TELL IT LIKE IT ISN’T: Mike Francesa’s endless parade of faulty info and bad predictions is reminiscent of late war propaganda expert Tokyo Rose (inset). (AP)
In a city thick with guess-again and newspaper-reliant radio blowhards — the looming cicada invasion might provide some audio relief — immodesty prevented Mike Francesa from mentioning that this week he made world history.
The Academie’ International le Radio et Buzzing Devices, headquartered in Vichy, France, announced Francesa is now the all-time leader in disseminating half-truths, non-truths, wishful fabrications and in treating both listeners and co-workers as “les miserables.”
The announcement further reads, “In so doing, Monsieur Francesa has surpassed Tokyo Rose.”
The statement later noted Francesa surpassed Tokyo Rose — no relation to Howie Rose — because she did make good on her promises to play popular music for Allied sailors and soldiers throughout World War II.
Wonder which one put Francesa over the top. Perhaps it was Tuesday’s bit when he knowingly declared John Tortorella’s job as Rangers coach was in no jeopardy, whatsoever. You know how he says such things, as if he actually knows.
Of course, Francesa knows as much about the few things he admits to not knowing well — hockey, Al Alburquerque — as he does about those he claims superior expertise — baseball, basketball, football, golf, horseracing and the absence of a sales tax in Connecticut (startling news to its residents). And the sum of that knowledge is nothing.
Yet, he declared Tortorella, known to hockey fans as divisive and abrasive — and coming off a five-game playoff loss — safe. As if he knew!
And he referred to Tortorella as “Torts,” another transparency to promote himself as a XXX-L
big shot. “Torts” is among the legions of Francesa’s imaginary big-time buddies throughout sports, entertainment, global politics, waste management and those who employ drivers.
Given Francesa’s track record for being both colossally and immediately wrong — Volume Six is nearly complete — Tortorella was fired the next day. And then Francesa credited himself for breaking the story — the one he knowingly assured us, a day prior, would not happen!
If we were as arrogantly, consistently and sensationally wrong as Francesa, we either would have ceased making “superior knowledge-based” predictions or begun to have fun with our failures.
Either way, we would cease pretending to an audience that knows better, that we know better, and that our lowly listeners are lucky to share the air we breathe — at least after we exhale. But Francesa is all gall, no shame.
And he wasn’t done with the Rangers. An hour or so after Tortorella was sacked — as if on Francesa’s reverse-cue — he said, “The name I’m hearing” to replace Tortorella “is Lindsey Ruff.” Said it three times — “Lindsey Ruff.”
Fascinating. Lindy Ruff has been an NHL presence as a player then coach since 1979, but the name he “kept hearing” he likely never had heard of until it became easy, NHL-wide speculation, then he presented it as “what I’m hearing.”
Several times daily, Francesa, from behind his curtained lab in The Emerald City, tries to make a fool of someone — bullying and denigrating undeserving souls, in and out of the studio. That’s his sense of sport and good radio. But such misanthropic egomania invariably exposes him as dressed in the emperor’s old new clothes.
Perhaps Francesa surpassed Tokyo Rose on Tuesday, when he granted a peon a few seconds. The caller sounded like an elderly man with a point to make about a “a hitch” in Ike Davis’s swing. Francesa jumped him, cut him off, beat him up. He sarcastically, cruelly claimed that he, Mike Francesa, had no idea Davis is in a slump.
That Francesa’s unwarranted, schoolyard bully mistreatment was lost on the poor man, and that Francesa thought his audience would admire the way he belittled and big-timed this guy just for kicks, made Francesa the heel once again.
Anyone and everyone can be wrong, a lot, too. But Francesa speaks as if he 1) knows all, and 2) is never wrong, when both 1) and 2) are b) completely false. In fact he often is so wrong and so disinclined toward the honesty to acknowledge such, it’s funny! The only one left who takes Francesa seriously is Francesa!
Thus, when he pompously picked the elderly Spurs to lose in the first round of the NBA playoffs (they then beat the Warriors) then followed it with the Grizzlies breezing past the Spurs (the Spurs swept!) he again set himself up for the ridicule he pours on others, many of them only guilty of being foolish enough to wait to speak with him, make that, Him.
The all-knowing sage who mocked professional forecasters to instead predict Hurricane Sandy would be a mere passing rainstorm, could bring instant world peace, simply by expertly predicting World War III for this Tuesday.
CC Sabathia, not pitching well as of late this week, was given Francesa’s OK. “I’m not worried about Sabathia,” he declared, as if he were Yankees manager Joe Girardi. “Whew,” wrote reader Jim Atorino, “that’s a relief.”
RU mess obscures arrest
THERE was more clarity as to who knew what, asked what, said what, and when they stopped knowing/asking/saying it, during the Watergate hearings than in the last two months at Rutgers.
Meanwhile, RU’s ongoing administrative Marx Brothers movie — Groucho as Professor Wagstaff, president of big-time football aspirant Huxley College — has helped minimize the story of full scholarship student-athlete and 6-foot-4, 275-pound lineman Michael Larrow. He was quietly dismissed on May 6, a fact RU didn’t reveal until he was arrested a second time on May 27, this time charged with punching his girlfriend. He was suspended the first four games last year, after a July 28 arrest for allegedly assaulting a woman. She declined to press charges.
* The Mets overcharged the Yankees for family and friends tickets to Yanks-Mets? Next time, teams should first try StubHub, where the Mets now directly dump their own tickets to be sold at discount.
Players have the MLBPA to protect their interests. Team owners have Bud Selig to protect theirs. The fans? The commissioner already is taken.
* Though there is no good time to call broken bats “dead soldiers,” Memorial Day was the worst. And though Keith Hernandez meant no harm, he still, as a matter of good faith, should have expressed his regret the next night. But he didn’t.
* Everything the NBC production crew did wrong throughout Bruins-Rangers — especially eliminating the live view of the handshake line — an NBC crew did right throughout Red Wings-Blackhawks.
* Longtime, as in 30 years, CBS producer Eric Mann yesterday was replaced as the lead producer of CBS’s NFL studio show. Moving in is Drew Kaliski, previously of CBS Sports Network.
* When NHL players score in overtime, they look for their teammates. When NFL players score in OT, they look for the TV cameras.
* Oh, well, as Joba Chamberlain said, “At the end of the day, the sun comes up in the morning.”