As a kid, did you ever mess around with a pinball machine; throw all the balls into the slot, pull the plunger to test your pinball wizardry? See if you could flipper all or several balls back up before they drained out?
That made for brief curiosity and fleeting fun. It was all too frenetic to follow let alone enjoy. All-in, full-contact pinball met its logical end minutes after we invented it. Yet, that game appears to have been reprised during the NBA playoffs.
Sunday’s Cavs-Celtics Game 7 on ESPN included 74 3-point shots. In a 48-minute game, that meant 1.55 3-point attempts every minute. Good Gail Goodrich grief!
That didn’t leave a lot of time to play thoughtful basketball. And little of it — fast breaks, give-and-goes, down-low screens, one-touch passing toward off-the-ball movement — was seen. Had it not been a Game 7, it would’ve been another dare to the better sports senses to endure.
With 74 3-point shots, the blind notion that this would’ve been a 220-plus points game is understandable. But the final score was Cavs 87, Celts 79. Only 16 of the 74 shots — 22 percent — were successful, which seemed a pitiful waste of talent, not to mention the abandonment of a cherished team sport.
Or was it in the game plan for Boston’s Terry Rozier to take 10 3s, missing all of them?
But c’est la sac — this is the bag we’re in.
Tuesday, prior to Mets-Braves on WOR Radio, new Met Jose Bautista was interviewed by host Wayne Randazzo. I’d never heard Bautista interviewed at length. He humbly spoke of his charitable organization giving “me a chance to reciprocate” for his professional success. Fabulous. But then why would he choose to be known as an excessively immodest, antagonizing, unsportsmanlike, in-yer-face home run bat-flipper? It made no sense. Is one act a con? Both?
Also, Tuesday, the Astros had the Yankees beaten, 5-3. Reliever Hector Rondon pitched the eighth, striking out two and making one, two, three of the Yanks on just 10 pitches.
But then Houston manager A.J. Hinch provided maximum aid and comfort to his enemy, replacing Rondon in the ninth with this game’s designated closer, Chris Devenski. Soon, the Yanks would be 6-5 winners.
But from the best to the worst teams, this is now how big league baseball is now managed. It’s an epidemic moving in on 15 years. That it’s a betrayal of the practical application of baseball — that it makes no sense — makes no difference.
The next night during Astros-Yanks, YES’s Paul O’Neill praised Hinch for always sticking to his plan. Apparently O’Neill approved of Hinch removing an unhittable reliever after 10 pitches, the night before.
FOX’s lead MLB analyst, John Smoltz, seems like a lovely guy eager to please his audience with info and opinions — endless info and opinions, so much so that it appears we’re headed for another postseason in which Smoltz smothers the telecasts, as he did throughout Saturday’s Angels-Yanks.
By now one would reasonably think that someone at or near the top of FOX Sports would have prevailed upon Smoltz to save himself from himself, not to mention us, by having him speak a lot less.
But Smoltz represents another extraordinary epidemic, one that points to TV executives who don’t realize we’re trying to watch television!
What? Vulgar Lil Jon gets pass from NHL
It’s time sports’ pandering commissioners demonstrated the courage of their oh-so-hip marketing convictions.
If it met with the NHL’s standards that standardized rapper — vulgar, N-wording, women-denigrating — Lil Jon entertain before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final then was interviewed on NBC during the game, Gary Bettman should be equally eager to recite or display Lil Jon’s written, produced and sold lyrics.
Reader Frank Macy suggests that Bettman could begin with the pornographic “Bend Ova” then conclude with a few lines from “Real N—- Roll Call.”
If a white NHL player called a black opponent the N-word or spoke lewd sexual degradations of women, Bettman would publicly gnash his teeth then announce an immediate fine and suspension, decrying the inexcusable shame of it all!
Last year the NHL employed rap-sheet rapper and proud pornographer Snoop Dogg to entertain a family audience during the NHL All-Star skills competition. Snoop Dogg gave the NHL what it deserved: An X-rated session.
But if Bettman is good with it all — and he obviously is — why not pass out lyrics sheets so he can lead everyone in following the bouncing puck?
Didi can’t run away from his lazy play
Et tu, Didi?: After swinging and missing at strike three in the dirt, Wednesday, Didi Gregorius just stood and waited for the catcher to secure the ball then tag him out. Conspicuous, inexcusable bad baseball. On YES, Michael Kay, David Cone and Paul O’Neill said nothing as if perhaps we didn’t notice what we couldn’t miss.
Monday, Howie Rose said the Braves’ Freddie Freeman, vs. Jacob DeGrom, swung at the first pitch, adding that Freeman now always looks to hit the first pitch. Perhaps the better-idea anticipation that the first pitch will be the best one to hit, especially against better pitchers, is why Freeman has gone from hitting .259 in 2012 to .335 today.
Saturday on FS1, the Royals played the Rangers — both teams more than 10 games under .500. Still, the best seats in the house, starting behind the backstop, were filled. The Yanks, since their new Stadium opened in 2009, have rarely come close to such a reality — except in John Sterling’s bogus descriptions.
Reader Nicholas Longo suggests that Mets’ GM Sandy Alderson will be asked to select his pitchers among those to appear at the All-Star Game — to throw batting practice.
Another week in which Twitter has proven both the paradise and Waterloo of megalomaniacs — those who feel that the world at all times must know what they think about everything, all day, every day. As Verne Lundquist said, the most dangerous word in our language has become “send.”