While watching Saturday night’s Reds-Giants NL Division Series game, it hit me that if a first-time baseball-watcher, a Brit, perhaps, asked us to explain the all-the-time, on-screen inclusion and intrusion of TBS’s computerized pitch-track box, we’d be stuck to provide the bloke with a sensible answer.
“Are batters allowed to take a go at pitches thrown outside the borders of this box? Does this device help determine the game?”
“No, it has no official status. Batters can swing at any pitch.”
“So then why bother with this? Why doesn’t watching the actual pitch suffice? Why wouldn’t that be enough?”
“Well, it would. And it is. But this pitch-track box is considered a technical enhancement.”
“An enhancement? Of what?”
“Well, I’m not sure.”
“This box seems to indicate all the batsmen are the same height, bat from the same stance, and from the same place within the batter’s area. True?”
“Well, it seems to indicate that, but no two batters stand the same way or have the same strike zone.”
“So then how does this box enhance anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this device expensive to include within these telecasts?”
“Probably. Plus, you need technicians to install and operate it.”
“Well, then, it seems like a bloody waste of time and money. If it cost a tuppence, that’s a tuppence too dear.”
“Well, yeah, it would seem that way.”
“It’s nothing short of a distracting, scene-pinching obstruction, a complete, royal folly, no?”
“Well, that’s one way of looking at it.”
“Is there another way to look at it?”
“I guess not.”
“So why not let the game be played, let the TV cameras work as TV cameras, let the announcers discuss what they will, and leave it at that?”
“I don’t know. … More crab dip?”
* The most stunning sight from Friday’s wild-card game in Atlanta wasn’t the cascade of trash thrown in the eighth inning, but came an inning later, when Chipper Jones, among the most complete stars of his time, in his last at-bat — with two out in the ninth and his team losing — chose not to run to first until it was nearly too late.
Jones hit a one-hop, dying liner to Cardinals second baseman Daniel Descalso, who, likely figuring Jones was running — and hard — hurried his throw. But Jones was barely jogging! What was he saving it for?
Only after the throw got away did he run hard, barely making first.
Jones was generously — understandably — given a hit. On TBS, Brian Anderson, Ron Darling and Joe Simpson generously issued Jones a look-the-other-way pass. But it was another sad sight for modern, jaundiced eyes.
Nineteen seasons later, and having long admired the way Jones played The Game, I’d have preferred that he ended his career by striking out.
College grid TV earns ‘F’
What Tv continues to do to football is similar to what an 18-month-old would do to an ice cream sundae.
On Saturday, an ESPN graphic previewed the West Virginia-Texas game with, “Second Meeting In Series.” Beneath that appeared, “Last time was 1956.”
Only on ESPN could a total of two games, 56 years apart, be “a series!” One can envision the Texas team stomping around in its locker room, chanting, “Let’s avenge our 1956 defeat!”
On Fox on Saturday, after Stanford receiver Ty Montgomery fumbled, analyst Joel Klatt declared Montgomery, ugh, “put the ball on the turf!”
Put the ball on the turf ? He couldn’t even see the turf if he wanted to put it there: He was gang-tackled!
On ESPN2, a TD pass to Auburn’s Emory Blake was reviewed to see if he had stepped out of bounds before scoring. ESPN would have had a good taped view of whether he did, but Blake’s feet disappeared behind ESPN’s “Bottom Line” crawl! ESPNU’s Connecticut-Rutgers game included tape of UConn coach Paul Pasqualoni in an ugly, sustained and disturbing sideline confrontation with one of his linemen. Analyst John Congemi’s take? He laughed.
We can sense CBS’s lead college analyst, Gary Danielson, slipping away from us, becoming another panderer. Saturday, during the LSU-Florida game, he lamented the loss of “swagger” among LSU’s defensive backs. A few plays prior, a Florida player swaggered his way to a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
* Yesterday, CBS’s NFL studio host James Brown sympathetically spoke with Lance Easley, the replacement side judge who made “that call” in the Sept. 24 Green Bay-Seattle Monday nighter. Brown sensitively noted Easley was “the most vilified man in America,” how he was antagonized and ridiculed.
Touching.
But the day before, Brown was among the CBS studio regulars knocking and mocking the replacement officials as one league-wide, bad joke.
If you’re scoring at home — you can’t
Why is easy so difficult? TBS is another network that can’t plainly and clearly post the score, the inning, the number of outs and the count for instant recognition. You have to find, then decipher dots and dashes. Ya gotta break the code.
* As clearly seen (again) during the third quarter of yesterday’s Browns-Giants, 22 years later and NFL head coaches (Tom Coughlin), their staffs (Giants) and NFL veteran broadcasters (CBS’s Dan Dierdorf) still have no idea when the replay rule applies.
* Top of the second inning Saturday during A’s-Tigers, TBS, to a national TV audience, posted a “Social Media” question that read (I kid you not): “Which team will commit the most hits?”
Nurse! Hurry!
* Ray Lucas, on Rutgers’ WOR radiocast Saturday, included peripheral “vision” — along with strength, speed and quickness — as an ingredient that makes good running backs even better. Good, vastly underrated point (see: Barry Sanders).
* Praise here for Vin Scully on Friday brought a pile of reader responses sagely suggesting that if Scully were just starting, he’d be rejected by TV and radio execs as dull, understated and disinclined toward forced, loud self promotion.
* Reader David Distefano figures if ESPN televised the Vice Presidential debate it would continually cut from Paul Ryan to show his bother, Rob Ryan, on the sidelines.
* NCAA Character Builder Game of the Week: Saturday, late in Urbana (Ohio)-Kentucky Wesleyan, Urbana completed a pass for 21 yards, leading to a TD that made it 74-0.
* Reader R. Comer: “Champagne celebrations after one-game wild-card games?” Sure. Hey, “We’re No. 4!”