NOTHING But Netting: From a TV debut standpoint the Mets’ new park, over the weekend, was the clear (view) winner. Telecasts from Yankee Stadium thus far exude three need-fixin’ problems.
1) Every batted ball shown from behind-the-plate — and that’s just about all of them — is first seen through backstop netting. Oopsie. Depending on your sense of what a new, $1.5 billion ballpark should be, impaired-view TV likely lands between annoying and intolerable.
Saturday, YES explained that the through-a-net look is actually an improvement over the original, pre-telecast view. Really? Yikes.
Apparently, when blueprinting, the Yanks did not invest much forethought into primary camera positions. That was bound to happen when you become too busy with other logistics, such as, “Let’s see, $850 per seat, times 81 games . . .”
Backstop nets lately have been extended to meet safety and liability issues. But there are ways — smartly placed camera platforms, for example — to work around them as opposed to through them.
2) The Stadium does not yet have dedicated first or third base down-the-lines low camera positions, a must for a new big league parks in 1989, let alone 2009. While YES is trying to remedy that, foresight again seems to have been lost to the Yanks’ maximizing the number of unaffordable seats.
3) While fans understand that in-park commercial signage is meant to be seen on TV, the billboards in Yankee Stadium show up so large and garish they often swallow the game being played in front of them.
The in-house ads in the Mets’ new park showed up tamer, less intrusive, more incidental. Baseball seemed to be the top priority.
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Final Four Saturday: CBS’s pregame piece on two disabled high school basketball team managers in Maine was so touching that we wondered how we’d manage to stop crying before tipoff of UConn-Michigan St. No fooling.
CBS quickly solved that with a pandering inclusion of triple-threat (drugs, weapons, assaults) rapper Eminem, presented as a caring son of depressed Detroit, followed by made-for-TV team intros during which players seemed to have been encouraged to demonstrate their self-regard.
With 14:15 left in the second, UConn up two, MSU’s Raymar Morgan changed the game with the best instant, all-good-senses play since Mickey Mantle slid back into first in Game 7 of 1960 World Series.
As UConn’s Craig Austrie lost the ball at the foul line, Morgan immediately punched it down-court — first-timed it, controlled it without actually handling it — directly bouncing the ball to Draymond Green who took it, in-stride at half-court, for a nolo contendre layup.
The thought, the vision, the touch and timing — all arriving and acted on in an instant — were extraordinary; a play that should have been replayed five times. It wasn’t replayed even once.
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What comes after preposterous? The sunny suggestion that the Yanks, as their own concessionaires, would keep prices down was false. A bag of Cracker Jacks, absurd at $5.25 last year, is now $5.75; 16-ounce beer went up .50 to $9.00.
Gary Cohen was at his face-facts best at the top of Friday’s telecast. After reporting Gary Sheffield had been signed, he made it clear the Mets had added a fellow who’s impossible to root for. (What else is new?)
We’ve seen it during games in Houston, D.C., Pittsburgh: Plush, expensive backstop seats going conspicuously empty because they’re too expensive. The telecasts become front and center salutes to team owners who out-scalped the scalpers — and got nothing for their greed. And I suspect we’ll often see the same during telecasts from Yankee Stadium and Bailout Field.
After a show-and-tell Friday about how the two Citi Field bullpens are side-by-side, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez concluded that “bench-clearing brawls can now be fought in right-center.” . . . David Cone on YES Saturday said Cubs pitcher Rich Harden‘s injuries are “well-documented.” Someday we’ll hear that The Bill of Rights is well-documented.
Merle Harmon, sweet radio voice of the Jets, 1964-72, is in a Texas hospital with pneumonia. . . . Apparently Giuseppe Franco ads on Yank telecasts will be replaced by the Gracie Brothers’ hand-to-hand combat try-this-at-home instructional videos.
ESPN, The Joke, continues. A SportsCenter feature Saturday concluded that the improved Royals would bring parity to the AL Central. A graphic read, “Parody in AL Central.” (Thanks to reader John Fortuna for the heads-up.)
For a moment last week it sounded as if Dave Winfield was being interviewed on ESPN Radio no sales strings attached, for no other reason than to chat with an ex-star. Should’ve known better. Winfield was on to promote his new assignment as an ESPN analyst.
The Jim Dolan/Cablevision Knicks, the NBA’s most advantaged franchise, over the last eight seasons are now 247-407 (.378), including 0-4 in their only playoff series.