Wait a second. ESPN recently suspended anchor Max Bretos for innocently saying “chink in the armor” when referencing Jeremy Lin. Yet, last week ESPN issued a press release proudly announcing that it has hired “Hip-Hop Superstar Nas” to provide music for ESPN’s NFL Draft coverage.
Check out Nas’s lyrics on the Internet. I randomly stumbled upon “Ether.” Even by standard gangsta garbage — “F” this and that, loaded with references to black men as “N—-s” and the sexual degradation of young women, homophobic rants, odes to assault weapons and drugs — Nas’s “artistry” is sub-human.
Check it out for yourself. And no accidental or innocents slips of his tongue, such as “chink in the armor.”
I challenge any ESPN or Disney executive to publicly recite the lyrics of Ether, written and performed by Nas, then as publicly state, “Yep, he’s just the guy for us!”
And why does ESPN feel that its NFL Draft coverage needs to be covered by any music, let alone choosing a professional creep? Because he’s popular? So is crack.
In a sports world gone nuts, ESPN is, in fact, the worldwide leader.
Boomer, Carton don’t know what ‘fan-friendly’ means
The wonder of sports radio in this town is that you can say whatever you want about anyone or anything — WFAN’s Joe Benigno advocates violence against NFL game officials — and never have to be accountable for what you say.
You can pull “facts” from out of the air, slander people, claim to have the scoop on something you just read in a newspaper. You can call a guy a bum one day, then have him on your show the next day and tell him he’s a great guy. Then you can do it all over again, the next day, no one to stop you.
Last week on their WFAN/MSG simulcast, Craig Carton and “Weekday” Boomer Esiason pulled a Mike Francesa when they authoritatively claimed that because the Mets are hurting for ticket sales they’ve become “the most fan friendly team in New York.”
That must have come as impossible news to Mets’ fans, including longtime patrons — those charged $14 for “$5 Subway Foot-Longs” at the Subway concession near the Citi Field outfield sign advertising $5 Subway Foot-Longs.
This fan-friendly season, to order tickets online — an overhead savings and convenience to teams as they can eliminate or reduce box office employees — the Mets nevertheless are socking and soaking purchasers with stiff, escalating “convenience charges.”
Wanna buy two $40 tickets? Add $12 dollars — six bucks a ticket — in “convenience fees.” Two $85 tickets? Add $19. Two at $140 apiece? Tack on another $32. Then there’s something called “processing fees,” another modern marketing invention that can run you another $6.
Why does it cost more in service fees to buy a $140 ticket than a $40 ticket? Why treat your customers like suckers, the better the customer the bigger the sucker?
And all of it meets with the approval of Bud Selig, who declared, when the new Yankee Stadium opened that he personally checked and found that all seats were affordable. That’s right, the commissioner found that seats sold for $2,500, $1,250, $850 $600 and $450 per seat, per game met his standard of affordability.
Then again, this Steward of the Game is paid $15 million-$18 million per year to say such things.
So, if you don’t find the Mets to be the fan-friendliest team in town, take it up with Carton and Weekday.
And while you’re at it, ask Carton and Esiason, now in the shared employ of WFAN and Jimmy Dolan’s MSG Network, what they think of Rangers playoff ticket pricing and sales methods, including a 73-percent hike from regular season costs for just the first round.
The truly fan-friendly team — or at least honest team — in this town is the one that would print tickets with face values that read, “To Be Determined.”
Tiger can do no wrong
It’s painful to listen to those we’ve grown to respect — those who have taken care to earn it — conduct the TV worship sessions that make watching Tiger Woods play golf such a strain on the good senses.
Thursday, first round of the Masters, Woods was playing nicely until 17, when he began to hit it crooked, bogeying the last two.
Before that second bogey, with Woods having had to take a drop from a bush, Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo, working the CBS telecast on ESPN, began to wonder into their microphones if King Tiger’s bad shots were a matter of infirmity. After all, they said, he seemed to be working kinks out of his neck on the range (hours earlier!).
Perhaps this explained why he had just hit a few bad shots — as if there has to be some mitigating, mystery as to how it’s possible that Tiger Woods can hit bad shots!
When Woods finished, ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi interviewed him, but didn’t ask about his health. He didn’t have to. Woods said he was heading right over to the range to work on correcting those bad shots.
Last year’s Masters was won by Charl Schwartzel, who birdied the last four holes, a feat widely forgotten. As reader Adam Radosti notes, had Woods done that, the media already would have labeled it one of the most unforgettable, legendary accomplishments in history — the kind that only could be produced by Tiger Woods.
* Through several preseason and one regular season broadcasts, new Mets radio man Josh Lewin has demonstrated several hopeful things. He knows the game’s anecdotal
history. He’s on top of the game in front of him. He has a good sense of humor, and he’s eager to please.
Perhaps a little too eager to please, too eager to replace accuracy with pithy, parenthetical lines that can cause confusion in the mind’s eye.
During Thursday’s opener, Johan Santana struck out Braves’ catcher Brian McCann with a fastball that Lewin described as high and out of the strike zone — then “tomahawk-high.” Clever, but “tomahawk high” on Braves’ jerseys is well in the strike zone. The pitch, as Howie Rose clarified, was shoulder-high.