SAY WHAT?!? In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon tragedy, Boomer Esiason misspoke when he compared the catastrophic injuries spectators and runners suffered to the same ones U.S. military suffered when hit by “IUDs.” He likely meant IEDs. (
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In The immediate aftermath of any national calamity, it’s both natural and understood that sports TV and radio regulars would share their thoughts and knowledge on such matters — even if they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Tuesday on the WFAN/MSG “Boomer and Carton” show, Craig Carton and Weekday Boomer Esiason changed course from their usual heavy newspaper lifting and crotch talk to demonstrate their serious, sensitive sides.
Esiason, noting the bombs that exploded in Boston caused catastrophic injuries to the lower extremities, added that the same injuries are suffered by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan when hit by “IUDs.”
Esiason likely meant “IEDs” — improvised explosive devices — and not IUDs, a protective device used by women.
On ESPN Radio’s nighttime Freddie Coleman show, Coleman several times flippantly referenced the bombs as “back-to-back explosions” — as if they were home runs, shutouts or road games. Yeah, the bombers went yard.
And yet, there was some circumspect commentary.
On WFAN/YES, Mike Francesa, unlike after the 9/11 terror attacks, did not tap into his incredibly deep knowledge well of world history and international affairs to blame the entire thing on Israel as “a failed experiment,” nor did he strongly suggest that American Jews are disloyal Americans who should be subjected to loyalty oaths.
While WFAN and Francesa claim he said no such things, then, the tapes of his show from that day immediately went missing, where they remain.
And this time, Chris Russo, now with Sirius XM, but then Francesa’s partner on WFAN, despite Russo’s insider’s grasp of global intrigues and his many State Department sources, did not provide listeners with an estimate of how long it would take to bring the Boston bombers to justice.
After 9/11, Russo told his audience that, “it will take a year or two to get Osama bin Laden.” How he knew this to make such a claim, he didn’t reveal. But he was only off by eight years.
Media turn blind eye toward scheduling insanity
SPORTS patronage — TV payments, included — has become a greed-stricken farce, fresh rip-offs delivered daily. Complicit in the muggings are the media, which, for reasons ranging from conflicted interests to disinterest while traveling the path of least resistance, are disinclined to name and shame the perpetrators.
This past Sunday, here, was sunny and 60 degrees at 1 p.m. Yet, no afternoon baseball game was scheduled here.
The Mets were in Minnesota, where arctic conditions — hardly unusual for Minnesota in mid-April — caused a postponement.
The two previous Mets-Twins games, played Friday night — first-pitch, 34 degrees — and Saturday, were in winter weather that MLB deemed acceptable. An empty stadium disagreed.
When interleague play began, Bud Selig described it as “a gift to fans.” Yet, the only gift was to team owners; they quickly jacked up ticket prices to those game.
The Yankees were home Sunday. They could have played the Orioles on a sunny, mild afternoon.
But in exchange for ESPN money MLB allowed the game to begin at 8 p.m. Yankee Stadium was at least half-empty, as few found sense in sitting through a ballgame on a 45-degree night from which they would arrive home at midnight, school and work, the next morning.
Other than greed, there was no sensible reason to have scheduled Orioles-Yankees for 8 p.m. The Dodgers played at Arizona Sunday — a game that sensibly should have been ESPN’s.
The Mets’ series in Colorado this week was turned to frozen farce by reasonably anticipated weather.
Tuesday’s first game began, as Gary Cohen reported on SNY, in 36 degrees, a wind chill of 27 and with fewer than 1,000 fans in the a 50,000-seat house. It was colder during the second game, a doubleheader forced by the previous day’s postponement.
On WFAN, Josh Lewin reported that a fan had made a snowman to sit beside. Cohen reported that maybe four thousand people were in the park for the start of the second game, which went 10, ran 4:19 and included light snowfall.
It was 28 degrees in Denver when yesterday’s game began.
The farces-by-design are endless. Yet, where’s the media outrage? Where’s the bashing of “Bottom Line Bud” and his “Anything-For-a-Buck Brigade”? Or is this now acceptable, the ridiculous having become standard?
Local cable systems are now ambushing subscribers with additional charges for sports programming. These customers — suckers — this season paid for more than 100 Rangers, Islanders and Devils games that went unplayed. Their TV tickets still went up!
You want Knicks, Rangers playoff tickets? Obscenely expensive as they are, Jimmy Dolan will sell you some — provided you also buy WNBA Liberty games.
And while Ho naps with Hum, the fleecings, price-gougings, tack-ons, bundlings and assorted scheduling absurdities quietly march on. Media once expected to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted can no longer be bothered.
‘42’ gets its facts wrong
No big thing, but how hard would it have been to get it right?
In the movie “42,” Brooklyn’s Gene Hermanski is seen batting right-handed. He batted left-handed. Bucs’ pitcher Fritz Ostermueller throws right-handed; he was a lefty. Leo Durocher wasn’t suspended for carrying on with women, but with gamblers.
The 1947 scene in which Jackie Robinson is spiked at first by the Cardinals’ Enos Slaughter shows Hugh Casey to be the Dodgers’ pitcher. It was Ralph Branca — no small fact. (Running to cover first, Branca told Robinson he would retaliate in Slaughter’s next at-bat. Robinson insisted that he not — Branca was pitching a perfect game. It ended a one-hitter — Slaughter’s grounder between Robinson and Eddie Stanky in the eighth.)
In the dramatic scene (and movie poster) in which Pee Wee Reese drapes his arm around Robinson’s shoulder, they appear with “Dodgers” across the fronts of their shirts, their home uniforms. But they were in Cincinnati, wearing their grays, “Brooklyn” across the front.
And neither Robinson nor any other big leaguer of that time stood posing after hitting a home run.
But the movie’s doing well despite/because Mike Francesa’s call that it wouldn’t — a prediction he made based on the fact it couldn’t succeed given that no one contacted him to interview its stars. Seriously.