The three-part question has become this: Are we treated like morons because they think we’re morons? Or are we treated like morons because they’re morons? Is there a bottom to this?
Early in the second half of Monday’s NCAA Championship, ball in play, CBS felt it a good time to diminish the view in order for us to read, “Kentucky 4-0 when trailing or tied at the half of this tournament.”
Had UK gone 3-1, it wouldn’t be in the final!
Reader Peter Pujols wants to know if, as Michael Kay on Tuesday claimed on YES, Derek Jeter can’t stand all this retirement-season attention, “then why didn’t he wait to announce his retirement until after it? I’m a Yankee fan, but not an idiot.”
As if there’s not going to be six months, and beyond, of money, marketing and Jeter’s cut of Steiner Collectibles.
Monday, bottom of the fifth of the Yankees’ home opener, John Sterling, Voice of the New York Yankees for the past 24 years, eagerly launched his self-promotional, all-the-same, always-in-doubt home run call — this one on behalf of Jeter — before knowing or even caring whether it would be a home run.
After declaring it “Gone!,” Sterling, as per his 24-year absurdity, realized that it wasn’t; it was off the wall. Jeter would make second. Barely.
But this call was different from Sterling’s standard backfire in that he ignored his own warning. He already had told listeners that with the wind blowing in on a cold day, a home run would be extremely difficult!
Reader Kevin McCauley is also tired of being treated like an idiot: “The average person would be too embarrassed by now to continue to call home runs before they were sure they were.”
But you can’t be embarrassed when you have no shame. And that goes for Yankees decision-makers as well as Sterling.
Also erroneously presuming it was a home run was Jeter. In a rare demonstration of minimalist baseball, he jogged to first, watching. Naturally, this went unspoken by our “radio eyes,” Sterling and Suzyn Waldman. For all the endless, ludicrous, in-game sponsorship business, this was none of our business.
Thus, what went unspoken on both local radio and TV is that had Jeter — or anyone else — run even moderately hard the entire way, he could have eased into second, standing. Instead, Jeter, 40 in June and back from ankle surgery, had to slide into second!
But again, we’re not supposed to be bright enough to notice what we can’t miss. The Yankees’ home opener again was played to at least 1,000 empty good seats. As if no one wanted to sit in them. Again.
But this incredible, can’t-miss-it, ongoing story of systemic, untreated greed makes little to no news, anywhere. See it, but don’t say it.
During the radio broadcast of the game, a John Minko-narrated WFAN promo was heard: The Kentucky-UConn final would be heard on FAN “tonight at 7:30.” With nothing said about a pregame and tip scheduled fort 9:10, WFAN told a 1-hour, 40-minute lie.
Although Division I basketball and football have been overwhelmed by criminality among full-scholarship recruits, the NCAA nevertheless invited rap-sheet rapper Kid Rock — arrested five times — as the pregame entertainment.
Kid Rock and student-athletics. Pity he didn’t rap, “F–k Off.” A sample: “We’re f–king up your city and we’re f–king up your program. F–king all your bitches, we can f–king give a g–damn.” Yep, Kid Rock’s the best the NCAA could do.
Then come the image ads about how the NCAA shapes good character among young college men and women.
By the way, Drake, who raps lyrics such as “N—-s talk like bitches, these days” — and worse — this week was named ESPN’s host of this year’s ESPY Awards.
UConn won this tournament for one indisputable, old-fashioned reason: foul shooting, a sensational 101-for-115. Its six opponents shot 78-for-118. (That, and because Kentucky finished 4-1 after trailing or tied at the half.)
But TV has no use for things that don’t explode. It sells 3-point bombs and rim-rock slam-dunks (hopefully followed by menacing glares at the camera), as if that’s what wins games, as if we’re too stupid to appreciate something as relevant as free throws.
Maybe if student-athletes grabbed their crotches after making free-throws …
That’s why the NBA’s best story this season has appeared in newspaper agate, not on TV: Phoenix Suns boxscores. The superstar-less, TV-neglected team that, under rookie coach Jeff Hornacek, wasn’t supposed to win 20 games, has won 47.
Suns boxscores are heavy in 10-deep, share-the-load, team-first stats — points, rebounds, assists, minutes. By now, we’re not supposed to have any head for such basketball. The NBA and its TV partners long ago determined to sell us superstars instead of basketball.
Reader Fred Rosen: “I wonder what the record is for most slam-dunk contests televised on consecutive days.”
This past Sunday, NBC presented what almost surely will be the most fantastic finish to a PGA event this season.
Matt Jones, who never had won on Tour, began the day six back of leader Matt Kuchar. On No. 18, Jones sank a 50-footer. In the first playoff hole against Kuchar, Jones, after a bad drive, had to lay up. He next holed a long chip — over a bunker, no less — to win. Spectacular stuff.
But, because Tiger Woods wasn’t playing, it was predetermined to be unworthy of our attention, the pathetic residual of TV having over-egged its pudding, of having produced so many Tiger-centric telecasts that those who could’ve been golf fans as well as Woods fans were TV-conditioned to dismiss and miss this golf.
There still are plenty of us who resent being treated, by design or unintentionally, like morons.
Reader Michael Brennan, Palm Beach, Fla.: If an MLB game ends on a replay challenge, will it be called a “watch-off”?
Anyway, yesterday’s Masters coverage opened with an over-written essay from ESPN’s Mike Tirico. First, he cited the Masters as representing, ugh, “the renewal of spring” — spring wouldn’t be renewed without it! — following “a penal and punishing winter.” Yep, penal and punishing.
A bit later on ESPN, CBS’ Peter Kostis told us that Phil Mickelson, after a bad chip, just committed “an unforced error.” Given that I’m a moron — or supposed to be — I’ve no idea what that means, but I suspect it’s the opposite of a “forced error.”