Rarefied air. A strong weekend for sports on TV and radio. Good things come to those who wait, Grasshopper.
Tops was the Nets’ radio team, Chris Carrino and Tim Capstraw, on WFAN. The mark of any superior radio call is when you’re in no hurry to leave the car to watch the same game on TV. Why abandon the call of Saturday’s Nets-Raptors Game 1 on radio when it seemed as if that call could not be improved upon?
Carrino and Capstraw gave us the Five C’s: Clear, concise, candid, and, uh, Carrino and Capstraw. At no point did I have a question they hadn’t already answered. They saw the floor, gave the score.
Better, was what they didn’t: No fad-driven hollering, no rah-rah junk, no “signature call” gimmickry and no forced, faux-hip expressions. Carrino painted the pictures — “All alone, left baseline jumper … ” — and Capstraw provided his artistic interpretation — “He was alone because …”
A good, honest, steady call for those who prefer fluency in plain, Basketball English. What a pleasure. Shoot, they were so good, that during a commercial I started the car to ensure they hadn’t killed the battery. For serious.
Also strong was SNY’s Mets squad of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. At the top of Friday’s game, the Mets having returned from sweeping the Diamondbacks, they might have been moved to beat the drums for the hungry-for-more Mets!
Instead, each told their version of the same cautionary tale: The Mets had just swept a team that appeared predeceased, a team that in three games made five errors and many more easy outs. Thus, folks, root at your own peril. Soon after, the Mets were 6-0 losers, but they did get one hit.
Saturday’s Blackhawks-Blues Game 2 on NBC was, without NBC’s help, a classic. St. Louis went up, 2-0, on a goal with two seconds left in the first period. Next, down, 3-2, they tied it with seven seconds left, then won in overtime. Non-stop stuff, some of it brutal — but not necessarily illegal — all in high speed.
Yet, NBC unilaterally improved on the view with some neat tape-work and commentary. Late in the first, it gave an extra-high overview that showed a Blues shift-change to be tardy, allowing undefended ice.
Play-by-player Dave Strader and analyst Ed Olczyk added that unless the Blues fix that, they’ll pay for two reasons: Chicago’s the best at “stretch-passes” — long, down-ice passes to line-hangers — and in the second period, with teams changing directions, the Blues’ bench will be even further from their goalie. Good stuff, worth looking for.
Saturday night, as the Mets again were losing to the Braves, Cohen, his voice loaded with Grecian formula tragicomedy, said: “Ike Davis just had another hit for Pittsburgh. He’s now 2-for-2, with a walk.”
Even the toppings were tasty: A sweet backhanded catch of a Mark Teixeira line drive by the Rays’ right-field ball boy yesterday. Before replaying it, YES stuck with it long enough for us to see the kid get a gloved fist-bump from a Tampa Bay reliever. Fabulous.
Time to rewind on MLB replay
How is it that we could anticipate the 700 unintended examples of how MLB’s new replay rules would make mystery hash of games, yet MLB’s best minds couldn’t? Like the NFL’s replay rule, this is going to be another that takes 30 years of fixing before it’s still not fixed.
As seen during Friday’s Braves-Mets game, the replay rule is now expected to determine whether there are two out, three out or four out.
Yep, Lucas Duda, headed to third with two out, reasonably assumed that the out call at first was the third out. Then it appeared that, as per the replay rule, Duda could have been either the third or fourth out.
Somehow, baseball survived 150 years without these replay rules, yet denial is powerful. Baseball has no more applicable, practical common sense than it has foresight. Lose these rules, and now. Chalk it up to a well-intended but ill-conceived try. Only sustain the one that determines whether a batted ball was a home run.
More Bud Ball: The Orioles-Red Sox game last night for ESPN money, will be followed by today’s Orioles-Red Sox game on Patriots Day at the local holiday’s standard 11 a.m. start. It’s April; the Boston forecast last night was for the low 40s. MLB and ESPN couldn’t have scheduled White Sox-Rangers or Giants-Padres? Once, shame could compete with greed.
NBC continues to push Rangers-Flyers games as a continuation of a blood-dripping 40 years holy war. But those who follow hockey — and that’s most of those watching — know better. The NHL’s days of Dave Schultz, Don
Saleski and Bob “Hound Dog” Kelly are long gone.
No apologies for vulgarization of sports
The coarsening: Why would Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri apologize — especially to kids — for hollering an obscenity about the Nets during a pep rally when the NBA and his team proudly named Toronto-born rapper Drake as the celebrity host of the 2016 All-Star Game in Toronto?
What Ujiri hollered in public doesn’t come close to the hate-filled, N-word loaded vulgarities Drake raps in public and sells to the public.
And why couldn’t NBC-owned Golf Channel tell the Top-Flite golf ball people that while it appreciates their business, it refuses to run an add so childish, so vulgar and so unfunny that it leaves viewers, who pay a premium, and golf, diminished?
It seems that even at 36, the Nets’ Paul Pierce isn’t too old to make juvenile, how-great-I-art gestures.
We’ve heard from a stack of Syracuse alumni upset the Orange will wear three new football uniforms, this season, none of them emphasizing orange
Hey, don’t tell me; tell Syracuse. Maybe the alumni can lead a “Say No To Nike” revolt.
John Sterling, yesterday from St. Petersburg, Fla., called two Yankees home runs, Sterling self-promotional-style, that weren’t homers. “Voice of the New York Yankees” — for the last 24 years.
Former Ranger Mark Pavelich is auctioning his 1980 U.S. Olympic Team gold medal. That’s his business. But who would want someone else’s achievement medal?
Peter Turner, a reader from Montreal, writes that with Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson having signed with the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes, he now should be “Chad Quatre-Vingt-Cinq.”