To borrow from — and mess with — a song, “When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars … and the ‘Last’ button on your remote is func-shun-ing…”
Friday was one of those Three-Game Nights, when every time we hit “Last,” someone was saying something interesting, funny, engaging, different.
It began on YES with Paul O’Neill, who is becoming a strong listen based on the fact that he doesn’t know any better. He has no filter; he says whatever he’s thinking, as if seated beside us at a game — as it (mostly) should be.
O’Neill, early, went into an Andy Rooney, cell-phone slice-of-life mode: “Ever look down and get a missed call from somewhere where you don’t know anybody?”
Come to think of it, yeah.
O’Neill said he just got a call from someone in Charlotte: “I don’t know anyone from Charlotte.” Yup!
In the fourth, Michael Kay mentioned Toronto’s Brett Lawrie did rehab in Single-A in Dunedin, Fla.
O’Neill: “Boy, Dunedin. Flashbacks. Down in Dunedin they have this crushed [sea] shell warning track. It was so bright there on sunny days.”
Nice! I could see that, even began squinting. Not important to know, it was interesting to hear — good filler.
Next, when Lawrie walked — he thought he’d walked a pitch prior, even tossing his bat and starting to first — YES showed him talking to first-base coach Dwayne Murphy. Lyle Overbay was seen in the foreground.
“Ya see Lyle Overbay, over there? You get to hear all the conversations, all the pitches the hitters think they [the umps] missed.
“Because that’s the first thing you do — you have to tell somebody, as a hitter, because it frustrates you. So you run down to first and you start bawling to the first-base coach, and Overbay gets to hear all this.” Fabulous.
Over to SNY for Mets-Phillies. Top of the fifth, a cut to a taped show-and-tell: Starter Dillon Gee on how he throws his changeup. Interesting.
Keith Hernandez: “The best changeup I ever faced in my career, head and shoulders over anyone else, was Andy Messersmith.”
That reminded Hernandez: “I hit a home run off of him in Busch Stadium, dead center field. I was almost to second before I realized I’d hit it that far. So I said in the paper, ‘I’d never hit one there before.’
“Messersmith was waiting for me at BP the next day. He said, ‘Never hit one there before, eh? Well, the next time, try to hit the one I throw at ya first!’ ”
Back to YES, Travis Hafner pinch-hitting.
O’Neill: “In these situations, in old Yankee Stadium, you had to run all the way down the hall to use the batting cage. This new stadium, right down the steps, are two great cages. So as a pinch hitter or a DH it’s easy to get loose, take swings, be ready.” Neat!
Back to SNY. A studio insert showed the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo homering into the second deck in Miami. The ball landed just in front of the only two folks in sight. Yet neither seemed much interested. Odd, but, c’est la vie.
Ron Darling saw that, too: “Have you ever seen a home run that comes within one seat of a fan, and neither of them moved to try to catch it or go after the ball?” Eggs-ackly!
Over to Knicks-Celtics, where, Knicks up 78-59, 7:06 left, J. R. Smith was throwing an elbow at Jason Terry, winning a technical, an ejection and, eventually, a suspension. MSG’s Spero Dedes could have seen it both ways — Terry’s recoil might have been exaggerated — but he told it the right way:
“These are the kinds of decisions that have plagued J.R. Smith in his career. … You just can’t do that, certainly not when you’re up by 19. … You can’t justify swinging an elbow at a guy’s face.”
It was a good TV night. Thanks, y’all.
Did Marv need a bathroom break in triple overtime? Yes!
The Nets’ triple-overtime loss in Chicago, Saturday, was an endurance test for all. TNT’s Steve Kerr handled the play-by-play at the start of the third OT. “Where’d ya go?” he asked, when Marv Albert returned.
“I went to grab a sandwich,” Albert said.
As Dad used to say, “I told you to go before we left the house!”
After Saturday’s game, WFAN’s John Jastremski kept hollering that the Bulls are nearly unbeatable at home. Really? The Bulls this season were 24-17 at home, the third-most home losses among the 16 playoff teams.
Good call by Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy, yesterday: The Nets allowed the Bulls’ 14-point, late-fourth-quarter comeback by missing clock-stopping free throws.
* Michael Kay’s reliance on neo-baseball blather is too often misplaced, misapplied, misleading and mistaken.
On Friday, against Mariano Rivera, the Blue Jays’ Brett Lawrie, batting .184, hit a 1-2 pitch into right, an opposite-field single.
“Nice piece of hitting by Lawrie,” Kay said. “He just stroked it to the right side to pick up a hit.”
Please. If Lawrie could do that against Rivera, why’d he whiff at the previous pitch, why was he hitting .184?
What Kay described as “a nice piece of hitting” and Lawrie’s ability “to stroke it to the right side to pick up a hit,” looked more like a fortunate piece of hitting, Lawrie more likely relieved to hit it anywhere.
* New among TV’s mock NFL Draft mock experts: Offensive linemen with “short arms” as a liability. ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. warned the Giants’ first pick, OT Justin Pugh, has “short arms,” which apparently means they’re not unusually long.
Think any short-armed lineman ever started on a Super Bowl team or is in the Hall of Fame? Nah.
* Yesterday, after Heather Cox reported that the Knicks’ bus was stuck in Boston traffic en route to the arena, Breen had a great take: Had Red Auerbach been alive, he’d have been suspected of arranging it.
On Channel 11 yesterday, Keith Hernandez volunteered he had since-fired Mets clubhouse man Charlie Samuels forge his signature on team-autographed balls. Geez. Has the statute of limitations expired?
On Friday, after completely — but authoritatively — getting the first round of the NFL Draft wrong, Mike Francesa, gifted with the ability to turn road underdogs into big winners (by touting the favorite), sagely predicted the Celtics, three-point favorites, would win that night. Knicks by 14.
LSU running back Jeremy Hill, 20, was arrested for battery as one of two to allegedly beat a man unconscious outside a Baton Rouge bar early Saturday morning. Hill was on probation after pleading guilty last year to carnal knowledge of a juvenile after being accused of having a 14-year-old perform oral sex on him. In lesser matters, LSU’s academic finals begin May 6.
Things we learned this April: The Islanders are as good as the Rangers, Joe Girardi just might be a good manager, it’s still kinda cold for baseball in Minnesota and Colorado, and Jets’ PSLs are worth the paper they’re printed on — but not a penny more.