IN the second inning of Monday’s Met opener, after Mike Piazza turned a double into a single by not running out a bloop down the right-field line, Fran Healy said, “You just saw something that Mike Piazza never does – he didn’t bust it out of the box; he watched it,” Healy said on MSG. “Very unusual.”
Friday, after Piazza stood near home plate to watch his home run clear the left-field fence in Atlanta, Healy said, “He knew it was gone, so he watched it.”
What Healy might’ve/could’ve/should’ve said on both occasions was, “It’s unlikely that any team has hurt itself more than the Mets in recent seasons by not running the bases reasonably hard. They even lost a World Series game to the Yankees by watching instead of running. But this most fundamental lesson, for the most part, remains unlearned.”
It was another rotten week, all around, for both fundamental truths and fundamentals as experienced through television.
With the East leading the West, 8-4, during Thursday night’s McDonald’s High School All-Star basketball game on ESPN, the following graphic appeared: “Dunks – East 3, West 0.”
On the previous Sunday afternoon, ESPN televised the NCAA slam-dunk and three-point shooting con- test, immediately followed by a re-run of the 2000 MLB Home Run Derby. The TV-delivered essence of sports has become the explosion. In baseball, it’s the stand-and-pose home run. In basketball, it’s the three-point bomb and the rim-rocking slam-dunk. Nothing else matters, even though it counts.
Free-throw shooting, running to first base – the kinds of individual acts that help teams win games – have no commercial value, thus they’re losing their fundamental value. It stands to reason that coaches aren’t instructing players to become deficient at foul shooting or to linger near the batter’s box on batted balls. So who is?
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Mike Francesa on his Feb. 11th WFAN show: “By April 1, there won’t be any cable system in the metropolitan area that will not have the YES Network on. The subscribers will go crazy if it’s not on. I’ve been down this road a million times with this.”
Had Francesa been so familiar with this road, he’d have known that the previous time Cablevision lost Yankee rights to a competing programmer – 1989 – the Yankees were removed from Cablevision homes.
He’d also have known that cable systems often make it difficult, if not impossible, to view programming that competes with programming owned or partially owned by the cable system.
Then again, our elected and appointed officials don’t seem to understand that, either.
How is it that cable TV and its steady abuse of the public is such a populist consumer issue, yet rarely does it becomes an election issue? Might it have something to do with the cable industry’s generous, both-sides-of-the-aisle campaign contributions? Perish the thought.
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Highly regarded former Post horse-racing writer/columnist Bill Finley was recently fired as a TV consultant/commentator for OTB’s Crosswalks (Ch. 71) TV station. Finley’s reform-minded suggestions apparently didn’t meet management’s.
Kevin Graham, late of ESPN Radio in Pittsburgh, has been named program director at 1050 ESPN Radio, here. . . . With MLB cashing in on the continuance of post-9/11 security restrictions – why not reduce the outrageous prices of ballpark food and drink now that patrons have virtually no options? – we’re left to wonder the penalty for being caught trying to smuggle in a tuna fish hero.
Nets’ TV voice Ian Eagle, in a what’s-in-a-name? feature on FSN-NY, Wednesday, explained why he pronounces his name “I-in” instead of the far more common, “E-in.” Eagle produced a cardboard sign that carried the name, “Brian,” then reminded us that we wouldn’t pronounce it, “Bree-in.” Enteresting.
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The great and gracious Ernie Harwell will retire at season’s end, at 84, after 56 years in the baseball booth, most of them calling Tigers’ games. A Georgian, Harwell has considerable New York roots.
In 1948 Harwell joined Red Barber and Connie Desmond calling Brooklyn Dodgers’ games. From 1950 through 1953 he worked with Russ Hodges on New York Giants’ baseball radiocasts. In 1960, when Harwell left the Orioles for the Tigers, he was replaced in Baltimore by Bob Murphy – our Bob Murphy.
Interviewed yesterday on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” Harwell said, “I don’t believe in sitting down and contriving some kind of a call. I think that’s a big mistake because it usually falls flat.”
He was too gracious, of course, to name names.