Phil Mushnick

Phil Mushnick

Sports

Jeter Day (or night?) shows Yanks’ lack of respect for fans

Sometimes — and ESPN NBA Insider Chris Broussard should feel free to confirm this — my mind strolls a lovely path, “What If Lane.”

Saturday morning, ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” of all stops, briefly dropped us in a warm, nurturing, smiling, sunshiny place.

With the Reds in New York to play the Yankees, “SC” pulled tape of the 1998 Little League World Series champs, the Toms River, NJ, kids, including current Reds All-Star Todd Frazier, as they were guested at Yankee Stadium — the old, affordable one, the one built for baseball, not pocket-picking.

During the national anthem, Frazier, who was 12 and looked like Opie Taylor, stood beside Derek Jeter, throwing him upward glances that radiated a “this-can’t-be-real” glow.

I sat there, by myself, grinning like the “After” model on a teeth-whitening commercial. What nice, sweet stuff. Aren’t sports grand?

Again, it didn’t last long. Soon, ESPN and “SportsCenter” returned to relentless self-interest, back to beating the NBA free-agent season drums, WNBA All-Star Game drums, ESPY Awards “highlights” drums — as if beating the top and sides of a dumpster.

Then and now: Derek Jeter and Todd FrazierMy9; UPI

Paradise lost. Again. It was adios, “SportsCenter,” before another ESPN attack on the central nervous system and the digestive tracts, upper through lower.

(Friday, ESPN presented an “NBA Free Agent Special” — as if every ESPN TV, radio and Internet entity hadn’t spent the last month drowning the issue, then running it over a few times, then burning it, just in case.)

Still, what if? What if ESPN’s regard for sports and sense of sports — the last, oh, 25 years — had leaned more toward that kid-Frazier-beside-young-man-Jeter feel instead of applying its time, money and indefatigable energy to hacking the sport from our sports?

What if ESPN had applied as much devotion to sports as it has to ESPN?

And how did Jeter’s final season, something that should have been so sweet, turn so sour so quickly?

It’s only July and my email is stuffed with lifelong Jeter acolytes who have grown nauseated by the excessive, often maudlin media and marketing excesses of Jeter’s Farewell Tour, which now seems more like an overly written public service ad campaign to shelter homeless birthday cake.

Reader and Jeter fan Chris Cody neatly described it as relentlessly “sappy,” thus it might be best poured on our pancakes.

And that was the mood even before what happened Friday.

Friday, the moment the Yankees announced their Sept. 7 Sunday afternoon game will be a Jeter tribute game (Haven’t they all been?), two questions immediately arose:

1) Would MLB/ESPN move it to a Sunday night, 8:05 start?

2) Would Yankees ownership and administration, with their “Pinstripe Pride,” clip-joint mentality, exploit/honor Jeter by attaching the game to price-gouging?

The answer to 2) was “Yes,” and more shamelessly than the usual shamelessness. Since the last two years in old Yankee Stadium, the team’s “business model” has been to out-scalp the scalpers, so much so that the best seats — and for the most attractive games — have remained shamelessly — and deservedly — empty.

For Sept. 7, tickets that normally would be available through the Yankees’ website almost instantly disappeared from the team’s control and became the property of the Yankees’ contracted ticket-broker and business partner, Ticketmaster, from where ransom prices were immediately attached.

If only Times Square Elmos had first congregated on 161st Street, they’d be welcomed — provided the Elmos tickled the Yanks. After all, the Mets already landed Amway for Citi Field.

It’s not as if Jeter, given his own, farewell-season jacked-up autograph sell and previous memorabilia excesses, is in a position to publicly go to bat for his devoted, multi-generational fans. It is, after all, a practical and perhaps unfortunate truth that on such dubious, ugly-cash matters, Jeter is more than a little bit “pregnant.”

Regardless, it all meets with “Bottom Line” Bud Selig’s full approval, if not his inspiration. The commissioner of baseball continues to make it abundantly clear that he measures his and The Game’s success only in terms of “revenue.”

Patrons — suckers and the indiscriminate wealthy — who attend the Sept. 7 Jeter game will be issued, no extra charge, a “Commemorative Coin.” Inevitable, I suppose, these Yankees would choose a coin.

Still, what if? What if this season, Jeter’s last, had been conducted with class? What if the Yankees and MLB had allowed the scalpers to do their worst rather than do their own worst to make fools of fans and diminishing patrons in the Yankee-holy name of Derek Jeter?

Of course, you never know. Not just with ESPN, not just with the Yankees or Selig, Jeter, MLB and all sports commerce and sports media. That’s the problem with right-minded ideas, these days: They’re left untried.

Anyone have change of a coin?

YES! Good effort at scouting the Reds

Strange, but YES’ TV booth seems to feature advanced scouts.

Paul O’Neill, a former Red who lives near Cincinnati, over the weekend demonstrated that he knows at least as much about the Reds as he does the Yankees.

O’Neill spoke eagerly, easily, confidently and in great detail about all things Reds. Friday, for example, there was the defensive ability of Reds catcher Devin Mesoraco; Sunday, on why the Reds were starting outfielder Skip Schumaker at second base.

Can’t recall O’Neill more ready, willing and able to speak good, current baseball info than throughout the three Reds-Yanks telecasts.

During Yankees games against Baltimore, former Oriole Ken Singleton, who lives near Baltimore, annually demonstrates that he knows at least as much about the O’s as he does the Yankees.

♦ Good stuff from Nationals fans Friday, respectfully applauding Brewers shortstop Jean Segura on his return from the Dominican Republic after the death of his 9-month-old son.

♦ For clean, clear, cliché-barren, on-course analysis heard, of late throughout the British Open, Dottie Pepper, former LPGA star, continues to be both utilized and underutilized. Same with Sean McDonough as a tower host.

♦ As a golfer, my fear is non-golfers who watch golf on TV might think we all speak as if we’re nuts. In other words, when golfers say someone “played well,” ESPN’s Mike Tirico would have viewers think we say, “he had a stellar performance” or “was in good form.”

♦ Yesterday, Spain’s Sergio Garcia, three back and having just hit his approach to the 11th, was heard shouting — in English — “Ah, be good, please! Be good! Please be good! Please! Please!” ESPN’s Curtis Strange: “I think that qualifies as begging.”