We may as well get started. I don’t think those Fox Sports execs are going to show. They never do.
They never accept my invitation to sit and watch a national Fox baseball broadcast then explain what in the name of Abner Doubleday were they thinking, and worse, why do they continue to think it?
Why do they annually — 10 years now — dare diminishing numbers of viewers to suffer three hours of John Smoltz as the nation’s lead MLB analyst? Will, “We senselessly aided and abetted the ruin of baseball on TV” look good on their résumés?
Do they really think American baseball fans enjoy him, that they’re attracted to his dreary, humorless, monotonous, redundant, often contradictory prattle? That we look forward to three-hour, late Saturday afternoon lectures on pitching?
If so, they’re in the wrong business. Or is it that like many former baseball fans, Fox’s shot-callers haven’t lately bothered to watch?
Saturday, at random, we chose Smoltz’s top-of-the-fourth filibuster during Cardinals-Mets, the Cards up, 5-0. The following comes with a warning: This will not be an easy journey, thus, vaya con Dios. Here goes:
“Each pitcher that pitches in the big leagues tries to create an advantage by having one aspect — whether it’s stuff or a certain area of the plate that you dominate — that puts the hitter in position but right now [Mets starter Adrian Houser] hasn’t been consistent enough down, consistent enough in one area of the plate, and the Cardinal hitters have been more comfortable than they are not.”
Pete Alonso then catches a foul fly ball but Smoltz thinks we want to hear more, thus doesn’t stop:
“In other words, let’s just say you come out and dominate away — away, away, away — and you get them looking that way. Now you can get away with making more mistakes, if you make them, but if you’re not in one area and you’ve caught too much of the plate without 98 miles per hour, then the hitter has the advantage of those pitches.
“And early this game that has been the difference. He makes a good pitch away for strike one, but then has a hard time going back to that spot — to repeat it and put pressure on the hitter.”
Smoltz wasn’t done — hardly! There was still half-a-game left.
But to think that one might have turned to the game to watch, even enjoy, a ballgame became an impossibility by design! Ten years of self-destruction of a live sports property that Fox will soon pay $730 million a year to retain.
And that doesn’t include the combat pay for the poor soul assigned to Smoltz’s closed captioning. Around the office they call him “Jitters.”
Greed prevails over safety of horses at Derby
With 20, again, scheduled to go in Saturday’s Derby, I can’t shake my annual creeps that 20 is far too many — at least by six —for equine and human safety, thus doom awaits.
The Derby annually maxes out on entries because of ego-driven owners — “I have a horse going in the Derby” — and the desire to seem special even among the special at Churchill Downs.
Meanwhile, the gate, as of now, will open to 20 young horses, all of them inexperienced in any racing let alone races run with most of the entries headed for the same spot — the rail.
NBA in-game analyst Richard Jefferson, who often gets swallowed in his own long-form nonsense, may have Jalen Brunson to thank for inculcating the value of keeping it short and simple.
After Brunson scored on an extraordinary one-handed floater in traffic, Jefferson nailed it with, “I don’t know how you guard against that.”
Reminds me of Doc Emrick during a rare break in the Lightning-Bruins frantic Game 7 2011 conference finals when he famously surrendered with, “I have nothing intelligent to add.”
You like stats? Just seven times in MLB history has a batter struck out 44 or more times by the end of April. Four of those times have been this season.
The Phils’ Kyle Schwarber, the Reds’ Will Benson, the Bucs’ Oneil Cruz and the Dodgers’ Teoscar Hernandez have performed the trick this season.
Joey Gallo, now with the Nats, finished just one back. Gallo, however, did strike out 43 times in just 74 at-bats, 58 percent of the time.
As for Rob Manfred’s all-in DH, the change that was supposed to fuel MLB offenses to higher heights?
Well, Sunday five games included DHs batting .188 or under; 12 included DHs batting .216 or under.
I’m a born-and-raised basketball fan. So when the first quarter of Game 4 of Celtics-Heat ended with 19 3-point shots taken, I did what I was tacitly encouraged to do. I turned it off.
Mocked Draft: Is it too much to ask for an explanation as to why most local football fans knew that overweight, uninspired OL Mekhi Becton, the Jets’ 2020 first-round draft pick now trying to make the Eagles, was a wasted pick from Day 1 while the Jets had no idea?
Seems Juwan Howard, as the head coach of Michigan, couldn’t do enough to make trouble or exacerbate problems — on and off the court — while Michigan basketball annually faded. Thus it comes as small surprise that the Nets have hired Howard as an assistant coach.