FOR all the goofy stats, graphics and focus ESPN provides, Saturday morning’s “SportsCenter” had a can’t-miss shot to focus on one of the great stat-producing performances in modern big-league baseball. It occurred, after all, just the night before.
Friday night, Royals pitcher Luke Hochevar beat the Reds, 4-1. The game ran 2:12; Hochevar went the distance, allowing three hits and a walk. Ready? He threw 80 pitches. Eighty pitches, that was it. Don Larsen, in his perfect World Series game, threw 97.
But throughout Saturday’s one-hour “SportsCenter,” repeated throughout the morning, neither Hochevar nor the game was even mentioned, not a peep, not a clip, as if it never happened. With all the NBA- and NASCAR-on-ESPN/ABC come-ons posed as news, an 80-pitch complete game didn’t make the cut.
Yet, in that same “SportsCenter,” ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols continued to focus on her favorite subject: Rachel Nichols. Her dispatch from the NBA finals told that Dwight Howard isn’t happy with his free-throw shooting.
“He told me he will go to the gym, on his own, and practice hundreds of free throws,” she said.
Hey, in addition to Nichols, he’d better tell the guy who runs the gym.
But then Nichols added that practicing hundreds of free throws is “something Howard has done throughout these playoffs.” So what was the point of that report other than to say, “He told me?”
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If your kid’s Little League team, the last three seasons, didn’t demonstrate the most basic of basics — running to first, backing up the play, catching flies with both hands — you’d conclude that your kid’s coaches aren’t qualified to coach Little Leaguers.
But the Mets, who have lost out on the playoffs by one game the last two seasons, continue to lose games that a kids’ team, schooled in the basics, wouldn’t. And Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel (and Willie Randolph before him) and many among the media continue to pretend that these are isolated cases. They are. And there’s a new isolated case every other day.
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MLB Network continues to make substance its style. Tonight’s “Quick Pitch” and “MLB Tonight” will include a piece, voiced by Bob Costas, on Don Drysdale’s sixth straight shutout. That game, the night of June 4, 1968, was the same day as the California presidential primary, won by Robert Kennedy. Moments after Kennedy, in his acceptance speech, congratulated Drysdale, Kennedy was shot dead.
In 1993, Drysdale, a Dodgers broadcaster, was found dead of a heart attack in a Montreal hotel. He was 56. Hotel workers were sent to his room when he was late for the Dodgers-Expos game. Found in his room was a tape of Kennedy’s acceptance speech, a tape Drysdale apparently always packed.
During that night’s game Vin Scully had to withhold news of Drysdale’s death until his family had been told.
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If I were allowed one fellow with whom to start an NHL franchise, I’d certainly consider Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. But you couldn’t go wrong selecting Mike Emrick. So help me, if Emrick chose baseball, football or basketball, he’d be known as one of America’s most cherished sportscasters.
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So shortly after ESPN feeds bumptious agent Drew Rosenhaus’ enormous ego by having him star in an ESPN commercial, ESPN starts laying claim to “scoops” — with ESPN, you never know whether the scoop was scooped from elsewhere — pertaining to Plaxico Burress, a Rosenhaus client. And if it’s a legit scoop, fairly won by ESPN, those who should get credit have only ESPN to blame for getting suspicion instead.
Game 4 of the NBA Finals began Thursday after 9 p.m. and ended at 12:16 a.m. While many remain conditioned to call David Stern “a marketing genius,” others understand that he’s just another slave to TV money .ñ.ñ. Adam Schefter, NFL Network’s credible lead reporter, in August moves to ESPN.
Nick Faldo, the best CBS get from ABC since Warner Wolf and Dr. Phil, last week was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Now if we can get her to knight Texas-born CBS golf producer Lance Barrow, we could have Sir Lancelot. .ñ.ñ. Impressive get from Gary Cohen during yesterday’s blowout on Channel 11, recalling the line of Shock, Shack and Schinkel. In the early ’70s, the expansion Pens skated a line of Ron Shock, Eddie Shack and ex-Ranger Ken Schinkel.
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How ’bout a $9 beer, Mr. Mayor? When you see Rudy Giuliani seated in those mostly unsold second-row seats at a Mets-Yanks game, you kinda lose hope that he’s the kind of politician/public advocate who will demand to know from the Yankees why taxpayer money built a ballpark that prices out so many taxpayers. After all, only staggering greed caused so many can’t-miss-’em empty seats throughout the weekend’s Mets-Yanks series.
And you begin to wonder whether Giuliani, wearing his Yankee cap while seated in an obscenely priced seat, fancies himself a populist while looking like an elitist.