MLB foolishly eliminating one of baseball’s most riveting dynamics
‘HI, I’m Roger ‘Good Investments’ Goodell, here to tell you how you can gamble away your house from the comfort of your own home.”
Look what they’ve done to our games, Ma.
July 4, 1985, or back when folks still cared about baseball, the Mets beat the Braves, 16-13, in a 19-inning mind-blower, the Rick Camp Game.
I don’t know where Rob Manfred was that night, but he wasn’t with me. Or maybe he was. Before I fell asleep in my chair, I was so crazy-glued to the TV set I wouldn’t have noticed. And when I awoke, at 2:30 a.m., the game was still on and far from over!
Keith Hernandez hit for the cycle, manager Davey Johnson was ejected, the Mets scored two in the top of the 13th, the Braves scored two in the bottom of the 13th. Each scored a run in the 18th — the Braves’ coming on the lone career homer by pitcher Rick Camp, a career .074 hitter, to tie the game at 11-all. The Mets scored five in the 19th, but it wasn’t over. The Braves scored two in the bottom of the 19th before Ron Darling got the last out. One of the Braves announcers that night was John Sterling.
After a 90-minute rain delay at the scheduled start of the game, it ended close to 4 a.m. Yet the Braves, as promised, followed through on their fireworks display to celebrate the Fifth of July.
And it was all baseball. No replay challenges, no DH, no analytics, no quitting. Baseball in its glorious, natural and semi-memorable state.
But such games, as per Commissioner Manfred, will no longer be tolerated.
MLB, overwhelmed by its self-afflicted tedium, abandonment of fundamentals and devotion to computer-delivered scientific applications to the unscientific, has ruled that all extra-inning games must begin with an artificial additive, a gimmick in the form of a designated runner at second.
Don’t fix what’s killing baseball, fix what isn’t!
And this season, Manfred, who, like Goodell, portrays himself as what he so consistently and conspicuously isn’t — fans’ leading advocate — is good with it, perhaps even proud of it.
And now MLB, in exchange for tens of millions in Apple TV streaming dough, will exploit the Mets’ second game of the season — next Friday night’s game at the Nats, Max Scherzer expected to make his first start for the Mets — as pay-extra subscription bait. The game will not be televised on SNY or PIX11 but exclusively on a “first-few-are-free” streaming service.
And more than 20 Yankees games will be removed from free PIX11 viewing, lost to added-fees Amazon streaming deal.
More decisions that should’ve been too preposterous, too ugly, too greedy, and too unnatural to have even been considered. It’s anathema to the good and welfare of The Game. But instead of “No way!” MLB answered “How much?”
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this pay wall!”
NFL adds another token into its tokenism
The NFL’s latest diversity rules are again bereft of both foresight and genuine racial and gender practicality and sincerity.
Now teams must interview both females plus minority male assistant offensive coaches, thus adding to the predictable foolishness of the Rooney Rule, which only led to suspicions or realities of interviews conducted as a matter of rank tokenism.
How did you land your NFL job? “I’m black” or “I’m a woman” should be calculated as an exercise in service to legit equality? No more than separate drinking fountains did. If the NFL knows that one of its teams practices racial or gender discrimination, act on it! Don’t presume they all do!
That logically creates the suspicion or reality that minimizes legitimate qualifications of all female and minority hires. It insults those it purports to benefit!
How do you defeat tokenism? More tokenism!
Meanwhile, Roger Goodell’s NFL and the NFLPA continue to ignore what has become a profound criminal problem among players. This week, more of the usual. Panthers wide receiver Shi Smith was busted for drugs and a handgun after he was pulled over for speeding. It’s an NFL epidemic, yet Goodell has never been heard to even hint at it.
More: The NFL’s new overtime rules establish one standard to determine teams that make the playoffs, and different rules — each team guaranteed a possession — to determine who wins playoff games.
The inequitable regular-season OT standard will be sustained for the reason that Goodell omitted in his “doing it for the fans” explanation: TV money, especially as it applies to big TV market teams.
The NFL and its networks don’t want regular season 1 p.m. OT games to further collide with the starts of the 4:15 games, which are for the most part scheduled for 4:15 because they include better teams.
And when the Jets and Giants, regardless of their records, play at 4:15, as you’ve known for years after watching three-plus hours of an early game that has gone into OT, that game will be abandoned for local commercials then a scene-setter from wherever the Jets and Giants will play.
But why tell the truth when you can claim to be “all about our fans”?
Spanarkel adds spark to Madness
The runaway TV MVP of the NCAAs was analyst Jim Spanarkel. He added immediately applicable sense to every game he worked — from alerting us to defenses that should overplay players’ dominant dribbling hands, to identifying Purdue as too single-minded trying to take advantage of its height advantage that was double-teamed, front and back, by undersized underdog St. Peter’s.
He’s excellent for all and only the right reasons. No screaming, no faux-cool silly expressions, all substance. And now — based on emails from here, there and everywhere — the nation recognizes how good he is.
It remains unfathomable that Spanarkel, unless it was a matter of misguided diversity — he was replaced by Sarah Kustok and Richard Jefferson — was dumped by YES as Ian Eagle’s longtime partner on Nets telecasts. What a blunder.
Why do we presume that any thought, even the misapplied kind, is ever applied?
Early in Saturday’s Kansas-Miami Tournament game, the score was 9-9 with play on when CBS decided this was a good time to distract us by posting a graphic carrying the breaking news that KU “has three assists on its four made FGs.”
Clearly, CBS broadcast truck had been invaded by saboteurs. Then again, after jumping on stage as if it were Ford’s Theater — “Sic semper tyrannis!” — to smack Chris Rock, how much thought went into Will Smith receiving a standing ovation?
Too much significant Tournament info is withheld by TV. For example, Miami’s “sixth year senior” guard from Chicago, Charlie Moore, originally committed to Memphis, but instead played for Cal. Then Kansas. Then DePaul. Then Miami.
Reader Tommy Ameen figures Moore is “the most educated student-athlete” in the country.
