Although I’ve lately bashed Major League Baseball for changing — just a few weeks out — Sunday, Sept. 11’s Cubs at Mets from a 1 p.m. to an 8 p.m. start for ESPN, this one’s different, extra ugly.
My lament has been the same: Abuse of patrons who otherwise would not have bought tickets to a school/work night game, and the regularity of selecting big market teams to the exclusion of significant games in logical time zones.
But, rather than many readers sharing (or ignoring) this lament, and MLB and ESPN ignoring the issue, this one has been met with accusations from all that I’m insensitive to the importance of a nationally televised game played here on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
According to these folks, ESPN’s selection of Cubs-Mets was an act of common sense, common decency and patriotism.
OK, fine. Except for one thing: It’s BS, and I don’t mean blown saves.
MLB and ESPN knew 10 years ago this would be the 10th anniversary. Who didn’t? So why wasn’t this game scheduled for ESPN at 8 p.m. last September, when MLB released its 2011 schedule? Or were MLB and ESPN unaware that 9/11 this year falls on 9/11?
The mere suggestion that re-scheduling this game, a few weeks ago, was an act of greater goodness is sickening.
Had Cubs-Mets originally been scheduled for 8 p.m. on a Sunday, ticket sales would have been flattened. Both the re-routing of the game — and the God Bless America pitch only lately attached to it — is worse than the usual bait-and-switch because it exploits 9/11.
Now it’s a “commemorative game?” But there will be ceremonies throughout that weekend — held at logical times and for the right reasons.
“Sensitivity” had nothing to do with the re-scheduling, not compared to the NFL lockout, which was on at the time. With NBC’s Cowboys-Jets opener, the same night, in jeopardy, MLB/ESPN saw a New York opening.
Now, with the NFL to be played as scheduled, 9/11’s Cubs-Mets will exist as a rumor, not as a soul-grabber. And those conditioned-to-know-better know better. This was about TV money and alternative programming.
If scheduling 9/11’s Cubs-Mets for 8 p.m. was the noble thing to do — a national memorial of 2,977 mass murder victims — it would have been scheduled late last year, not late last month.
Francesa’s good at something! Being wrong
It remains astonishing how astonishingly wrong Mike Francesa is, time, after time. He could dismiss a 70-1 shot as having no chance, and it’ll not only win, but by six lengths, then win Horse of the Year. He’s that good at being that wrong.
Monday, after another of those Yankees-Red Sox snail-racing series — Sunday’s ESPN game was an 8:05 start that ended 3-2, two outs short of 10 innings and 4:15 later — Francesa offered his solutions.
One, he said, is to ban the scenario when the pitcher fakes toward third, then looks at first, thinking pickoff.
“That never works,” Francesa declared.
Bingo, bango, bongo! The next night’s Yankees game ends when Curtis Granderson is caught off first on that very play! (By the way, I was afraid to look; did anyone call it “a walk-off pick-off”?)
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Brett Gardner, Sunday in Fenway, already had reached second when his homer cleared the wall. Is that allowed? Shouldn’t he have been ruled out for not stopping to slap hands with the first-base coach?
Two days later on ESPN, a kid playing for Louisiana in the Little League World Series stood at the plate, admiring his home run, before going into a slo-mo home run trot. (Not a discouraging word from ESPN’s announcers.)
Now, where would a kid learn something like that?
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ESPN 1050’s Ryan Ruocco, Tuesday, led a chat as to who’s better, Eli Manning or Mark Sanchez.
Hey, Ryan, nice try, but why even bother? Now that ESPN has this new stats division, just wait a few weeks for ESPN’s new QB ratings. You won’t even have to watch the games to decide; ESPN will do it for you. ESPN’s already shoving it up our better senses. And just wait. Like the previous NFL ratings, many of the better QBs — including those who know when to throw the ball away — show up as statistically deficient.
But ESPN invites ridicule, always eager to throw time, money and effort — whatever it takes — to reinvent the flat tire.
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Versus, which used to be the Outdoor Life Network, in January will be re-named the NBC Sports Network. Then the Puff Daddy Network, then the P. Diddy Network . . .
Great Scott! Williams didn’t win
Imagine Stevie Williams’ shock to pick up Monday’s papers to read that it was Adam Scott, and not he, who won the WGC-Bridgestone!
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For what it’s/we’re worth, Steve Stricker , in yesterday’s first round of the PGA, shot 63 while wearing a logo endorsing the New York Stock Exchange. He went low!
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Reader Frank Giffone has a question: “Can anyone explain why facial hair has been seen under the noses of Yankees?” Sure: Think Steiner Collectibles.
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West Virginia, a fall-down-drunk party school with a football team that doesn’t discriminate against bad risks, this year will sell beer at on-campus games. Now students will be able to continue “pre-gaming” during the games. (Authentic fake IDs on sale at the campus bookstore.)
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Fabulous, you-are-there/keep-quiet-and-listen coverage from TNT/CBS yesterday of Rory McIlroy being examined after injuring his wrist. Gary McCord later called it: “A soap opera — How the Wrist Turns.”
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Two attaboys to harness driver and — full disclosure — golf buddy George Brennan for winning both the Hambletonian and Hambletonian Oaks on Saturday. “Best day of my racing life,” he, ahem, told The Post, before topping a fairway wood.
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The suspension of intelligent commentary when applied to Tiger Woods is epidemic. Tuning to the PGA’s live, on-line video yesterday with Woods at 6-over, 12 back, the commentators were discussing how, if he shoots four or five under in Round 2, he’ll be “in position” — not to make the cut, but to win! . . . Bill Parcells, who had done time in NBC’s, MSG’s and ESPN’s studios, is back with ESPN as a studio analyst. Perhaps this time he’ll say something worth knowing. ESPN also has added Jerry Rice, the cast of “Disney on Ice” and the woodwind section from the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra.