LATE Supreme Court Justice Potter Stew art, asked to define pornography, famously wrote that it’s difficult to define “but I know it when I see it.”
Same goes for great sports TV. It’s not the game-ending home run; TV can’t make that happen; TV’s supposed to show that. It’s the stuff TV can add, the “best seat in the house” stuff. And unforgettable TV often shows up in otherwise forgettable games. And you know it when you see it because when you see it you know you’re not likely to forget it.
For example, Oct. 16, 2000, the Mets’ NLCS Game 5 clincher against the Cardinals at Shea. At 7-0 Mets in the seventh, the Cards brought in Rick Ankiel, then in the early stages of an incredible and apparently incurable wildness streak that eventually would return him to the majors as an outfielder.
Ankiel, in two NLCS appearances totaling four outs, would walk five and throw four wild pitches. In his Game 2 start, he was replaced in the first inning. And as Ankiel again threw wildly – to the raucous delight of Mets fans – FOX’s “Voices of the Game” aired a clip of Mets pitching coach Dave Wallace, in the dugout, talking to pitcher Rick Reed moments earlier.
“I hope our fans do the right thing if the same thing happens,” Wallace said of Ankiel and his wildness. Reed responded with a fat-chance shake of his head, as if Wallace was wasting his compassion.
FOX’s presentation of Wallace’s unfulfilled and unrealistic hope that fans wouldn’t kick a guy when he’s way down was a moment that stuck. Always will.
Thursday, that ALCS Game 5 hassle at the mound between Kenny Lofton and Josh Beckett had passed when FOX presented an audio/visual tape of plate umpire Gary Cederstrom quickly demanding and restoring order in his court, one of the great performances in officiating history.
Cederstrom ran directly to Beckett: “Josh, not a word, not a word, not a word!”
Beckett complied. He stood back and said nothing. Then, shooing both teams’ pitchers back to their bullpens, Cederstrom said, “You pitchers, get your (wind) sprints in, now run all the way back!”
Great stuff, unforgettable stuff – Cederstrom for President!
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FOX’s superb use of technology throughout Game 5 may have been the greatest unscripted celebration of baseball umpiring in TV history. In addition to presenting that Cederstrom episode, FOX used extreme close-up slo-mo replays that showed the umps to have made the correct call on two extremely close plays.
A Mike Lowell shot down the left-field line was shown to have clearly landed foul by no more than 2 inches. LF ump Brian Gorman, back to camera, was seen straddling the line, in perfect position to get it right.
Then there was that “Manny being Manny” high fly off the wall, the one when Manny Ramirez made it all the way to first base. The last of several blown-up replays showed the ball to have smacked the yellow line at the top of that wall, confirming RF ump Paul Emmel’s call that the ball was alive, even if Ramirez wasn’t.
And, hey, Tim McCarver was beautiful when he got angry, ripping Ramirez for his career-long style-first self-regard, a fellow no more inclined to run out a ball in the playoffs than one in spring training.
(That brought to mind the absurd claim of ESPN “Baseball Tonight” expert analyst Orestes Destrade, 10 days before, that Ramirez is “the consummate professional.”)
On the other hand, FOX got caught stylin’, too, when it cut to a needless clip package just as Lofton went after Beckett.
There was something else. When the second inning ended, Beckett could be seen in the background, walking toward Indians first-base coach Luis Rivera, covering his mouth with his glove, leaning in to say something to Rivera. What was that about? Did he want Rivera to deliver a message?
We hoped FOX might address that in the top of the third. But it didn’t. Can’t have it all.
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Reader G. Plutko writes to ask whether Mike Francesa’s condition is treatable. After all, Thursday on WFAN/YES, Francesa and Chris Russo opened with a spiel about how the night before they were backstage guests of Bruce Springsteen, and how the superstar couldn’t have been more friendly, more gracious, more accommodating, more classy.
Minutes later, Francesa was back to big-timing callers, showing them his rude side, talking down to them, dismissing them as unworthy of his time.