Sports

TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, MIKE DIDN’T ; FRANCESA IGNORED FACTS IN ON-AIR ATTACK

UNLIKE Mike Francesa, I’m uncomfortable making myself the focus of my work.

But Francesa told several lies on the air Monday, self-serving lies not easily apparent to his audience. And, as Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

And the lies he told, simultaneously on WFAN and the YES Network, were at the expense of my integrity. And so I write, today, both in my own defense and to expose a 50,000-watt clear-signal liar. (And because it’s a juicy story, too.)

Monday, Francesa and Chris Russo responded to an item I wrote about them in that day’s Post. It noted on the day of the Nets’ home opener, they did a rare remote from the Meadowlands, offering, at the top of the show, a bunch of reasons as to why they were there, but likely excluding a significant one: That night’s game was the Nets’ first regular-season game on YES; and Francesa and Russo are on the YES payroll.

“Dumbest thing I ever heard [sic] in my life,” Russo said.

“Not even a kernel of truth,” Francesa said.

While, knowing them as I do, I don’t believe them, that doesn’t mean that I’m right or that they lied. The lies are those that followed.

Francesa: “This is the same guy who last year, when quotes were attributed to me in The Post, and The Times was going to slaughter me, called up and [The Times] had to can the piece because he [The Times columnist] had to admit that The Times never heard it.”

Russo: “What was that? I forget that one.”

Francesa: “Those quotes about 9/11 and everything, which weren’t made and no one ever found them. Plus, so he had to admit that he never heard them, so he got them second- or third-hand and they weren’t even true quotes and they didn’t even have the quotes, so they couldn’t do the story.”

Wow, damning stuff. I fabricated a story about the content of Francesa’s show in the wake of 9/11. Consequently, the New York Times was forced to “can” a story in which it had planned to “slaughter” Francesa based on what I’d written.

Scandalous. I should be fired. But only if it were true.

Sports media columnist Richard Sandomir is the person from The Times who contacted Francesa.

“There was never any overt attempt to do such a story,” he said Monday night. “I spoke with Mike, but then had neither the time nor inclination to pursue it. I couldn’t, not after [WFAN program director] Mark Chernoff told me that the show [in question] was not taped.

“There was no attempt to ‘slaughter’ Mike because there was no attempt to pursue it beyond that conversation I had with him.”

Furthermore, Francesa’s claim that I fabricated quotes, then attributed them to him is a total lie because I never quoted either Francesa or Russo in that column. I couldn’t quote them because WFAN claimed that it did not tape that particular segment.

But I did hear them – first-hand, not “second or third-hand” – then wrote a column critical of them for characterizing the 9/11 attacks as the fault of Israel, and by extension, American Jews.

I criticized them for suggesting that American Jews declare their loyalty to either Israel or the U.S. I wrote that as a third-generation American Jew and the son of a World War II veteran U.S. Naval officer, I found their take to be ignorant, repugnant and inflammatory.

And I listened at length, that day, because I’d already received calls, faxes and e-mails complaining about Francesa’s and Russo’s simplistic, bigoted overview on 9/11, one that ignored the fact that radical, theocratic Muslims were murdering non-Muslims of all faiths, all over the world.

The fact that no tape was, in Francesa’s words, “ever found” – he failed to mention WFAN’s claim not to have taped the segment I wrote about – was used by Francesa, Monday, as proof that I fabricated a story about him.

And that bogus premise, based in a lie, was used by Francesa as proof as to why The Times killed a piece that would’ve condemned him.

And that bogus premise, based in a lie, was used by Francesa as proof that quotes I attributed to him were fabricated – when he was never even quoted.