Sports

Boss’ life shouldn’t be sugarcoated

So you’re a New York sports columnist. You’ve covered George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, in some capacity, for nearly 30 years.

You didn’t like him on a personal or professional basis. You tried, but he actually made it difficult for you to root for the team you grew up adoring. He ruined peoples’ lives and careers — fired them, used, abused and humiliated them — just for fun.

But you certainly can’t ignore his death and you’ve got to write a column; that’s your job. So you stall as long as you can, an entire day after his death, just to think about it.

But now it’s time to write. Do you write a bunch of fluffy lies about him — the opposite of what you wrote about him when he was alive, hoping readers don’t recall, hoping they don’t recognize your hypocrisy and dishonesty and phony sentiment?

Or, at the risk of some hating your guts for it, do you write the ugly truth, at least your version of it, two days after his death?

Which would you have done?

Some truths are no easier to write than they are to read.

George Steinbrenner, the Revised Edition, still is being written, spoken and reported. Not that we could have expected differently, but for the last 5½ days we’ve listened to and read stories — words delivered by news folks who never had to deal with George Steinbrenner — claiming that he was a great guy. Their evidence? Seven World Series wins.

Other retro-views seem to strongly and strangely suggest that because Steinbrenner did some very nice, charitable things for some people, he could be excused for doing some very bad things to others.

“Too many short memories among Yankee fans,” writes reader Mario Morgado. “I was there the night he was banned from baseball for life [July 30, 1990]. I remember the two-minute standing ovation as word passed through Yankee Stadium [during Tigers-Yankees]. No announcement was made.”

Azinger gets it right by admitting he was wrong

LIVE video and commentary, properly seen and honestly spoken, is rare, wonderful. Tim Clark, Friday at St. Andrews, hit his tee shot on the first hole, letting go of his driver in disgust.

“Oh, he’s hooked it,” said ESPN’s Paul Azinger, recognizing that Clark was staring to his left. Then the ball was shown as it landed, slightly left, but in the fairway.

“No, he hasn’t hooked it,” Azinger followed, as if he’d been had. “You know, one’s man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. I’d have taken that all day long.”

More British Open: TV’s stupid Tiger tricks continue. Friday, although he hadn’t begun his round, Tiger Woods was the only one among 12 at 5-under-par to appear on Page 1 of ESPN’s leaders graphic.

For crying out loud, ESPN, in the midst of its second-round coverage of the British Open, ran a two-minute, taped promo for the second round of the British Open.

Geoff Ogilvy let fly an expletive on 16, Thursday, that could be heard in Harrisburg. “The wind can have you talking to yourself,” was all ESPN’s Mike Tirico would say.

Pleasant as he is, Tirico now seems eager to speak every media golf cliché he can. When he plays golf, I bet he never speaks of the score he “carded;” he says what he “shot.” Tirico and others, save “carded” for national audiences.

MLB Network, tonight at 10, has a documentary on Don Zimmer, “I’ve Seen It All.” Zimmer, 80 in January, is believed to be the longest-uniformed man in professional baseball, starting with the Eastern Shore League’s Cambidge (Md.) team in 1949. The show is narrated by Billy Crystal, who donated his fee to BAT, the Baseball Assistance Team.

Jack Craig died last week; he was 81. On the last day of 1967, the Boston Globe assigned him to cover sports television. He was the first TV sports columnist for a daily newspaper, and he remained on that job until he retired in 1996.

Craig wrote it firmly and honestly; he wrote it for the readers and for no one else. He always was available to me, to provide advice and his experience, thus he was helpful to this column’s readers. As the first, he set a standard, a strong one.

Jets leave fans green around the gills

Several subscribers to DirecTV’s NFL Ticket package — this season hiked to $315, up from $179 six years ago — are claiming that the cost can be negotiable. We’re reliably told that if you call and insist that DirecTV cancel your NFL package because it’s now far too expensive, you can decrease the cost, well below $315.

But why in the name of Woody Johnson do sports enterprises consider sports fans immune from hard times?

Given how much the Jets have discounted PSLs — “Act now, rip-offs reduced 30-50 percent!” — how many Jets fans now wish they hadn’t been first in line to spend a fortune? Those fans, who used to bleed green and white, now only hemorrhage green.

SNY’s “SportsNite” should begin with instructions. What does SNY want us to do, watch the highlights from Mets-Giants or read the graphics that obscure those highlights? And if we should read the graphics, which of the three groupings, the ones across the top, those down the left side of the screen or the moving ones along the bottom?

Reader Frank Montwell reminds the media that games won by the home team in extra innings need not be described as “walkoff” wins; it’s understood. And I remind him that it doesn’t matter — if people have the chance to write, say or holler “walkoff,” they’ll do it.

Sid Rosenberg was back on WFAN, last week, as a sub host. He still has no discernable talent beyond the nerve to speak vulgarities into microphones and his reliance on schoolyard name-calling — both attractive to radio execs. But, as with so many professional insult artists, he’s very sensitive to criticism.

From reader Dr. Jorge Ortiz: “Joba Chamberlain is not doing well coming out of the bullpen. By last year’s logic, shouldn’t he be switched to the starting rotation?”

NHL Network, this past week, showed, in chronological order, CBC telecasts of the Islanders’ four Stanley Cup championships. Cool. But NHLN is another that loses action behind those bottom-of-the-screen crawls. . . . The Isles have signed forward Rob Schremp. Schremp? Hey, Moe!