FINALLY! Lengthy delays, like the 3-hour, 45-minute wait Lucas Duda and the Mets sat through before Monday’s game vs. the Braves in Atlanta, benefit no one except team owners. (
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Here on Planet Macaronia, we rodents live on Macaronian Cheese, served every day, all day and all night.
Another cheesy week. But on Macaronia it’s best to behave like Bernie Madoff clients — no questions allowed, just do as you’re told.
Monday’s Mets-Braves didn’t begin until nearly 11 p.m., after a 3-hour, 45-minute rain delay. That once would have been impossible, ridiculous, nuts, out of the question. Death row inmates are treated with greater regard.
Today? Throughout MLB, that’s standard stuff. “Bottom Line” Bud Selig and his enablers have turned the grotesquely unreasonable into business as usual. Good thing it was a quick game — 2:29 — or it might have ended at 3:30 a.m.
But look at us, $5 bottled water off a chump’s back. Media and fans have become so accustomed to the twisted state of — pardon the expression — sports, that there’s no outcry or outrage, no shaming the shameless. There is nothing new under the morning moon in Macaronia. Let ’em eat cheese!
Besides, what now passes as sports media …
Also Monday, in Atlanta, three on-air members of a morning drive radio show — “Steak” Shapiro, Chris Dimino and Nick Cellini — were fired after they did a bit lampooning the diminishing condition of Steve Gleason, a former New Orleans Saint sentenced to death by ALS. Funny angle, eh?
But just as in the Don Imus calamity, the three were, to a large extent, just meeting the terms of their modern engagements. Consider that their local ESPN AM radio show was titled “Mayhem in the AM.”
They were hired to attract and sustain an audience of desensitized young adult males by being wise guys, put-down artists, jock shock jocks employed to “entertain” by going low, cheap and cruel.
Throughout Macaronia, that’s the formula. If you can’t be legitimately funny, creative or engaging, go low. Few are expected to know the difference, with even fewer to come.
With a severe weather warning issued for this region Tuesday night, the Dodgers-Yankees game was postponed well before it was scheduled to begin. Imagine that, a logical, safety-based decision.
Perhaps, though, we have Mike Francesa to thank. He knowingly advised that the game would be played, even if they had to wait all night. Minutes later, it was called. His expert claim that Hurricane Sandy would be a passing shower — his gift for being steadily, pompously and colossally wrong — was all it took.
Here in the media capital of Macaronia, Francesa can thrive. Throughout these NBA playoffs he has even provided vivid recall of events — that epic Tim Duncan-Patrick Ewing Finals battle, for one — that never happened.
As the ultimate insider, he also continues to note things “I’ve been told,” such as the latest on the progress of Alex Rodriguez. Funny, how what “I’ve been told” so often appeared in that morning’s papers or was just tweeted.
Tuesday night, despite the severe weather and warnings, the Mets’ Brooklyn Cyclones didn’t postpone their home opener until 9:04, two hours after the scheduled first pitch. That allowed plenty of time for those who did show to buy lots of eats and drink. This Mets’ acorn didn’t fall far from the tree.
Wednesday’s Dodgers-Yankees two-admission doubleheader was loaded with home-delivery Macaronian Cheese.
In the top of the first inning, Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez was thrown out easily on a grounder to short. On YES, a slightly incredulous Michael Kay said, “Gonzalez just jogging to first.”
But in the bottom of the first, when Robinson Cano hit a grounder, stumbled, then jogged to first — he reached on an error but had no shot to reach second or force a bad throw because he jogged — Kay went into his Sgt. Schultz, I-see-nothing mode.
Kinda the way Kay notices all the empty seats — except in Yankee Stadium — and how teams get burned on big-ticket player contracts — except the Yankees.
In the second, Yankees radio interrupted commercial sponsorship readings for Suzyn Waldman to report that Dodgers center fielder Andre Ethier didn’t appear particularly interested in catching then chasing Lyle Overbay’s fly ball, hit over Ethier’s head.
Fascinating. Waldman can identify such a thing in deep center field, yet doesn’t notice Cano’s indifferent running toward first, which regularly occurs right down there in front of her.
But, as reader Mike Logerfo suggests, many people misinterpret Cano’s style. “He just makes being thrown out at first look so effortless.”
Macaronian Cheese. Come and get it!
Spurs coach spurns foul idea
Just when we thought the Spurs’ Gregg Popovich was a superb coach, Tuesday he dismissed the idea of fouling, up three with seconds left in regulation, with, “We don’t do that.”
In other words, he would guard against something — making the first free throw, intentionally missing the second, then rebounding and scoring to tie — he may have seen once or twice, instead choosing to provide opponents an opportunity to tie with a 3-pointer, which he has seen successfully accomplished dozens of times.
* ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” Sunday at 9 a.m. (ESPN2, 10 a.m.), profiles Joe O’Brien, the son of outlaw bikers, who played college football, earned his degree and was climbing the coaching ladder at Montana State — until he was busted as part of a meth ring.
* Win or lose, good or bad, Phil Hughes is a mensch, politely facing the postgame media music.
* Howie Rose on Tuesday noted the two times the Mets won the World Series they were on country music stations, WJRZ in 1969, WHN in 1986.
* Wednesday on YES, after Yankees reliever David Robertson walked consecutive batters then went 2-0 on the third, Robinson Cano came in to talk with him. On YES, David Cone said when he was going bad like that, and a teammate or coach came to the mound, “You nod your head, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ but you don’t hear a word that’s said.”
Russo’s future uncertain
Something has to give, and soon, at Sirius/XM.
Chris Russo’s five-year, $15 million deal expires in August, and word from in and out indicate Sirius/XM isn’t eager to renew, not at that one-time-only price. Russo, when asked about his future on the air, has been vague.
A return to WFAN or a move to WFAN fatherland’s CBS Sports Radio Network? ESPN Radio-NY? A reunion with Mike Francesa, who never did find that new partner (odd; he’s so easy to work with), or a professorship at the New Canaan branch of the Connecticut School of Broadcasting?
Coming, this August.