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Nurse! … Nurse!
It’s those voices, those voices in my head. They’re back. … They always come back!
They arrive every August and live inside my TV set. They don’t leave until, of all days, the Pro Bowl. They were there Monday, throughout ESPN’s version of Bears-Giants.
First, Jon Gruden spoke of Eli Manning: “He threw 25 interceptions last season, and no matter how you slice it, that’s way too many for a guy with his talent.”
Moments later, during the Giants’ first series, a stats graphic appeared highlighting — in a different color, no less — Manning’s 25 interceptions. And no matter how Gruden sliced it, he kept slicing it:
“That must be improved upon, and Eli Manning has taken that personally.”
Next, another graphic, this one identifying Manning’s 30 turnovers, last season — fumbles included — as an NFL high. For those who couldn’t read it or tried to ignore it, Mike Tirico read it aloud.
Ron Jaworski: “I actually have 18 of those as his fault. Of the 25 picks — and I went through the entire interception reel — only 18 would I put on Eli Manning. There were batted balls, tipped balls. It shows up as 25 picks, but they weren’t all his.”
Exactly! So why did a guy they call “Jaws” wait until the fourth time these wildly misleading stats were presented to note that these wildly misleading stats are wildly misleading? Why allow them to be the focus of the telecast’s open and first 4:20 of clock time?
Why didn’t these voices instead provide a more valuable viewer service, like state birds. Or silence. Eli Manning wants to cut back on interceptions? So does Edmund LaFarge III, QB of the Eata Lambda Pi intramural flag football team at Dinty Moore Tech!
But then it was right back to Gruden: “You know, Tom Coughlin’s philosophy is to not turn the ball over.”
Well, that secret’s out.
Nurse! Nurse! Hurry!
Gray asks tough question at right time
There are times — most of the time — when Jim Gray begs a bashing for going too far in what seems a move toward self-inflation. But that doesn’t mean he always gets it wrong.
The Joseph Agbeko-Abner Mares bantamweight championship on Showtime was, by most accounts, another Vegas rip-off, with ref Russell Mora ignoring repeated low blows thrown by Mares, the winner by majority decision. Egads, one shot Agbeko took to the crotch was ruled a knockdown!
Here, as opposed to the 1999 World Series when Gray infamously demanded a full confession from Pete Rose, is when the scene-side reporter could jump in hard. And he did, essentially asking Mora to explain how he repeatedly missed a robbery while patrolling such a small, under-populated beat. Mora was stuck for a good answer.
* Patience, grasshoppers. Instantaneous replay capabilities continue to be a blessing and a pox. Tuesday on SNY, Gary Cohen became apoplectic when Angel Pagan, in the top of the first, became the latest non-sliding Mets player tagged out at the plate.
“It’s an epidemic! I just don’t get it!” he hollered.
Just then, Pagan was seen being approached in the dugout by Terry Collins. But that scene was just as suddenly lost to a replay, one that could have been shown after the episode played out.
(Cohen was just as flabbergasted an inning later: “Can you believe that! The Mets have second and third, nobody out, and three straight batters are called out on strikes!”)
* For a fellow who should, far more than most, be socially sensitive to physical afflictions and from-birth infirmities, Boomer Esiason has no trouble chumming for cheap laughs, targeting the growth on the side of Carlos Beltran’s head. But that’s Weekday Boomer. Weekend Boomer would never do that.
* If one more ESPN guy or gal tells us that the Little League World Series is all about “having fun,” I’m going to puke. Judging from the pressurized looks on the kids’ faces — needless dugout closeups provided by ESPN, plus shots of parents on the brink of hysteria — this is as much fun as a nationally televised call to the principal’s office.
Boxing is still option for Kenny
Brian Kenny — 14 years a steady, thoughtful and versatile ESPN presence — will leave next week to become the primary studio anchor at MLB Network. MLBN has made, as they say in tennis, a great get. Kenny, an ESPN boxing regular, will be able to take a boxing gig. HBO and Showtime apparently are interested.
* Good news for CBS’ Rich Gannon. He’ll be teamed on NFL telecasts with Marv Albert, who always makes analysts better.
* One week Sports Illustrated decries the escalation of young criminals recruited as college football players. Good. But the next week it poses five college football players — all showing bad-dudes-with-attitudes scowls — on its cover.
* Yesterday on YES, Joe Girardi spoke an odd expression, wondering whether a rainout would create “a regular doubleheader.” Regular doubleheader? These days that could mean a day-nighter, two payments for admission.
* Don’t look now, but the wild card has cost us another great pennant race, this one a fabulous back-and-forth between the Yankees and Red Sox. But neither team will much care if it finishes first compared with getting its pitching rotation set for the ALDS.
* Former Giants Amani Toomer and Roman Oben will call Friday night high school football for Cablevision’s Varsity network.
* How come basketball brawls, such as the recent one in China involving Georgetown, are treated by TV as disturbing, shameful events, yet baseball brawls are given the slide trombone treatment, packaged and served as zany, madcap misadventures?
* To call for the U. of Miami football program to get the “death penalty” for repeated violations is not unreasonable. But as reader Dave Conrad suggests, the last one who should be calling for it, on his Sirius XM show, is Steve Phillips.
* Crack from the West Coast about Tuesday’s East Coast earthquake: “A 5.8? Out here we use that to stir our coffee.”