated that Welke had at first got it wrong, then changed his call to make it right. Welke, Buck claimed, “put his hands out to signal foul tip.” (No he didn’t, that’s signaled with a hand-on-hand brushing motion.) But by starting to run to first, Buck continued, Ethier let Welke know that he’d actually swung and missed. That, Buck affirmatively concluded, was why Welke called Ethier out.
Huh?
Tim McCarver, without actually telling Buck that he might have been the only one watching who didn’t understand what had just happened, then straightened it out for all of us – a clarification politely designed to get only Buck straightened out. Ethier, McCarver explained, swung and missed but was not out until he was tagged by Schneider.
Buck didn’t say another word about it. It was as if he’d never said anything to the contrary in the first place, and that either way, we wouldn’t know any better.
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Also on FOX on Saturday, the Hit Zone graphic made it clear that the pitch location difference between Matt Kemp being a .600 hitter and a .217 hitter is less than the space between “space” and “between.”
Fabulous tape, yesterday on YES, of Bobby Abreu holding his head and wincing in horror as he ran to first after he saw his line drive hit the face of Twins’ starter Nick Blackburn. It told a memorable human interest story in under one second.
Well, what were you expecting Saturday night from CBS, a dignified presentation of cage-fighting? The sell was WWE/XFL. CBS host/shill Gus Johnson, obedient soldier, seemed unnaturally charged up, as if he were working a used car lot in TV commercials not seen before 2 a.m.
ESPN’s relentless service to ESPN mostly serves to make ESPN look small. The following breaking news graphic appeared throughout Saturday morning: “ESPN hockey analyst Barry Melrose reportedly will be named head coach of the Lightning. Melrose says, ‘My desire to coach again has never been a secret, but I love what I do at ESPN.’ ” Yeesh!
One day, following a loss, Venus Williams or Serena Williams will give a little credit to their opponent, just a little. One day.
So I put the knock on WFAN’s Craig Carton for his crude, rude, lewd dude act. And Carton responded by twisting my last name into an on-air vulgarity. I guess he showed me! (By the way, Craig, anything you can do to “Mushnick” all the Mushnicks have heard from 11-year-olds by the time we turned 10.)
Reader Dan Sheehan, with friends and family on Friday, celebrated his fifth anniversary in remission following a bone marrow transplant. That’s why no matter how great the odds against, you still play to win, you still play it Dan Sheehan-style.
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Friday on WFAN/YES, Mike Francesa and Chris Russo swung at John Sterling for talking over the beat writers who join him in the booth during Yankees games. They said it’s annoying to hear Sterling interrupt them and exploit their presence just to say what he thinks. Yep, Francesa and Russo, the two worst offenders, are offended by that.
Later Friday, with Joe Girardi on, Russo’s questions were answered by Francesa. Francesa didn’t actually ask questions as much as he made statements, the kind designed for Girardi to reply, “You’re absolutely right, Mike.”
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Eric Hannan, reader from Houston, was watching Saturday’s Astros-Brewers from Miller Park, where sausage mascots race before the top of the seventh, when FOX Sports Net-Houston posted this: “Astros 9-5 when Italian wins sausage race.”