THERE is no one – and I mean no one – quite like Mike Francesa.
The closest anyone comes is the Wizard of Oz, but he’s a fictional character. Even so, Francesa beats the Wiz. Francesa’s self-importance is so advanced that when the light turns green, he thinks it’s because he knows people down at the DOT.
Francesa was on the air last October when word came from a Jersey newspaper’s Web site that Joe Torre had just agreed to a one-year, $5 million renewal with the Yankees. As the ultimate insider, Francesa then pretended that he was not the least bit surprised. Yep, he knew it all along; Torre will be back. End of story.
Minutes later, word came that Torre had rejected that offer as an insult.
Francesa, as if no listener knew any better, then pretended he knew that would happen, too. He began to holler that Torre had been insulted by the Hank Steinbrenner Yankees! Torre, Francesa raged for the next few hours, was left no choice but to turn down such a disgusting offer! Shame on the Yankees!
This past Tuesday, with Torre gone and Hank Steinbrenner to pander to, Francesa again revised his Mr. Inside take on the matter. That offer the Yanks made to Torre? It was a respectable one, said Francesa. Yep, he knowingly said, nothing insulting about it. He never even hinted that he’d said – let alone hollered, and for hours – anything to the contrary.
He’s absolutely amazing. The Emperor’s same old new clothes.
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Not entirely sure what ESPN saw in Cris Carter from his work on HBO’s departed “Inside the NFL,” but it has hired him as a studio analyst.
ESPN has also hired Bobby Knight to work the studio during college basketball’s postseason. That Knight once tried to belittle one of ESPN’s most valued reporters, Jeremy Schaap (among who knows how many others), apparently wasn’t enough to resist the temptation.
Always good for morale when the management rewards a guy who has abused the help.
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Rep. Bobby Rush (D.-Ill.), the chair of last week’s committee that quizzed America’s sports authorities on drug policies, seems to be among the very few to realize that while pro wrestling is fake, its performers die real deaths – while the business escapes accountability.
Rush said he was “exceptionally and extremely disappointed” that Vince McMahon was the only one invited who declined to appear. “Steroid abuse in pro wrestling,” said Rush, “is probably worse than in any professional sport or amateur sport. The number of deaths in the professional ranks is startling, to say the least.”
Worse, McMahon’s no-show surely deprived some Congressmen and their staffs important autograph and picture-posing time.
But if McMahon’s day before Congress comes, we’d hope that Rep. Rush asks him to explain the medical condition he suffered from that caused his own steroid use. And next, why the WWE’s (then the WWF) favorite physician, Dr. George Zahorian, wound up in a federal prison. And that’s just for starters.
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As if there aren’t enough bad golf jokes, the Golf Channel continues to be an endless one. Thursday, it broke into live coverage of the Honda Classic to throw it to the studio for word from anchor Adam Barr that pro Arjun Atwal has “been cleared of speed-racing charges.”
Left unsaid was that the charge against Atwal stemmed from a high-speed car accident in Florida that caused a fatality. Atwal wasn’t just being investigated for speed racing (is there any other kind?), he could have been looking at hard time. GC’s report made it seem as if he beat a speeding ticket.
Then there’s reader Dan Doyle of Chicopee, Mass. When he e-mailed GC asking why it again abandoned live coverage of a PGA Tour event at 6 p.m., the network’s response read, “Sorry, we did not have the rights from the PGA Tour to air past 6 p.m.”
On and off the course, that’s a bad lie. On Thursdays and Fridays, when GC bolts from golf for its studio show (unless Tiger Woods is still playing) at 6 p.m., GC not only has the rights to continue showing golf, it’s the only network that does.
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A few weeks back, during “Brian Leetch Night,” a Garden scoreboard carried the extra-large message, “Welcome Home Bryan.” Apparently, Bryan Trottier had just entered the Nassau Coliseum.
Wednesday, during Bobcats-Knicks on MSG Network, a camera focused on legendary sportscaster Bob Wolff and his wife, Jane. Mike Breen spoke of how much Wolff, the first TV voice of the Knicks, means to the Garden. A graphic appeared identifying Wolff as “Bob Wolfe.”
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While sports talk radio hosts are encouraged to speak “guy talk,” WFAN’s Evan Roberts, last week, spoke of those times “When I’m groovin’ with a lady.” Hmmm. That’s the kind of guy talk spoken by guys who spend Saturday nights groovin’ with a bag of Doritos.