Had to enjoy that Wonder-bread sandwich NBC served Saturday. The Rangers-Capitals telecast came in the middle of two slices of preposterous.
The game began 20 minutes after NBC advertised it would, an old, dishonest trick that NBC Sports has reprised.
So after 20 minutes of commercials, come-ons and pregame analysis, the game began. Fifty-five seconds later, the first whistle stopped play. So NBC — less than a minute into the game — sent it to mid-ice, where Pierre McGuire provided some more
analysis!
What more was there for us to consider after 55 seconds? McGuire, on camera, reported the self-evident: The Rangers had begun with a decent, hustling scoring chance (but so did the Capitals!) and the Rangers would have to produce more such chances to win this game.
No kidding? Thanks.
When the game and series ended, McGuire sat with 21-year-old Capitals defenseman John Carlson. McGuire’s first question was, “When did you guys start to feel you had a chance to win this series?”
Nurse!
Let’s see, given that the Capitals were the No. 1 seed and the Rangers were the last seed, given that the Capitals took a 2-0 lead in games, then a 3-1 lead in games . . . well, we’ll let Carlson handle the rest:
“We started out thinking it,” he said.
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More Rangers-Capitals: Although competent and versatile, Kenny Albert
, working the radio side over on ESPN 1050 AM, is stronger on hockey than other sports. His confidence is obvious; he takes control of the broadcast. And that makes analyst Dave Maloney
better because he doesn’t have to force things.
Maloney, in the first period Saturday, reported that he just received a text from a friend who told him that an NBC replay showed that the puck Capitals star Mike Green
took to the side of the head dislodged the screws that affixed his visor to his helmet. Hey, delivering good info is what it’s all about.
On NBC, Doc Emrick
reached back to recall “a Gordie Howe
hat trick — a fight, a goal and an assist.”
After the Capitals scored the first goal, sirens began to blare in Washington’s home arena. At that point, though, a group hassle began near the Rangers net. With the sirens continuing, it sounded as if the cops were coming to break it up.
The attractive pace of NHL games and telecasts continues to put other pro sports to shame. Saturday’s game, despite delays for Green’s injury and a tussle, was played in 2:25, roughly the standard for regulation time.
Missing the point — as usual
How is it that the first who should notice are the last?
Saturday, in the top of the first in Baltimore, Mark Teixeira
doubled, then slid hard into the bag and Robert Andino
, who was covering. Andino immediately got in Teixeira’s face with an angry spew. Not even an air traffic controller could’ve missed it on the screen. But on YES, Michael Kay
and Ken Singleton
spoke over it and past it; they missed the whole thing.
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You didn’t think Kay was or is going to mention over the weekend that Camden Yards was loaded with Yankees fans because great seats for two games, parking, two good meals and an overnight stay in a nice place still costs considerably less than similar seats to one game in Yankee Stadium, did you?
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Best graphic of the weekend was posted Saturday by the Golf Channel: “World No. 5 Graeme McDowell
hit 85.7 percent of fairways in Rd. 2 [of the PGA’s Heritage].” Let’s see, 85.7 . . . in just one round he hit 15.42 fairways!
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All that analysis from ESPN’s NBA experts and all those numbers last week, yet we didn’t hear a mention that in the Mavericks’ Game 3, five-point loss in Portland on Thursday, they shot 13-for-23, 56 percent, from the foul line. (Saturday, in a two-point loss after being up 23, the Mavericks were 10-for-10 on FTs, but Portland was 22-for-23!)
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Quality Control: Yesterday, during the broadcast of the 2010 Long Drive Championship on ESPN2, the sight of the ball on the tee often disappeared behind ESPN’s “Bottom Line” crawl.
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So long, Knicks and Rangers fans, ticket-holders over decades and generations, who, as of this past weekend, are done, priced out of Jim Dolan
‘s Garden. You join tens of thousands of Jets, Giants, Yankees and Mets devotees — the good times, rotten times check writers — in being recently lost to beyond-all-logic, twisted greed — all in the name of sport, of course.
Baseball, brought to you by . . .
Mets radio is starting to move in on Yankees radio for excessive commercial attachments.
Here we thought the radio booth at Citi Field was the Bob Murphy
Memorial Radio Booth. But Saturday we were told it’s the Peerless Boilers Mets Radio Booth.
And this from reader Tom Barrett
of Scotch Plains, N.J.: “Apparently Ike Davis
‘ HR went halfway up the Pepsi Porch. And Josh Thole
‘s double is headed towards the Mo Zone. And Thole was safe at second with New York Life, safe and secure. I’m going to vomit now.”
OK, Tom, but don’t forget to vomit in your Rubbermaid pail, the Official Pail of the New York Mets.
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We continue to appreciate Gary Cohen
‘s mentions on SNY and Ch. 11 when a no-hitter is being pitched, elsewhere, into the eighth or ninth. Such was the case, Friday, when Florida’s Anibal Sanchez
had one in the ninth. But these days, such good-faith mentions are an invite to bolt in search of the live scene. On Friday, MLB Network had it.
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Bill Maroney
, Staten Islander exiled to Colorado, asks if Reds pitcher Mike Leake
, having been arrested for shoplifting, should statistically suffer a “caught stealing?” Don’t know, but once he was taken into custody he should’ve been credited with a hold.
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If ESPN’s superimposed K-Zone box were actually used to determine balls and strikes, the pitchers with the best breaking stuff, every one of them, would be released as worthless. What plate umps call strikes would be ruled balls.
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Arizona’s pitching coach is Charles Nagy
, pronounced “Naggy.” Great name for a pitching coach.