Perhaps the biggest difference in baseball from what it was, oh, 40 years ago, is how The Game’s stewards steer, specifically how they regard and treat kids, their fundamental sense of right from wrong.
Well, that sense of right from wrong, once a matter of common sense, ain’t what it used to be; it has been compromised, rationalized, demoted, corroded. Consider two recent examples:
1. One of the ugliest marriages between sports and TV has been the union of Little League Baseball with ESPN, the network that attaches radar guns, network advertising and Brent Musburger to 12-year-olds.
This summer, because creating buzz now seems the shared motive, the Little League World Series on ESPN/ABC will expand its use of replay to include plays at the bases and to determine whether batters were hit and bases missed.
ESPN, if it had any common, adult, sporting sense, would have rejected being party to ingraining kids with the strong, wrong sense that their ballgames be subjected to intense, life-altering, deadly serious examinations. Instead, because the E stands for excessive, ESPN will provide up to a dozen cameras per game.
From reader John Kraus, of Easton, Pa.: “All this to embarrass some unpaid slob who thought that volunteering to be an umpire was a noble effort. But it’s all about the kids, and having fun, right?”
As we’ve seen from the day the NFL began its “instant replay rule,” not only isn’t it instant or accurate, the rule naturally turns professional judges indecisive, as only such a rule could at any level.
2. Q: Why aren’t kids’ birthday parties held at 8:10 on Sunday nights?
A: Because that would be preposterous, much too late to make even small sense; few adult gatherings begin on Sunday nights.
Yet, MLB, having sold its Sunday night authority to ESPN, has decreed that “Lunchbox Day,” a kids’ promotional day at Citi Field, Sunday, Aug. 15, be switched from a 1:10 start to an 8:10 start, creating yet another shameless, money-first bait-and-switch.
Writes Mrs. H from Connecticut: “I feel duped and disgusted. How many kids who probably would have gone to the 1 p.m. game now will miss being at the game and taking home a Mets’ lunchbox? My grandson certainly will.”
In 2008, the Mets sold tickets to a Sunday afternoon game using as a come-on a “Mr. Met Dash” — a postgame run around the bases for kids 12 and under. Then MLB, on ESPN’s orders, switched the game to Sunday night.
But be it steroids, StubHub or starting times, MLB’s profit motive during the Bud Selig Era has been built on shamelessness. Stick that in your lunchbox, kid.
All Tiger, all the time, on Golf Channel
The Tiger/TV co-dependency continues: The only reason we were able to see Lee Westwood hit a few shots at Firestone on the Golf Channel (a CBS co-production) yesterday wasn’t because he was a few shots ahead of Tiger Woods, which he was, but because he was playing with Tiger Woods, who was nowhere near the lead.
Yesterday’s telecast was so Tiger-centric that Woods could have produced and directed it. So as not to allow anyone to think Woods wasn’t playing — or that anyone else was — nine consecutive times GC returned from commercials to show Woods.
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For nearly two years, the Jets’ desperate, deceitful ticket-sales methods have been predicated on the Jets reminding Jets fans that they’re stupid. A radio ad voiced by Jets’ play-by-player Bob Wischusen now pitches ticket prices “reduced by almost 50 percent!” then refers to them as “the hottest tickets in town!”
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Every ticket in this town now comes attached to a sell with a smell. The Yankees have contacted season ticket subscribers, offering first crack at an expensive Yankees/college football ticket-bundling deal that includes Notre Dame-Army, Nov. 20 at Yankee Stadium, plus the purchase of $300 Yankeee seats that exclude Red Sox and Rays games.
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I’m still betting that Rachel Nichols retires before Brett Favre.
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This is the time of year when the media begin to marvel at how many MLB teams are still in the hunt to make the postseason, not understanding that with four spots available in each league, anything to the contrary would be the rarity.
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My pal Fred Schechter figures he has to be the only one who listens to the PGA station on XM radio. He figures that when he tunes to Ch. 146, a light goes on in a room, somewhere, and some guy puts down his magazine, flips on his microphone and starts to talk about golf.
A-select memory of history
Of all the day-of reports following Alex Rodriguez‘s 600th home run, perhaps the most suspiciously selective came from NBC national news anchor Lester Holt: “At 35, A-Rod is the youngest player to reach that milestone. He joins a club that includes Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays.”
Although Holt never mentioned Rodriguez’s steroid use, he seemed to have purposefully omitted the steroid-era club members, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey Jr. Why else would he have not mentioned Bonds, who is No. 1 on the list?
Rodriguez’s historical homer gave Yankees broadcasters a lot to ignore, too: Steroids, the ongoing investi gation of one of his doctors (traveling HGH advocate Anthony Galea) and new Yankee Stadium’s signature look — lots of empty good seats, first base clear around to third.
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Too often Keith Hernandez, rather than say nothing, seems to fill space by claiming something that’s hard to believe. Tuesday on SNY, after Jeff Francoeur‘s ninth-inning, opposite-field home run off Billy Wagner gave the Mets the lead in Atlanta, Hernandez said: “It was a fastball, away, and he didn’t try to pull it.”
Didn’t try to pull it? Geez, Francoeur’s hitting .235, he’s a career strikeout threat and he’s facing a 97 mph pitch. Pull it? It seemed more a matter of Francoeur trying not to swing and miss.
But Tuesday night’s best comment was spoken during YES’ Blue Jays-Yankees postgame by host Bob Lorenz: “When we return we’re going to talk to Michael [Kay] and Al [Leiter] about just how dominant Ricky Romero was tonight, shutting down the Yankees, held them to two hits and no runs.”
Er, now we don’t have to wait for Michael and Al to tell us.