Tally ho! The chase is on! The long, short and 44-regular of this new ESPN FM deal? It’s the beginning of the hunting season.
Both the Yankees and Mets are radio free agents after this season. And, as of yesterday, ESPN is no longer a non-qualifier because of 1050’s severely limited, after-sundown signal.
With ESPN essentially signing a longtime lease — presumably with an option to buy — with 98.7 (most recently KISS-FM), a three-network rights race is on among Mets’ station WFAN 660 AM, Yankees’ station WCBS 880 AM — both owned by CBS — and ESPN.
It may wind up like 1993, when TV newcomer Fox delivered a knockout bid for the NFL’s NFC rights. CBS — the NFL’s forever NFL, then NFC network — was out.
Also, Rangers and Knicks games this Monday move to 98.7 FM, thus their broadcasts will no longer fade to static a few miles west and south of Manhattan.
Starting Monday, ESPN-NY will be simulcast on 1050 AM and 98.7 FM. Come the fall, a Spanish-language ESPN Deportes (sports) N.Y. station will fill 1050— likely to be a steady ratings and money-maker, as is ESPN Deportes LA. Credit ESPN Radio master strategist Traug Keller.
Other things, including a Saturday 10-noon show hosted by Patrick McEnroe and new time-slots for Ryan Ruocco and Stephen A. Smith (OMG, Stephen A. in stereo!) — is newsworthy, but sideshows to what this is mostly about: local team baseball rights.
ESPN, now with a clear local signal and a long deal to rent 98.7, is prepped to make its next long-plotted move. First choice, Yankees. Second choice, Mets.
Er, ah, stay tuned.
Last thing: Emmis Broadcasting, now ESPN’s FM landlord, was WFAN’s original owner. Now it has provided ESPN-NY the opportunity to provide FAN with 24/7competion — and perhaps a baseball team.
Never too early for All-Star votes
AMONG Bud Selig-Era traditions — the best seats go empty, season openers in Japan, 8:05 Sunday night starts, 21⁄2-hour rain delays, $35 parking — is the disfigurement of the All-Star Game.
Monday, MLB announced that All-Star Game balloting has begun! Yes, three weeks into the season, MLB is soliciting votes from fans and fools!
Should Spring Training stats count? Absolutely, why not? All MLB asks is that you vote no more than 25 times. Seriously. MLB doesn’t want it to get stupid, ya know?
Of added interest, the All-Star billboard MLB has designed seems to include some electioneering. In a cut-and-paste of photos of 12 stars, Matt Kemp stands front-and-center. Kemp was the NL MVP runner-up to accused, excused drug-cheat Ryan Braun.
Braun doesn’t appear among the dozen, although recent-past MVPs, including Josh Hamilton, an admitted drug addict and alcoholic, do.
Oh, well. It’s April, All-Star Game balloting time. Go get ’em. And try not to vote more than 25 times. Save some votes for May.
* YES’s Ken Singleton had the Line of the Week, then the Oopsie of the Week: During the Yankees-Red Sox series he noted that in Boston, “Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone have the same middle name.” Nice!
Wednesday, during Yankees-Rangers, batting practice video showed Hamilton blasting one that “lands on top of the roof near the Budweiser sign. That one’s for you, Josh.” Ugh.
* How did Roger Clemens’ lawyer, Rusty Hardin, earn a rep for being slick? He seems to specialize in transparent nonsense.
Tuesday he told the jury, “God help me if we have reached a stage in this country where we make a federal case of denying that you committed a crime. Our government should never, ever prosecute a person for saying, ‘I did not do it.’ ”
It shouldn’t? “I didn’t do it” should be good enough, case dismissed? Empty the prisons!
Clemens is charged with lying under oath, with committing perjury as a prominent figure accused of relying on illegal performance-improving drugs in a competitive, multi-billion dollar industry. “My client shouldn’t even be here because he said he didn’t do it” is not a defense; it’s a dance.
* Rather than issue a good-faith, “I got it wrong. Let me fix it,” Michael Kay often foolishly chooses to land a few steps below honest, hoping his audiences don’t know any better or forgot.
During a recent Yankees telecast, he reported that Raul Ibanez, the night before on ESPN, became the second to hit a homer in the upper deck in new Yankee Stadium, joining Russell Branyan. Kay, fooling few, went out of his way to credit that info to ESPN, for which he also works. Kay next reported it as fact.
But Ibanez didn’t reach the upper deck, and Brandon Allen was the second to do it, last August — a shot Kay called.
Monday from Texas, when Singleton mentioned Ibanez’s upper deck blast, Kay could have cleaned it all up. Instead, he played Artless Dodger. He said, to “clarify,” then, “It has been reported” that Ibanez hit it into the upper deck, but it landed just below.
But with by “it has been reported” Kay put the error on unnamed others, not on ESPN or himself. And that’s dishonest. Why do that to your audience, yourself?
Big score for SNY
EYES Can See Clearly Now: SNY this week enlarged its score bug, allowing viewers a return to instantly knowing the score and the count.
* Chris Carlin, during SNY’s “Loud Mouths” on Tuesday, stated that Brandon Jacobs is suspected of “being involved in a high-speed chase” with N.J. Troopers. Whoa! Ix-nay! Jacobs is suspected of being part of a 100-mph Trooper escort to Atlantic City.
* Round 1 of the Stanley Cup — when one-seeds play eights, twos play sevens — has again shown home ice to be worthless to all but team owners selling $10 cups of cheap beer. After Wednesday, road teams were 29-17!
* ESPN’s John Kruk bashing Nick Swisher for excessive self-celebration would be worth something — if it weren’t 20 years too late or if Kruk took his complaints to ESPN’s Dept. of Highlights.
* It was inevitable. Gary Cohen, during Marlins-Mets on SNY yesterday, identified Nationals’ pitcher Jordan Zimmerman as — yikes — “George Zimmerman.”
* Met Justin Turner, in yesterday’s SNY postgame on his game-tying 13-pitch pinch-hit walk: “That big at-bat in the ninth? I think that’s a situation every kid dreams of, except they probably dream about hitting it out of the park, or something, not drawing a walk.”