DON’T worry. Be happy.
This past October, from the moment ESPN announced it had entered the mix to televise the Masters, the fear and loathing among golf fans in anticipation of Chris Berman’s smothering presence has grown by the day.
With the Masters just three weeks away, e-mails, once expressing mere anguish, have begun to arrive carrying vague “goodbye-cruel-world” threats. The imagined sounds of Berman on the telecasts – “K.J. Choi To The World, for par” – have made people tense as a mousetrap.
Relax.
Berman will have nothing to do with this year’s Masters telecasts, no presence whatsoever. There’s not even a pro-am for ESPN to show him clowning in. Mike Tirico will be the only ESPN person seen through the network’s Thursday and Friday, 4-7 p.m. window. And Tirico is assigned to conduct interviews from Butler Cabin.
The rest of ESPN’s telecasts will be in the hands of CBS and CBS personnel. Berman won’t even be a member of ESPN’s three-man, on-site “SportsCenter” team.
Hmmm. ESPN’s first Masters, four ESPNers assigned to be there and none of them Berman? Would NBC leave Bob Costas home during a biggie? Would CBS give Jim Nantz the week off? Would Fox leave its robot in the shop? With newly purchased rights to the Masters, wouldn’t you want your No. 1 guy to be there in some role?
That makes for some history-based suspicion. Berman is not only ESPN’s highest-paid personality, he’s the on-course host of ESPN’s U.S. Open coverage, during which times, as if by popular demand, he has gradually added more of his tired and annoying self-promotional shtick. (Ya think the Masters folks don’t watch the Open?)
That Berman will be nowhere in sight for ESPN’s first Masters doesn’t rhyme with ESPN’s usual big-game scheme. It’s not the kind of event one misses because it’s bowling night.
It therefore stands to reason that the Masters boys, who keep a firm grip on everything from TV announcers to tickets – the grains of sand in the bunkers are numbered – made it clear from the start that Berman not make ESPN’s cut. Either that, or ESPN preemptively volunteered to bench Berman.
It stands to reason that even if Berman swore to leave his seltzer bottle and whoopee cushion home – TV announcers choose their words with such gem-cutters’ care during the Masters that the telecasts make for unintended comedy – he was considered by the Masters people and/or ESPN to be a behavioral risk.
*
No one can ever tell John Thompson “no,” not even on fundamental right-from-wrong grounds. Basic conflict-of-interest ethics, the kind taught in Georgetown’s classrooms, are ignored in service to Thompson. To tell John Thompson no is to risk dire professional and personal consequences.
So Westwood One Radio has again “assigned him” (met his request) to call Georgetown’s NCAA tournament game or games, a game or games coached by his son. Eight sites to send him to and he’s sent to the site of his son’s games. Again.
*
Speaking of again, starting with the first game of the NCAAs yesterday, CBS sustained its habit of diverting viewers’ attention from live play to read so-what graphics. Within the first five minutes of Xavier-Georgia, we were three times shown shooting-percentage graphics that, five minutes in, meant nothing.
And that nonsense lasted all day, all night.
Also unfortunate was that a game of considerable local interest – Stanford-Cornell, from Anaheim – was lost to CBS’ local and national evening newscasts.
*
Time for John Flaherty, valued YES baseball analyst, to become a more accomplished broadcaster. It’s time he ceased prefacing comments with, “You know, Michael [Kay]” and began talking to all of us. Just speak, John, especially since you know what you’re talking about.
*
That many people were left bothered by Billy Crystal’s at-bat for the Yankees has been explained or dismissed as jealous pettiness. But it might be a case of justifiable resentment. After all, while Crystal considers himself the world’s biggest Yankee fan, he’s tied with thousands of others.
Crystal’s not the biggest Yankee fan as much as he is among the most privileged. And that status allows him to become one of the most intrusive. Over time, the humor and novelty found in such privileged intrusions can only rub off to reveal resentment.
It’s much like watching Spike Lee demonstrate from his courtside seat at Knick games. We know that if we jumped up and got into players’ faces as Lee has famously done, we’d surely be ejected, perhaps even arrested.
It’s like hearing Mike Francesa’s boasts of having the best seats to anything and everything. The public exploitation of one’s privilege, after a while, can make big shots seem small.