TAKE A BREATH! Saturday’s L.A. starter, Carlos Monasterios (above), had barely warmed up when Fox’s Eric Karros, the former Dodger, started analyzing every pitch and every situation in excruciating detail. (Getty Images; (AP))
Eric Karros (AP)
Show of hands: How many would like to be at a ballgame seated beside a fellow (or between fellows) who kept leaning toward you, giving you his take on almost every pitch and swing?
How many of you turn on a baseball telecast hoping that the analyst or analysts will examine nearly every pitch and swing?
Thought so. Then why is it that’s what we get? When did this start, who started it, and why does it not only persist but grow worse?
Based on what he has for years heard, did Fox’s Eric Karros, Saturday, figure that’s what Fox and its audiences want, or was he instructed to inspect pitch after pitch, swing after swing? He started early. One out in the top of the first of Mets-Dodgers, he began daring us to hit the mute button.
First he told us that Dodger starter Carlos Monasterios “has a good off-speed changeup” — is there another kind? Seconds after, before a 3-2 pitch to Angel Pagan, this:
“It’ll be interesting, with a 3-2 situation, and you’ve got first base to play with, so you just don’t wanna lay something over the middle of the plate. You’ve got a young hitter at the plate; [Dodger catcher] Brad Ausmus, I’m guessing, is probably going to expand the zone a little bit.”
Usher! Security! Remove this man! Or kill me. Just make it quick.
And that “young hitter at the plate”? Pagan is 29, in his fifth big-league season, with 1,100 at-bats.
Did anyone suggest to Karros that because it’s TV — because we tuned in to watch more than listen — that it’s often OK, and even preferred, to say nothing?
But Karros likely was just doing what he thinks analysts are supposed to do. Remember: In TV, no bad idea is unworthy of duplication!
Consumers are scoring ‘Direct’ hits
PRAISE the Lord, and pass the ammo! We’ve got ’em on the run!
We’re now hearing from more (and more) readers who have done what we’ve lately urged: Tell DirecTV to take a hike; don’t fall for its advertised “preseason special” for the Sunday NFL Ticket package.
The price tag on that act-now! early-bird “special,” $315, not only is $25 more than last year’s fee (recession? where?), it’s the price DirecTV hopes will be swallowed by suckers, by those most easily fleeced.
DirecTV’s advertised, set price isn’t set at all. It’s individually negotiable. We’ve now heard from at least a dozen
NFL package subscribers who,
under their threat of cancellation, have had that $315 fee reduced by a lot — $45 — to a whole lot — $126.
What we’re left with is the NFL again serving as paid party to the abuse of its fans/customers by a business to which the NFL has sold its logo, license and authority. And then that NFL business partner, with the NFL’s see-no-ripoffs blessings, is allowed to do as it pleases — as long as the NFL gets its take.
And the NFL’s DirecTV take is huge — $1 billion a year, through 2013. That’s all the NFL cares about, knows about.
As for you, you dig-deeper saps, Roger Goodell’s NFL is inclined to include a PSL, of some sort, behind every door, the stench of boiler room from every basement. To borrow from baseball, the “steal sign” is always on.
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Yeah, lots of bad calls this season. Still, not as many as TV makes it seem.
There should be a rule: Anyone who has to rely on a slow-mo replay to determine whether a call was correct loses the right to gripe about the ump; the broadcaster also must add, “Not that I could have called it any better.”
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Speaking of replays, after a season and a half in new Yankee Stadium, nothing that happens within it, outside of the lavatories, is left unseen by YES’s camera crew — John Moore director, Bill Boland producer. Yesterday, YES had both foul poles, all bases and even the heading-this-way rain clouds in Tupperware mode — covered.
SNY slo-mo show not too swift
FRIDAY, after Gary Cohen and Ed Coleman — Ron Darling was ill — suggested that Dodger Vicente Padilla’s super slow curve is the slowest in the majors, SNY showed it in a replay — a replay shown in slow motion.
SNY demonstrated slow in slow motion! That made it look like Bugs Bunny’s “perplexing slow-ball,” his out-pitch against the Gas House Gorillas. …
Strong pregame stat from Darling, yesterday: Dodger starter Clayton Kershaw, 9-5, “has had four wins taken away by the bullpen.” . . .
When R.A. Dickey suddenly had to be replaced, yesterday, Howie Rose, on WFAN, described the scramble to warm up in the Mets bullpen as looking like “high school gym class.”
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As Time Goes By: From first pitch to last out of Friday’s Royals-Yanks, 4:05 elapsed,
a 1:25 rain delay included. Yet, the time of game was booked as — and will be factored as — 2:38. If that game ran only 2:38, why was the Stadium nearly empty in the sixth? Ah, baseball in the Age of Bud.
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Albert Pujols on CBS, tonight, with David Letterman. … Suggested YES poll question: Who looked stranger in a Red Sox uniform, Ralph Houk or Elston Howard?
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An ad in yesterday’s Times for memorabilia sold through the N.Y. Times Store, included this item: “Yankees Game-Used Baseball Cuff-Links, MLB authenticated, set in sterling, $150.” Game-used cuff links? Must’ve been the official scorer’s.
Uecker tale still tickles
BOB Uecker’s return to the Brewer booth following heart surgery brings to Bert Sugar’s mind the story Uecker tells of being a Cards backup catcher and calling time to head to the mound to talk to Bob Gibson.
Gibson got in the first words. “What are you doing out here?” he snarled.
Uecker replied, “I was just heading out to talk to Curt Flood in center.”