SPRING FEVER: Hideki Matsui, with the Rays last season, will be honored by the Yankees with a Bobblehead Day next month, but The Post’s Phil Mushnick writes that the event seems a bit disingenuous. (Anthony J. Causi)
Seems as if everything now comes packaged in bogus hype, bubble wrap pumped with gas. Soon, straight addition — two-plus-two — will be presented as limited edition, act-now, must-see math.
“Hi, I’m Henry Winkler, here to tell you about the latest, greatest offer on earth — a triple-reverse mortgage!”
Even an 18-second, in-game promo narrated by Michael Kay during Friday’s Yankees-Red Sox YES telecast, was loaded with moron-targeting bunk.
The promo might have been heard and seen in simple, old-fashioned just-the-facts English: “July 28 is Hideki Matsui Bobblehead Day; the first 18,000 fans in the house will receive one.”
Instead, it was pitched as your very special opportunity to procure, well, take it, Michael:
“Well, make sure you’re at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, July 28, for one of the hottest collectibles of the season. That’s Hideki Matsui Bobblehead Day, the second of a new collectibles series presented by AT&T.”
One of the hottest collectibles of the season? Given that Matsui last played for the Yankees in 2009, it sounded more like souvenir shop surplus, a warehouse space-killer, a collectible in that it collects dust.
Or did the Yankees — having announced a Matsui Day back in April — actually then order the manufacture of 18,000 Matsui-in-Yankee-uniform “hot” collectibles four years after he left? Anything’s possible.
Put it this way: If this were a “hot collectible,” the last team to be giving them away would be the Yankees. If they were “hot,” the Yankees, these days, would hand them out to the second 18,000 in the Stadium.
Even more ridiculous, the full-screen billboard read that the bobbleheads would be given to the first “18,000 guests in attendance.”
Guests? When did customers become guests? When’s the last time you charged your guests 40 bucks to park — just for starters?
An 18-second, in-game promo; that’s all it was. But that’s all it takes these days to be identified as, and treated like an idiot.
Cohen latest un-Amazin’ fall from grace
So The Securities and Exchange Commission intends to remove billionaire hedge-funder and Mets minority owner Steve Cohen from the investment industry, charging colossal neglect in allowing two senior employees to engage in illegal, colossal insider trading.
First there was no-questions-allowed Bernie Madoff. Then flowers-for-delivery magnate James F. McCann, a Mets’ minority owner, who settled one of several on-line sales fraud claims for $325,000. Now Cohen.
Kinda makes ya wonder whether Mets majority owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz do business with any honest folks.
The inevitable approaches: Time to sell the team to Bobby Bonilla.
* Ron Darling, during Saturday’s Phillies-Mets on Ch. 11, praised the Phils’ Delmon Young as “a very intelligent hitter.”
Hmm. That couldn’t have been the case last season, when Young played for the Tigers. According to an arrest report, at 2:40 a.m. a drunken Young, outside a Manhattan hotel, was hollering anti-Semitic curses when he hit a fellow he thought was Jewish (Young later pleaded guilty to a charge of aggravated harassment).
Outside of here and Detroit, that episode made only scant and quick news. Consider that while Young last fall played in 13 nationally televised postseason games, not one Fox or Turner TV announcer mentioned it.
And to think John Rocker became — and remains — an easy national media villain for racial and ethnic comments, yet committed no crime.
* Golf’s network nonsense contest remains intense.
After Lee
Westwood three-putted during the British Open, ESPN’s Curtis Strange borrowed from tennis to call it “an unforced error.”
There are forced errors in golf? Was Westwood being double-teamed?
Then there was Paul Azinger’s observation Zach Johnson “has a commitment to impact.” Who in the field didn’t?
Yesterday, Mike Tirico told us Westwood has “struggled with his ball-striking.” Does that mean he hit some bad shots?
For a while, reader Ted McNabb was confused by ESPN’s announcers who spoke of “summer-like” weather in Scotland. “Oh, wait …”
The way he acts in public, the way he acts toward the public — even after a miserable round in a major — is among Phil Mickelson’s outstanding and stand-out qualities, why he’s so easy to root for, feel good for.
Big Blue’s Hill takes another fall
So Last year, Will Hill, Giants safety out of the University of Florida — another Urban Meyer recruit — went undrafted because, despite his obvious talent, he was considered a highly dubious character, a very bad risk.
Suspended during his college career, he was given to tweeting outrageously vulgar, gangsta-man boasts, and to posing in sexually suggestive, almost pornographic photos. And, at 22, he was divorced and the father of four children by three mothers.
Next, as a free agent signed by the Giants, he was suspended by the NFL for a failed drug test.
And then, as was widely reported and applauded, he swore he was a changed man — a good citizen, grateful for yet another chance. That would be good news for him, but perhaps even better for his kids and their mothers.
Last week Hill was suspended by the NFL for a violation of the league’s substance-abuse policy.
* Saturday, after Gary Cohen mentioned that some kids were excited to meet Keith Hernandez before the game, Hernandez said, “Well, they’re only human.”
* More Guesswork As Fact: Saturday, Fox’s Tim McCarver said Ichiro Suzuki was playing Boston’s Jose Iglesias shallow in right because Iglesias “popped one right in front of Ichiro last night.” Sounded good. But Iglesias had singled in front of Brent Lillibridge; Suzuki moved to center after Brett Gardner was ejected.
* Reader David Distefano asks if the contracts of Prince Fielder, Justin Verlander, Miguel Cabrera, Torii Hunter and Victor Martinez — collectively to be paid $90 million this season — are what bankrupted the City of Detroit.
* How can McCarver advocate David Ortiz for the Hall of Fame without even a mention Ortiz was on “The List,” MLB’s drug list?
* Now that so many Yankees have been injured, then re-injured, reader Brian McGonnigle asks if the eminent physician, Dr. Mike Francesa, will scream condemnations of the Yankees’ medical staff the way he did the Mets’?
* TV money has rendered 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Yankees-Red Sox games virtually extinct. The only shot of finishing one of them in daylight is if there’s a nine-hour rain delay.
* Historically spooky Phils-Mets pitching matchup yesterday: Lee–Harvey.