Some traditions aren’t worth sustaining.
Witch burnings, for example.
They nearly destroyed the New England broom industry.
Other traditions hold on for no apparent good reasons.
In Europe, adults still greet each other by kissing, or at least briefly rubbing against, both cheeks with both of their cheeks.
Not only is this excessive, it’s a waste of time, tantamount to shaking each other’s right hand then pivoting to shake each other’s left.
Upon the 1944 liberation of Paris, think how many more French Gen. de Gaulle could have rubbed cheeks with if he limited those rubs to one cheek per person.
Then there are traditions that have died for no good reasons unless short-term greed, neglect and a pitiful lack of foresight are good reasons.
The MLB All-Star Game is a prime example.
Once the second-most anticipated games to the World Series, the team owner-assigned Guardians of the Game — “Commissioners” engaged as Chief Financial Officers — have allowed the All-Star Game to recede from view as a must-watch rivalry between two distinct leagues, rooting interests firmly attached, to a summer night’s desultory waste of time watching indistinguishable “teams.”
Consider that Tuesday’s All-Star Game on Fox registered a 3.9 TV rating — the latest in an annual series of all-time lows.
And it appeared against no live sports competition. From 1967-89, the All-Star Game consistently scored ratings 20 and above — the difference between 35 million viewers and 7 million this week.
The irrelevance of the All-Star Game began after the 1994 strike when Bud Selig, who saw and spoke baseball only as a bottom-line operation — he spoke of his tenure as successful only in terms of “revenue” — proclaimed that come 1996, interleague play would arrive as a “gift to our fans” who remained devoted after the strike.
But that quickly proved a con, as MLB team owners were quick to raise the ticket prices to such games, especially gouging fans for those that included same-region AL versus NL games.
Interleague play has proliferated until the two leagues have essentially become one, add-two-cans-of-water, stir-and-serve baseball.
Tuesday night’s edition barely deserved its poor rating.
Fox predictably did its usual to cause viewers quick and lasting irritable vowel syndrome with Joe Davis and John Smoltz.
As reader Larry O’Neill so succinctly put it, “What a blabbermouth session!”
The Rob Manfred regime — so pathetic as to allow a group of attention-starved, Catholic-trashing, faces-painted fringe lunatics who cross-dress as nuns to be honored before a Dodgers game as representative of the gay community — had the two teams, loaded with indistinguishable players, dress in indistinguishable Nike uniforms — jerseys on sale for $200, plus $30 shipping.
Did it not dawn on any of these marketing geniuses that Tuesday’s participants wear their actual team uniforms to help viewers identify Corbin Carroll as an outfielder for Arizona and Jonah Heim as a catcher for Texas?
As kids, we were thrilled to see Mickey Mantle play in his Yankees uniform. Today, MLB would dress him in AL team pajamas.
How did this All-Star Game best serve next year’s? How did it serve to stanch the bleeding of viewers for a business addicted to TV money?
It only served its further demise. Perhaps next year’s Midseason Classic will include a mid-game witch burning, “Brought to you by Zippo, the official lighter fluid of Major League Baseball.”
Rutgers football earns ‘Big Red (Ink)’ tag
Now that head football coach Greg Schiano makes $4 million per plus lots of perks, and two of his assistants this season will be paid in excess of $1 million, Rutgers has boosted tuition costs 6 percent, double the increase from last year.
With RU approximately $260 million in athletic department debt since catching Big Ten fever, taxpayers involuntarily fund the college 20 percent of its annual costs, including $500,000 in DoorDash charges rung up by football recruits during COVID.
And, of course, the school pays small fortunes to bring in pay-for-slay colleges such as Wagner, Howard and Morgan State in futile attempts to become “bowl eligible.”
And that’s why RU, even in its optional all-black Nike uniforms and helmets, is known as “Big Red (Ink).”
Pete Stendel must now recover from a severe head injury — an orbital fracture — but the Yankee Stadium medical response team could use some immediate work on its procedures.
As reader Jim Heimbuch suggests, it appeared to be a “not-so first responder” unit, an emergency ambulance service that chooses the long way to the hospital.
Treatment of Stendel, the first-base Yankee Stadium YES cameraman nailed in the face by an errant throw, was unnecessarily delayed because the ATV that left the left-field bullpen area to treat him chose to travel the warning tracks rather than cut across the outfield to reach him as soon as possible.
Heimbuch did acknowledge that the grass in Yankee Stadium is “precious.”
I was away when I read this, but despite Aaron Boone’s unfathomable standards, it had to be wrong: Yanks up, 4-1, Domingo German has a one-hitter on 74 pitches in the seventh when Gleyber Torres butchers a double-play grounder to load the bases. Boone then pulls German. Yanks lose, 7-4.
Surely that didn’t happen, as it made even less than no sense. But it’s exactly what happened.
Mike Francesa, then with WFAN, was asked if he’d ever consider managing the Yanks.
Francesa, who often didn’t know when callers were mocking his self-importance, took the question seriously. So he gave a serious answer: “I would, but only if the money’s right.”
Even Francesa would have left in German.
Another bad look for Venus
Venus Williams, 43, carried on the family tradition of acting like a self-entitled brat when she refused to shake the hand of the chair ump after her first-round loss at Wimbledon.
Seems Williams was upset by a call that didn’t go her way, thus she considered herself the victim of a grave injustice.
Williams is very selective in applying her sense of justice. She avoided the grave injustice suffered by Doug Adler when ESPN fired him for praising her “guerrilla” tactics that a reckless NY Times correspondent claimed was abject racism as if Adler, for no reason, suddenly called Williams a “gorilla.”
Venus knew what Adler said and meant, knew it held zero racial context.
And as a Nike rep she knew that Nike had produced at least two ad campaigns featuring its tennis stars playing “guerilla tennis.”
But she allowed Adler to be destroyed with, “I only pay attention and address situations that are noteworthy.”
And I suppose it doesn’t matter to her or ESPN that Adler volunteered his time and expertise to instruct poor black kids in tennis during his annual trips to Washington to call WTA matches.
He lost that gig, too, after the Times and ESPN branded him a racist.
Williams, as did the frightened media and all of tennis, allowed Adler to be destroyed by a hideous and obvious lie.
But at this Wimbledon, Williams demonstrated her disgust with a perceived injustice that had befallen her.
By the way, with The Times’ surrender of its sports section to a sub- contractor, any chance that it will ever do right by Adler — ever even note that it played a role in the life sentence of an innocent man — is gone.
