The two most foolish presumptions made by TV’s masters of control are: 1) those who watch TV are not particularly bright, and, 2) those who watch TV can’t see.
With football games that count coming, we’ll soon be double-whacked by such persistent realities, but until then, baseball telecasts stand on their own.
To that endless end, YES Network viewers — in large part composed of Yankees fans — are regularly mistreated to two hefty and equal parts 1 and 2.
On Tuesday night, for example, the Yankees were down, 2-1, in the top of the third. The Angels had runners on first and second, one out when right-handed hitter Mark Trumbo hit a bouncer between first and second, but considerably closer to first.
With second baseman Robinson Cano playing Trumbo toward second, first baseman Lyle Overbay, moving toward second, quickly fielded the ball then threw to shortstop Eduardo Nunez, who missed second trying for the force. He then was left with no one to throw to at first to at least get Trumbo, not a fast runner.
There was no one at first to throw to because the Yankee who should have been there, CC Sabathia, didn’t immediately run to cover first as a matter of fundamental baseball. He didn’t leave the mound; he stood and watched. He sprinted toward first only after it was far too late.
Still — and again — what was impossible for both intelligent and sighted viewers to miss was totally missed — or ignored — by YES’s three expert commentators.
“CC Sabathia,” said Paul O’Neill “ has been put in a tough situation.”
He made no mention of Sabathia’s contribution to it. The Yankees defense, Michael Kay added, “has not been kind to him [Sabathia].” No one among Kay, O’Neill and Ken Singleton recognized or chose to note that had Sabathia immediately run to cover first — Uncle Pete’s Baseball Camp For Beginners, Day 3 — neither he nor the Yankees might be in such a “tough situation.”
In the fifth, after Alfonso Soriano stood styling at the plate, watching his homer to give the Yankees the lead — the ball cleared the left-center wall by a few feet — none of the three chose to mention that Soriano, as is his career-long habit, chose to show off rather than run.
O’Neill explained that “Soriano knew it, immediately.” That’s odd, because the left fielder didn’t; he played it as if it might hit the wall.
Also in the fifth, Kay told us that Alex Rodriguez “just missed one” — a home run — in his previous at bat. That “just miss” was based on him not hitting a home run on a down-the-middle pitch. That “just miss” was seen on YES as a high fly to medium center field.
Virtually all games, then, feature such “just miss” home runs that become routine fly outs.
Funny thing, though, is that while we too often are expected to disregard what we see on TV, we’re endlessly encouraged to pay strict attention to what we’re told and what we’re read.
In Kay’s case, he reads so many stats that he’s unable to distinguish the useful from the useless, the silly from the ridiculous. He just recites them the way Polly wants a cracker. Perhaps, given that we’re both sight-impaired and dim-witted, he thinks he’s impressing and/or enlightening us.
On Tuesday, while he did not say anything about Sabathia’s clear and present lethargy, at the end of the inning after Soriano’s homer, Kay dramatically alerted us to this: “The big blow, a two-run homer by Soriano; his 21st home run of the year — 11 of those 21 have given the Yankees the lead!”
Kay has read so many stats he has no idea what he’s reading or saying, anymore. Soriano, this season, hit 17 for the Cubs. Still, what does that stat mean? How many of Soriano’s homers were worthless? Somewhat worthless? Worth a little? Worth plenty? Unworthy?
In the seventh, when Soriano stood and posed after hitting his second of the game — it was nearly caught then hit off the top of the wall — Kay and Co. had the restraint to pretend that we didn’t know that we had just seen bad baseball, that Soriano should have been running, not preening.
But as long as we’re legally blind dolts, it’s all good!
Sordid NCAA stories now commonplace
It Has been a week since four Vanderbilt University football players were indicted on five charges of aggravated rape and sexual battery; one also charged with unlawful photography and tampering with evidence.
All four are accused of raping an unconscious Vanderbilt student in her dorm room.
To think that such a story has been so vastly underplayed or even ignored, that, at most, it was relegated to the back of the news menu, along with other side dishes. To think that it made “in other sports news” news, if it made news, at all.
Or is it that sordid stories are what we have come to expect from college football players and the college football system, but not, as was the case in 2006, from “rich-kid, suburban” college lacrosse players?
To think that the bogus sexual assault charges against Duke lacrosse players by a credibility-barren woman were swallowed whole by a national news media, never even pausing to study the facts.
But last week’s charges followed a seven-week investigation, no national media or social activists hollering for justice or blood. The national media have ignored this one from the start.
Then again, perhaps such stories coming from big-time college sports are just no big deal. Not anymore.
Amazin’ talk with Scully
The Mets’ trip to play the Dodgers wasn’t a total waste. Wednesday, it produced a terrific SNY pregame session, Gary Cohen interviewing Vin Scully, who has been elegantly and intelligently describing Dodgers games since 1950. Since 1950! Speaking of the 1950s Dodgers, Marty Adler, Dodger archivist and founder of the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame, died Monday. He was 77.
* In the hours and then the day after the PGA Championship, ESPN’s “SportsCenter” paid greater attention to why Tiger Woods didn’t win it than to why Jason Dufner did. Woods finished 14 shots behind.
* Best unintended line of the week: Wednesday, as Angels’ reliever Juan Gutierrez twice threw to first to hold Robinson Cano, Michael Kay said Gutierrez is “paying a lot of attention to Cano, who really doesn’t run much.”