Sports

Chip-Chip Hooray! He’s done!

THE only reasonably good news is that it lasted “only” nine games. With that Tigers-Twins one-game play-in thrown in, this TBS postseason, starring Chip Caray, could have gone, yikes, 13 games.

Ya know how you wonder exactly who’s responsible for certain decisions, like $2,500, $1,250 and $850 seats in Yankee Stadium? And attaching Stephen A. Smith to live microphones? Well, someone at TBS decided that Caray’s the man to be lead play-by-player on the network’s biggest sports telecasts — for a third straight year.

I don’t like piling on Caray, but what about us, the viewers? Unless TBS has no better grip on baseball than does Caray — or unless we’re foils in TV’s longest practical joke — don’t we get credit for knowing good from awful?

The Phils beat the Dodgers, 5-4, in Game 4 of the NLCS when Jimmy Rollins, with two out and two on, bottom of the ninth, banged one in the gap and to the wall. With the runners going on contact — and neither falling down or missing a base — that was it, game over.

But in the game being played in Caray’s head — nothing like the one being shown on TV — there was more: “Here’s the throw to the plate! … It’s … not in time!”

That’s what he hollered. There was neither a throw to nor a play at the plate; the ball was held by the cutoff man in the outfield. Yet he described both. At the biggest moment in a series, he provided a national TV audience with a live description of action that was not taking place. Again.

Earlier in that game, Caray: “Ten set up, 10 knocked down by Randy Wolf, as he goes to work here in the fifth.” As every baseball fan knew, that’s crazy talk when applied to a starter who isn’t pitching a perfect game. But Caray doesn’t have the ability to speak straight, unadorned baseball, such as, “Wolf hasn’t allowed the last 10 to reach.”

How’d you like to be seated with him for nine innings, let alone nine playoff telecasts, starting with that 12-inning Tigers-Twins epic — the first of nine straight that Caray and some unidentified TBS exec tried to wreck? Imagine, it could’ve been worse!

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The bigger the game, the greater the re-invention of the wheel. Game 3 Yanks-Angels, 4-4, bottom of the eighth. Bobby Abreu hits one in the gap. He’s about 25 feet to third when he tries to return to second. He’s thrown out, Derek Jeter to first baseman Mark Teixeira.

And for the next 48 hours, TV, radio and print told us that Teixeira had done something extraordinary. MLB.com called this “A great play!”

Wait a sec. What else was Teixeira to do except trail the play on a leadoff double? Stay at first in case Abreu decided to return? Sign autographs? Why would Teixeira not cover second? These days, though, a good fundamental play might be extraordinary.

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Give John Sterling credit. Every Yankee postseason, he brings his game up, makes himself more insufferable.

Game 2 of the ALCS ended with Maicer Izturis throwing the ball away in the 13th, a play that was indecipherable as heard on the Yankee Radio Network. Only after Sterling began his “Thaaaaaaa Yankees win” garbage, did he offer a clue. Until then, the game got in the way of his call.

In the 11th, when Alex Rodriguez tied it with an opposite-field line-drive homer — the ball landed in the first row — Sterling gave it his “It is high! … It is far! …” garbage.

Because self-promotion has always come before both his audience and the game, he didn’t care if he got another HR “blast” call wrong, or whether he misrepresented to a blind, dependent radio audience the biggest moments in the biggest games. Sterling chooses himself, first, every time.

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Ever notice that TV networks, after alerting us to side-stories, are the first to forget them? Game 4 NLCS, bottom first. On a 2-1 count, Ryan Howard takes a pitch from Randy Wolf that appears to be a strike. Ump Ted Barrett calls it a ball. On TBS, Ron Darling and Buck Martinez say Barrett blew it; should’ve been strike two.

Next pitch, Howard hits a two-run homer. As Howard circles, we catch a background glimpse of what we could anticipate — Wolf shouting toward Barrett. Did TBS provide a full video follow to what transpired between ump and pitcher? Nope, nothing.

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Beware of what you wish for, baseball fans. Remember, the NFL’s instant-replay rule was designed to reverse egregiously wrong calls. But, from Day 1, it rarely has been used as such. And never have the decisions come in an instant.

phil.mushnick@nypost.com