What’s that word, again, the one for when you’ve been pushed too far, forced beyond the limits of annoyance, past frustration, until you can’t take it anymore? There’s a word for it … Oh, yeah:
Aaarrghhhh!
Seems every Yankees telecast with Michael Kay at the wheel includes at least one extended Aaarrghhhh! session.
Thursday on YES, the game was moving along, minding it’s own business, when pay-attention time arrived: Down, 2-1, bottom of the eighth, the Yankees had one out, bases loaded, a 1-2 pitch to Robinson Cano.
The pitch was well inside. Cano checked his swing the instant before the ball hit him. It was ruled a strike-out, the replays supporting the “out” call made by plate umpire Ron Kulpa, with Kay reminding viewers “the swing supersedes the hit-by-pitch.”
All agreed: Kay, Ken Singleton, Al Leiter, the video — Cano’s bat went too far. Fine, let’s move on.
Hey, wait a minute, Chester. Not so fast. This play provided Kay with one of those “let’s have a deep, long discussion about something baseball” prompts.
Though there was no video presented to determine for certain who ruled Cano had swung — Kulpa or first base ump Chris Guccione — that didn’t stop Kay and Singleton.
Kay said it was Guccione, who at first called it a checked swing, “then changed his mind.” But that seemed to be bad guesswork. Guccione’s “out” fist appeared to be shown to Cano in order to stop him from further jogging to first.
Singleton said it was Kulpa, although Kulpa didn’t immediately call the swing a strike.
Both spoke as if they knew for sure, when it was clear that they didn’t, and at least one couldn’t.
Next, Singleton opened the can of Why Bother even wider, claiming it should have been the third base ump’s call. “You’re right,” Kay said.
Now there was doubt thrown on the call, as if it might’ve been wrong, called by one of two men who wouldn’t know!
“And we’ve heard from Paul O’Neill, numerous times,” Kay added, “that nothing bothers a hitter more than the home plate umpire making that call. According to Paul, you can’t see balls and strikes and also see if the guy’s swinging the bat.
“But the home plate umpire Kulpa said he went around.”
He did? How did they both now know this? Kulpa probably did, but what happened to Kay’s eyewitness claim, moments before, that Guccione indicated Cano successfully checked his swing before he “changed his mind”? Where was that video?
For all the expert, contradictory and changing claims and rotten guesswork they presented as fact, neither knew for sure — unless they could hear the umps — who called Cano out.
And in this case, the ball was way inside, thus, despite O’Neill’s claim, the plate ump could see that it was a ball and whether Cano swung. And all praise to Parenthesis, the Greek god of Better Late Than Never, that Leiter inserted that point — the first sense spoken since that 1-2 pitch!
Besides, how many called strikes did O’Neill ever agree with? And now Kay has me spending too much time sifting through nonsense! Aaarrghhhh!
Golf rules tend to bend for Tiger
So, unless the rules are interpreted on a who-you-are basis, a precedent has been established: Ignorance of the rules at The Masters is a legitimate defense.
But let’s see what happens to the next guy there who tries to cop such a plea.
The rules of professional golf were previously “adjusted” to enable Tiger Woods. On Jan. 31, 1999, at the Phoenix Open, 10 or more men in the gallery teamed to remove a “loose impediment” from in front of Woods’ ball. The loose impediment was a boulder so big and heavy that it could only be shoved until it tipped over from its spot.
Woods smilingly indulged his unfair advantage over the rest of the field — and perhaps further sensed his exceptional entitlement — while the TV guys, instead of wondering how both Woods and PGA course marshals would allow such as an interpretation of a loose impediment, acted as if they were delighted!
So, what we observed at last week’s Masters — the “flexible” rules of golf on behalf of Woods, accompanied by the pandering from those on TV who should’ve known better and spoken out — actually began in Phoenix, 14 years ago.
Late-night Phanatic b’day bash
Sold as the Phillie Phanatic’s Birthday Party — a kids’ promotion before Cardinals-Phillies today — it has been moved to an 8:05 p.m. start as per ESPN’s purchased authority over MLB. ESPN and MLB could have chosen time and weather-logical Tigers-Angels or Mariners-Rangers games, but doing wrong by kids and baseball is easy when you have no shame.
* Give John Sterling credit: Despite his inane, self-exposing call of the Yankees’ triple play last week — he actually stopped his call to editorialize that Jayson Nix, with one already out, should not have gone after the lead runner! — he continues to explain baseball in a know-it-all, condescending fashion. But Sterling’s what we get for being a small-market town.
* Why, we’ve been asked, were this year’s Masters’ telecasts interrupted by so many more TV commercials than in the past? A: There’s now a women’s clubhouse to build.
* The Tennis Channel’s negligence continues to ill-serve its only audience: tennis fans. Wednesday, beneath a tape of the Jo-Wilfred Tsonga–Niokolay Davydenko match from Monte Carlo, the network’s crawl carried the match’s result.
* Every time Mike Francesa opened his mouth to authoritatively comment on what went down at the Masters — from DQ rules, to Masters history, to the Dustin Johnson ruling at the 2010 PGA Championship, to distinguishing the Ryder Cup from the President’s Cup, to predicting that Adam Scott had no shot — he was dead wrong.
* A Star-Ledger report shows Rutgers, since 2008, has paid more than $4 million just in go-away money, mostly to athletic department employees.
* Reader Steve Arendash needs two tickets to next season’s Rasheed Wallace Night in The Garden, so please keep him in mind.
* Reader Marv Resnick, Midwood High, Class of ’56, tells me I was wrong here Friday: The Dodgers’ road uniforms in ’47 read “Dodgers,” and not, since 1945, “Brooklyn.” And he’s right!
* Here’s a refreshingly new idea! UNC has announced that it will replace its traditional Carolina Blue and white with all-black uniforms for its ESPN Thursday primetime football game vs. the student-athletes of Miami on ESPN on Oct. 17. The clever fools are promoting as “Zero Dark Thursday” — a charming parody on the Osama bin Laden “Zero Dark Thirty.” Ugh.