CAN’T Make This Stuff Up, Contin ued: Too bad if you bought tickets months in advance. Too bad if you were going to take the kids. Too bad if the kids are crushed and you have wasted a couple hundred bucks.
MLB has changed Sept. 7’s Phillies-Mets game from a Sunday afternoon 1:10 start to an 8:05 game for ESPN, for money, for pure greed.
Thus “Gold’s Horseradish Johan Santana Bobblehead Doll Day” is now a late-night game.
Still, on a school night, the first 12,000 kids, 12 and under, will receive a Santana bobblehead doll.
The rarest truths told by modern television are those told with no strings attached, but today, honest TV seldom has anything to do with being honest for the sake of being honest. Often, truth telling is not designed as a good-faith service to viewers but only as a disservice to competing networks.
Reader Bill Rowe of Marlboro, N.J. is among the many to note that ESPN, the last two weeks, has been eager to give the exact scheduled starting times (“10:58 p.m. ET,” “9:20 p.m. ET”) of Olympic events, thus undermining NBC’s usual Olympic scheme/scam of baiting and holding the audience.
Rowe rhetorically wonders why ESPN finds it important to provide exact start times of Olympic events (read: NBC events), yet is not as eager to supply such info about events televised on ESPN.
After all, just a few months ago ESPN passed on the opportunity to produce promos that could have plainly told viewers that the tip times of the NBA Finals were 9 p.m. Rather, ESPN chose to mislead audiences with promos suggesting 8:30 and even earlier start times.
Maybe next year. (Fat chance.)
Of course, if ESPN defended itself with the claim that NBC is the king of such selective, self-serving truth telling, it wouldn’t be wrong.
If, during this season’s NFL telecasts, every pass thrown out of bounds or through the end zone to avoid a sack or stop the clock were identified as counting against a QB’s rating, if every dropped pass were identified as counting against a QB’s rating, if every tipped pass that was intercepted was identified as counting against a QB’s rating, what play-by-player or analyst would again cite QB ratings as meaningful?
And if every two and three-yard net-gain dump-off completion were identified as improving a QB’s rating, and if every completion against prevent defenses and/or late in blowouts were identified for improving a QB’s rating, who would continue to recite QB ratings?
But because such identifications will not be made – and because any stat, good or bad, is seen as more insightful than no stat at all (or than simply allowing what you see dictate your sense of a QB’s ability) – QB ratings again will be spoken and posted in graphics as worth our consideration.
Was Gary Cohen always a cliché machine or, during this final season in Shea, has his sense of nostalgia caused him to reach for every antiquated (and for good reason) sportswriter/sportscaster expression?
Rather than simply telling us that a player has impressed management, Cohen tells us that his play “has kept him in good stead.” Yikes. Can’t a player simply pinch-hit; he has to have “a pinch-hitting assignment”?
And if the stranger seated beside you at a game told you that a pitcher “authored a complete game in his last assignment,” well, that would be a strong hint that you got a bad break.
If any crew, Thursday, was going to produce a terrific close-up of a pop fly sliding through the web in Chipper Jones‘ glove, it stood to reason that it would be the SNY crew directed by Bill Webb. . . . Lookalikes: Lou Valentine of Kew Gardens and Eddie Rabin of Manhattan agree: Johan Santana and the comedian Sinbad.
Good thing Chris Russo isn’t yet on the air or he would wonder how Georgia’s defense could be so weak that it can’t repel an invasion but can still be ranked No. 1 in the Coaches Poll. . . . Dan Fouts has returned to CBS (from ABC/ESPN) as an NFL and college football analyst. . . . ESPN Radio Philly and New York man, Jody McDonald, who this week was to have been on vacation, Friday had heart bypass surgery.
If team handball is an Olympic sport, why not floor hockey, team pickle-in-the-middle and beer pong? . . . And why do we get the feeling that countries identified by NBC Olympic commentators as having been “part of the former Soviet Union” will become part of the future Soviet Union?
A Fox Sports Net “Beyond the Glory” installment on famous pinch hits, last week, identified the three-run homer Dusty Rhodes hit in the Polo Grounds in the bottom of the 10th of Game 1 of the 1954 Indians-Giants World Series as a “walk-off.” Sure, and the Copacabana was a disco.