Creepy, watching and listening to Gov. Cuomo on MSG Network Wednesday, as he guest-hosted that “Garden Signs Billy Joel” feel-good news conference. The Governor sanctified Madison Square Garden as the perfect fit for all that’s good and great about New York City — then, now, and in perpetuity.
The last time a Gov. Cuomo gave me such creeps was in 1994, when Mario Cuomo hosted the news conference announcing Cablevision’s purchase of The Garden. Cuomo the Elder declared the marriage great, glorious.
Many others, especially Cablevision subscribers/victims, those competitors unfairly vanquished and those who studied the company’s ways and means, knew a lot better.
As a sworn representative of the best interests of New Yorkers, does the current Governor not know that in the years The Garden has been run by the Dolan/Cablevision monopoly — a longer-time member of the Play Ball! Politicians’ Club — The Garden has become a mendacious “Mecca” for both employees and for those patrons still inclined and wealthy and/or foolish enough to pay to attend Rangers and Knicks games?
Does he not know during Jimmy Dolan’s Reign of Error, scores of consumer-responsive and Garden-devoted team, event, building and MSG Network employees, from the entrances to the execs at the top, were forced out, replaced with quislings and heel-clickers?
Is the Governor unaware decades of good-faith dealing with those assigned to cover Garden teams and its TV network vanished when Dolan inherited the master key?
Mutual good regard was replaced with insecurity, paranoia, intimidation, transparently one-sided news/no news, and ill will in the forms of follow-you operatives on loan from a community theater production of “Casablanca.”
Suddenly, interviews with those you’d long known, liked and promoted had to be monitored by a third party in the room or on the phone. Or not conducted at all, thus depriving the deserving of good ink.
Years of honest, genuinely warm relationships between sportswriters (and by extension, the public) and Garden regulars ended like a misdealt gin hand. A fear-based Us/Dolan vs. Them mentality only ensured the self-fulfilling bad ink The Dolan Method churns, earns — and causes him to burn.
Does Gov. Cuomo know countless good people who proudly devoted all they had to their Garden careers now detest the place?
Is the Governor blind to the fact The Garden’s teams, under Dolan, have been tethered to the consequences of mismanagement, misspending and their industrial cousin, missed or abridged playoffs?
Dolan’s leadership is such that come the postseason, he’s often unable to further price-gouge off the underachievement of Garden-variety teams because they didn’t even achieve underachievement.
The only sustaining figure in this run-on sentence to failure of all human-operated systems? The boss, Jimmy Dolan. No one has spent more — and charges even more — for less.
But given Dolan’s anti-competitive cable TV heritage, it stands to reason neither the Rangers nor Knicks, despite their geographical and financial advantages, have succeeded. After all, hoops and hockey presumably are refereed by the fair-minded.
Even the WNBA Liberty, born on Dolan’s watch, have been a steady failure. Yet, if you wish to purchase marked-up tickets to those fleeting Knicks and Rangers playoff games, Dolan will sell you some — if you buy Liberty tickets.
Gov. Cuomo also should check out the onerous tack-ons now attached to tickets sold to the Christmas show at Radio City, since 1997 a Dolan property, thus a theater now stricken with all-year bah-humbuggery.
If Gov. Cuomo doesn’t know about any of this, he should look into it. But, given that he’s Governor, perhaps Dolan waived The Garden’s $5 “Facility Fee,” the one all else must pay to enter The Garden after buying a ticket at the Garden box office to an event at The Garden.
Mike’s on both sides of fence
“Honest” Mike Francesa’s expert assessments remain valued for their recognition of players’ strengths and weaknesses. For example, Wednesday he complimented Dustin Pedroia as “A tremendous player.” In a previous assessment, Francesa trashed Pedroia as “A little nothing.”
Cory Leible, by title an NBC Sports/News cameraman, by description a beloved acrobat who pioneered the use and uses of hand-held cameras, this week died at 76. A New Yorker who spent six years in the Army, Leible next did for — and with — the hand-held what’s now perched-in-a-perch standard. In his many days and ways, he was a TV stunt pilot and visionary.
Two-parter from Charles King, West Palm Beach, Fla.: “How high does a player have to go ‘vertically’ before he’s out of bounds, and is it different in domed stadiums?”
Les Stat Du Semaine: The Canadiens, who were in New Jersey Wednesday, have five U.S.-born players, only three from Quebec. Les Habs’ leading goal-scorer, Max Pacioretty, is from New Canaan, Conn.
Art Kaminsky, ubiquitous super agent — many national and local sports, sportscaster and TV news clients — a son of New York and a great character to spar with, has died of cancer at 66.
Reader Ray Martin suggests if Mike Tomlin and not Nick Saban had been on Alabama’s sideline for that last play, Saturday, Bama might still be undefeated.
Plenty of statement lames
Suddenly, TV is presenting regular-season “designer” games.
Last month, NBC’s Cris Collinsworth told us the Cowboys were playing a “signature” game in the quest for “a signature win.”
This week on MSG, before the Rangers played at home against below-average Winnipeg, Al Trautwig, then Joe Micheletti claimed we were about to watch “a statement game.” Wow, the Rangers soon would make a “statement.”
The Rangers’ statement was a 5-2 loss, a statement that afterward, on MSG, didn’t have the same stated importance as was stated before the start of the statement game. Or maybe it was a signature loss of a signature game.
Airline supplies Gator bait
World Gone Nuts, continued: A scheduled 50-seat Delta flight was canceled at the last minute Sunday to use the plane as a charter to fly Florida’s basketball team from Gainesville to its Monday game at UConn (and on ESPN), where the Gators lost at the buzzer. UF’s plane had mechanical issues.
The Gainesville Sun reported among those bounced from the commercial flight was a person headed — unsuccessfully, it turned out — to attend a funeral. Others had to be driven to airports in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa.
Apparently, those other-airport options weren’t open to UF’s team.