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It’s One of those great, sustaining and senseless mysteries of life, right up there with pineapple on pizza, lawn sprinklers seen operating during rainstorms and the save rule.
Why would Mike Francesa bother taking phone calls if he doesn’t allow the callers to speak? And, by extension, why, show after show, year after year, does he take such extraordinary steps to be so unlikeable?
Tuesday he took a call from a polite fellow who wanted to make a point about the Yankees’ lineup, how it might stand up into the playoffs.
The caller sounded as if he might be intelligent, as if he might have something interesting to say. In other words, the guy had no shot.
Most intelligent callers, especially those who don’t parrot Francesa’s takes, long ago learned not to bother, that they are the least likely to be allowed to speak and the most likely to be quickly dumped by Francesa, then insulted, as if they’re still on the air, but rendered speechless by Francesa’s genius.
Though the caller sounded as if he might be able to inspire good, kill-some-time sports radio, Francesa, as is his extreme condition, wouldn’t allow us to find out.
Rather than give himself and the audience a break from his repetitive, throne-issued blow-harding, he repeatedly stepped all over this guy, bullied him, tried to anticipate his point, finish his sentences, put words in his mouth, didn’t let him complete a thought.
A first-time listener would have asked himself, “What the hell’s the matter with this guy?”
If Francesa, once he rid himself of this fellow who had been unfairly treated as a pest instead of a guest, considered himself a big shot for his mistreatment of this caller, he was alone. If I had been his boss, I would have pulled him aside and demanded, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
I know: Old, ongoing story.
But does he never listen to tapes of himself at such moments? There’s no shortage of them.
Is there no one at WFAN/CBS Radio to sit him down, press the “play” button and encourage him to hear for himself that he has surpassed the boundaries of pomposity, that he’s just plain unlikeable and that his show has developed a perverse, reverse attraction, like the Demolition Derby and two-headed snakes?
Or is it too late?
Nearly as sickening was that Francesa trampled this caller to spout the opposite of what he had sold as his genius in the past! He told him that you can’t groom a team to win in the postseason because once the playoffs begin baseball too often becomes “a crap-shoot.”
Agreed! Anyone who has seen the Pirates or Royals or Padres win a four-game series in July knows that. Anyone, except Francesa.
Before the 2006 Tigers-Yankees ALDS, Francesa called it a waste of time: “I’ll tell you this: This is the easiest Round 1 opponent the Yanks have had in the Joe Torre Era. You could not have a duck in front of you, on one leg, worse than this Tiger team.”
The Tigers lost the first, then won three straight to win the series. Because the playoffs are too often a crap-shoot!
No doubt Francesa forgot that. He conveniently forgets so much, and, immersed in his own juices, figures you’re too stupid to know better.
This year he not only forgot that he picked the heavily favored Patriots to easily beat the Giants in the 2008 Super Bowl, he actually claimed he had picked the Giants.
This year, after declaring that UConn did not deserve to make the NCAA tournament, he told UConn coach Jim Calhoun that those who think that his team doesn’t deserve to be in the tournament are fools.
Is there no one in an authority position to demand that Francesa at least stop lying?
And is there no one to tell him that his self-serving, self-impressed claims are so transparent and often so dishonest that he’s the only one left to fool?
For the second straight year he promoted this week’s WFAN “Breakfast With Joe Girardi, Hosted by Mike Francesa” as a better-hurry-up because tickets “sell out fast” event.
Except, for a second straight year, tickets did not sell out fast. A duck on one leg could have hopped in from Detroit and still had plenty of time to buy plenty of tickets.
Couldn’t he have just promoted the event, no vanity-enriched embellishments for the legions of peons in the audience?
How can a guy who thinks of himself as the smartest guy on the planet be so self-deluded, so seriously foolish? Or have I answered my own question?
Little late for cheaper tickets
The Mets and Jets last week lowered some ticket prices, including tickets to the weekend’s Yankees-Mets series. Though falling short of admitting they were priced too damned high in the first place, neither blamed StubHub.
“There’s really an emphasis in the NFL on season ticket-holders, the lifeblood of the league,” said new Jets president Neil Glat, whose previous stop was as an NFL business exec.
That’s a noble, sensible sentiment. But it arrives a few years late for tens of thousands of multiple-generation Jets and Giants season ticket-holders driven out by PSLs.
It seems many of these fans, despite their years of patronage, were not all that devoted. Otherwise, they gladly would have paid up to $80,000 just for the right to continue to spend many thousands more per season to buy four tickets to eight games.
Yet, it seems that in Glat, the Jets’ top administration may no longer be in the hands of hustlers who pushed tickets as if operating a boiler room pump-and-dump. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell goes after those dastardly bounty hunters in New Orleans, he was a frontline advocate for Jets and Giants PSLs. He may be anti-bounties, but he has no problem with teams holding tickets for ransom.
* Imagine the lineswoman who Serena Williams cursed out in the 2007 U.S. Open and the chair ump she berated with childish personal insults during last year’s Open, spotting a come-on to buy Open tickets featuring a smiling Williams under the headline, “Love Is Passion.”
Are we all supposed to roll over and play stupid? Of course, we are!
Sorta like in 1995 when American Jeff Tarango was tossed from Wimbledon for rotten, abusive behavior toward match officials — his wife even slapped a chair ump — then identified John McEnroe as his inspiration.
McEnroe, a TV commentator by then, bashed Tarango for his behavior. As for citing McEnroe as his tennis model, McEnroe said he had no idea what Tarango was getting at.