It only stands to modern reason that Stephen A. Smith would return from suspension before the return of common sense. Last we heard of common sense, it was out of the game, suspended, given its unconditional release, delivering pizzas.
Thursday, as Gary Cohen and Ron Darling made clear early in SNY’s Mets-Nationals telecast, the Mets were facing one of the best control starters in the majors. Jordan Zimmermann this season has walked just 21 batters in 138 1/3 innings, with six strikeouts to every walk. Sensational.
Thus, if ever there was a game when the Mets would abandon their nasty habit of taking first-pitch strikes, this was it, no?
No.
First inning: David Wright looks at a first-pitch strike, strikes out swinging at a 2-2 pitch.
Second inning: Anthony Recker looks at a first-pitch strike, strikes out swinging at a 2-2 pitch.
Third: Curtis Granderson looks at a first-pitch strike, strikes out swinging at a 2-2 pitch.
Fourth: Juan Lagares looks at a first-pitch strike, grounds out on the next pitch. Wilmer Flores looks at a first-pitch strike, pops to first on an 0-2 pitch.
Sixth: Wright takes a first-pitch strike, hits a weak groundout on an 0-2 pitch. With runners on first and third, two out, Mets down, 3-1, Lagares looks at a first-pitch strike, strikes out swinging at an 0-2 pitch.
It’s crazy. Never seen a team more eager to change the game to four balls and two strikes.
And the notion the Mets are trying to build the opposing starter’s pitch count makes no modern-formula common sense, not when starters rarely go more than seven innings. Zimmermann, although pitching well Thursday, was removed with one out in the seventh.
Eighth inning: Wright looks at a first-pitch strike, pops out, foul, on an 0-2 pitch.
Ninth: Flores looks at a first-pitch strike, pops out, foul, on the next pitch.
10th: Granderson leads off looking at a first-pitch strike, flies to shallow left on a 1-2 pitch.
11th: Lucas Duda takes a first-pitch strike, strikes out swinging at a 2-2 pitch.
Mets lose, 5-3, in 13 innings.
Maybe the Mets are “guess hitters” who guess that it’s easier to hit behind in the count. Or maybe they’re just “waiting for their pitch” — before returning to the dugout to wait some more.
Of course, what do I/we know about baseball?
Award winners all across the dial
Weekly Awards:
Line of the Week: After the Phillies traded pitcher Roberto Hernandez to the Dodgers, WCBS-Radio sports anchor Gordon Damer noted Hernandez used to be named Fausto Carmona. Damer added that in exchange, the Phils will get two players “to be named later.”
Word of the Week: SNY’s Ron Darling, during Mets-Nationals, spoke of “someone who never swang the bat.” Dizzy Dean would tell listeners that runners “slud into third.”
Catch of the Week: “Upstate” Doug Branch was watching one of MSG’s pay-per-month summer-filler flicks, 1971’s “Brian’s Song,” when Bears’ 1965 rookie Gale Sayers is warned he will be the target of racist taunts when the Bears play in the South, specifically Atlanta and New Orleans.
Neither franchise, notes Branch, was in the NFL in 1965.
Expert Analysis of the Week: After Rory McIlroy drew a bomb down the middle of the par-5 seventh at the PGA Championship on Friday, CBS’ Peter Kostis, on TNT: “This hole is where long hitters have a huge advantage — if they can confidently hit it in the fairway.”
Oh, that kind of hole (as opposed to all par fours and fives, everywhere)!
Clairvoyant “Live” Coverage of the Week: Friday, during the second round, TNT/CBS somehow chose to cut to Paul Casey, at 4-over, 12 back and not previously seen, just before he holed a pitch.
Then, somehow, TNT/CBS caught up with Y.E. Yang, 6-over, 14 back and not previously seen, just before he sank a long putt.
Brilliant! Both must have been shown live, given we were told and shown nothing to the contrary. By the way, neither Casey nor Yang were seen again.
TV guys say darndest things
Crazy fancy-talk, the kind of nonsense only spoken by live-event sportscasters while on the air — they wouldn’t risk private ridicule — continues to make for head-scratching, unintended comedy.
Thursday, TNT’s nice-guy cliché-grinder Ernie Johnson, anchoring the PGA Championship, told us first-round leader Kevin Chappell is “a former UCLA product.”
While Chappell’s not — he always will be a UCLA “product” — Johnson couldn’t have simply said, “He played at UCLA”?
And one doesn’t play the course, one “navigates” it.
Now YES’ Michael Kay has joined SNY’s Gary Cohen in their inability to simply say someone “pitched well” or “played well.” Rather, it’s a matter of a player having “acquitted himself well.” Try casually saying that to your buddies, then check the looks you’ll get.
What was once out of the question…
Is there anything lower than CBS-owned WFAN’s Yankees broadcasts selling national anthem sponsorships, then eliminating the anthem, replacing it with commercials?
Every sell to new Yankee Stadium carries a cheap, cheesy stench. Print and website come-ons to buy tickets to Dec. 27’s Pinstripe Bowl — Big Ten vs. ACC — include a conspicuously placed list of the NCAA preseason Top 10.
The chance of a Top 10 team playing in the Pinstripe Bowl is roughly zero.
Hardly surprising that Spike TV, devoted to programming designed to desensitize teen boys and further fuel young-adult male creeps, would pursue Ray “Cold Case” Lewis to star in a new show.
It’s easy for TV’s golf voices to tell us who deserves to be on the U.S. Ryder Cup team. Tell us who doesn’t.
Following its Tiger Woods arrival-to-departure formula, who would TV, today, sacrifice to such coverage of, say, Jack Nicklaus? Arnold Palmer? Gary Player? Lee Trevino? Seve Ballesteros? Johnny Miller? Tom Watson?
Roger Goodell’s claim that PSLs are “a good investment” finally has come true! A Giants PSL holder who bought three so-so seats for $7,500 each (a total of $22,500) plus $350 per ticket per game, including two must-buy preseason games ($10,500 per season), was able to sell his tickets to a preseason game — face value, $1,050 — for a total of $100. He’s ecstatic.