SEE THESE GREAT EMPTY SEATS AT MARLINS PARK? THE ANNOUNCERS DON’T.
SOMETHING FISHY: Shortstop Jose Reyes swings in front of prime empty seats at Marlins Park — but don’t expect baseball’s TV announcers to comment on this epidemic. (Getty Images)
We must be seeing things. Rather, we must not be seeing things.
The public used to rely on the media to fight for it, to go to bat for the bat-less. Not so much anymore. Most in the news take their corporate orders — real, tacit and imagined — or make themselves available to be bought and sold to multiple masters, restricting what they would otherwise report.
Thus, ugly, smack-you-in-the-senses realities go ignored. Worse, on TV, we’re often told to ignore what we see and instead believe what we’re told.
While we understand that local broadcasters are frightened to tell certain here-and-now truths about the teams that employ them, MLB’s national networks have no such restrictions.
Heck, for the billions paid to MLB in rights, ESPN, Fox and TBS should insist that their announcers speak all truths. What’s MLB going to do about it, not cash their checks? Forbid them from bidding next time?
In other words, ESPN, Fox and TBS might have — could have and should have — spent the last four seasons hammering a point so embarrassing to MLB that it might have shamed teams and Bud Selig to exact greater-good changes.
Specifically, the best seats in new parks — those most often in view throughout telecasts — are so over-priced that they’re going empty, greed-wasted. After all, these are ballparks where ballgames of pre-undetermined value are played; they’re not destination resorts.
Over the weekend, the Mets played the Marlins in Miami’s new, climate-controlled stadium. The Marlins were returning from an 8-1 road trip.
Yet, clearly visible during Friday night’s telecast on SNY and throughout Fox’s on Saturday afternoon, many of the best seats — hundreds, if not thousands, behind the backstop and along the infield lines — went unoccupied.
On Fox, not only didn’t play-by-player Rich Waltz and analyst Tim McCarver seem to notice, they seemed to think that we didn’t either. In fact, they seemed to see people where we saw none.
“Another big crowd here, on a Saturday afternoon” said Waltz, after applauding the new park.
“They built it here in Miami,” said McCarver, “and they have come.”
The biggest big ticket for Marlins home games is $250, dirt cheap by Yankee Stadium standards, yet still illogically expensive to watch any baseball game. The family of four, with eats, drinks, travel and parking, is reaching for over $1,000 to attend a game.
No thanks, they’ll sit upstairs, or at least outside the Yankee Stadium-type moat that separates and designates — a financial caste seating system. Above and beyond such seats is where crowds now begin to gather.
That MLB teams slickly determined that their pricing should meet or surpass what scalpers/agents might get/got on a good day is not a good reason; it’s a cynical, rotten reason.
But the media, once inclined and even assigned to fight systems that make saps of the public, rolls over and plays dead. Not their problem. No one’s forcing anyone to buy those seats, ya know? Thus what’s becoming baseball’s standardized stadium look — the best seats unoccupied, wasted — is unworthy of news or noise.
Still, “Another big crowd here on a Saturday afternoon” should have been followed by a wide, high, swing shot of the ballpark — as a matter of evidence that there was, in fact, any crowd.
After all, down by the field, “another big crowd” had again avoided the best seats.
No sense in timing
Under the Circumstances: On Friday, in a one-run game in the seventh inning, SNY cut to a live, on-camera report by Kevin Burkhardt, standing in the right-field seats, to address the amenities in new Marlins Park. Come on.
And why the rush to get to replays that can wait?
On Saturday, Jayson Nix, oh-for-his-last-20, hit his first home run as a Yankee. As he was about to enter the Yankees dugout — good, live reaction shots were anticipated — YES cut to successive replays of the homer. Ugh.
* Imagine if Ryan Braun had a rotten start this season. All the guesswork artists who condemned him as a drug cheat would be hollering, “See?” But Braun’s the same player — 10 home runs, .305 average thus far — so we don’t hear a word.
* As part of its “Mets Yearbook” video series, SNY, Thursday at 8 p.m., for the first time presents the first video Yearbook, the 1962 pre-season version. It’s in cloudy black and white, Lindsey Nelson hosts, Casey Stengel goes on (and on) and it’s a hoot.
All hail Gen. Andy on YES
Andy Pettitte’s Yankees return yesterday was treated by YES, in its pregame by Bob Lorenz then at the top of the telecast by Michael Kay, as no less significant or dramatic than Gen. MacArthur’s return to the Philippines.
* YES postgame interrogator Meredith Marakovits is running out of ways to ask Yankees stars-of-the-game whether they’re pleased to have contributed to a Yankee win.
* Good, pay-attention job by NBCSN on Saturday, covering the Rangers-Capitals handshake. Those who wanted to see the two terrific goaltenders, Henrik Lundqvist and Braden Holtby, hook up were not disappointed.
* Couldn’t Verizon’s Fios and/or NBCSN find more credible advertisers for Rangers-Caps Game 7 than a blackjack card-counting operation? Repeated spots claimed, “A $140 value for only $19.99. Win hundreds, thousands!”
* Regular-season Rangers and Devils games began at 7 p.m. With shootouts, they had time limits. Yet all but one of the Rangers-Devils playoff games are scheduled for 8 p.m. Yikes! We’re going to lose the conclusion to a Marty Brodeur–Henrik Lundqvist weeknight classic to sleep, aren’t we?
* As best we can tell, the only media outlets that didn’t take credit for the scoop that LeBron James would be named NBA MVP were Highlights For Children and Bilbo’s Big Top Circus Blog.
* Nick Hoagland of Florham Park, noted an ESPN crawl Friday: “Tiger Woods makes charge at The Players . . . trails by six shots.” The crawl added that Woods is in 30th place. “Reminds me of the charge I made during the NYC Marathon,” wrote Hoagland, “vaulting from 10,000th to 9,437th.”
* NBC golf host Dan Hicks apparently is unable to say that a player won or might win. It’s always “hoist the trophy.”
* WCBS Radio labor commentator Steve Greenberg on Saturday presented an essay, with examples, on how lies, half-truths, misinformation and words presented out of context, once they hit the Internet, Twitter and Facebook, can wreck reputations, careers and lives. Ya don’t say!