It’s not too early for MLB and its partner TV networks to start working on next season.
First step: Change the in-game disclaimer from “Any rebroadcast, retransmission or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited” to be more realistic, as if anyone would steal what MLB, ESPN, TBS and Fox did to these playoffs.
So MLB should borrow from the medicines advertised during the games, specifically for treatment of Acute Smoltz Spinratis: “MLB advises that you first check with your health care provider. . . depression and thoughts of suicide may occur.”
Thank goodness that the worst-played, worst-managed, worst-televised, worst-spoken and worst-cluttered playoffs have gone to their maker. An institutionalized freak show that senselessly appropriated the worst of our worsening to conclude with a requisite riot and looting in LA by those who wear their MLB-licensed caps as a pledge of allegiance to their street gangs.
Call it the Fallen Classic surrounded by American Flag bunting.
The games themselves have been diminished to a state of malnourishment to the degree that saw World Series batters who never before bunted, the elimination of new, significant extra inning rules that determined the teams that reached the playoffs, pitchers failing to cover first base and base runners and fielders not knowing how many are out.
And media who complain about it or simply point it out are placed on the defensive, lest they be condemned as old and cranky for sustaining 100-year-old sense.
Consider Fox’s Derek Jeter after Game 1 of the WS when Aaron Boone, as per his six-year force of habit, provided as much aid and comfort to the Dodgers since Benedict Arnold said, “They went that way.” After yanking Gerrit Cole after just 88 pitches, apparently to save Cole for a big game, Boone did what he does: used and abused his bullpen.
Jeter: “I don’t want to be one of those guys who says, ‘Back in the day when we played …’ but we were talking about how when we played the Mets in 2000, Al Leiter pitched Game 6 and threw 140-something pitches.
“Cole was dominating this game. And if you take him out after 88 pitches for I don’t know what reason, it’s a domino effect on not only this game tonight, [but] tomorrow’s game and the rest of the series. I just think when you have someone who’s dealing like Cole was dealing tonight, you leave him out there as long as you can.”
No, Derek, never apologize for making baseball sense. There’s nothing wrong — quite the contrary — with being Old School when Old School is Smart School. “Back in the day” — even if only 24 years ago — made for more sense and winning baseball than what baseball has been allowed to become by neglect of anything more noteworthy than home runs and strikeouts.
Boone manages as now do most: on a fervent but foolish wish. It’s the Psalm of Aaron: Every game, and in half-inning rows, he will be blessed with a staff that comforts him.
The rank disrespect Rob Manfred, the Dodgers and Yanks showed for the World Series and The Game wasn’t shocking given that Manfred allowed the Dodgers to turn a Gay Pride Game into a demonstration-by-invite of bearded drag queen slobs dressed as church-bashing nuns. What did they have to do with baseball beyond pandering to the attention-starved disruptive?
They had the same thing to do with the World Series as did the Dodgers’ opening WS act — World Series now need opening acts? — Ice Cube, a vulgar, women-degrading rapper whose posting of anti-Jewish caricatures and content has now been ignored by both Roger Goodell and Manfred.
Goodell proudly donated NFL money to Ice Cube’s noble-sounding organization. I’d suggest that Manfred and Goodell join to rap one of Cube’s numbers, say, “No Vaseline.” Run away, media! Run away!
In Fat Joe’s case, chosen to senselessly stand on the mound in Yankee Stadium while shouting/rapping indecipherably into a microphone before Game 3, forget about his vile, N-worded lyrics and head right to his arrests record and uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time during street-shooting murders.
Reader Billy Nolan represented about 200 e-mailers to this column when he wrote: “I’ve been watching the Yankees all my life and I’ve never been more embarrassed for them.”
Fox, which again spent the World Series focused on the crowds rather than the games, did find two young women dancing to Fat Joe’s unpleasant grunting. Everyone else seemed confused, as if they’d been redirected to Karaoke Night on Rikers Island or halftime of the Super Bowl.
Why would MLB be so eager to attach the World Series to these two? Who would now watch who had no plans to watch? Would Manfred rap their lyrics to the kids and women in his life?
And as relentlessly annoying as were Fox’s overly excitable Joe Davis — as they sang on the old “Patty Duke Show,” “a hot dog makes her lose control” — and John “Spin Rate” Smoltz, who did not allow three consecutive seconds of silence over 16 hours, Fox provided them lots of garnish in the form of ESPN-like stats designed to recite and feed the hype among the unknowing.
Thus, Fox was eager to report stats that Bernie Williams is ahead of Mickey Mantle in “postseason” batting categories. Williams played in 121 postseason games. Mantle played in 65 — known only as the World Series.
“When will Fox learn!?” asks reader Mark Rottenstein.
It won’t. None will. It’s like waiting until after kickoff to get off the field to show starting lineups. It’ll always be done the wrong way because that’s the way it has always been done. Smoltz was first stamped with Fox’s approval in 2014.
But my favorite stat was Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle’s 60, 70 or how many “consecutive changeups” he threw. As reader Jerry C. asked, “If all he throws is a changeup, how can it be a changeup? A changeup from what? If he threw one fastball, wouldn’t that be his changeup.”
But it’s over. We can come up for air, again. It’s all over except the cheering, the laments, counting the looting and arson, loss of stock and revenue in Los Angeles and Fat Joe starring in “Pride of the Yankees.”
Bet on NFL’s gambling hypocrisy
CBS’s Ian Eagle, Sunday during Eagles-Bengals, noted that Philly CB Isaiah Rodgers was signed “after being suspended for gambling.” Hmm. Can the NFL suspend fans for not gambling?
Get Off My Infield Lawn: In August, Aaron Boone benched Gleyber Torres for not hustling. And such minimal play was to cease. But as reader Saul Mishaan notes, it not only was resurrected by Torres, the Yanks home-plate posed throughout the postseason.
Among the NFL’s most underrated: Ravens’ TE Mark Andrews. Be your own analyst: Watch him every snap until he’s out of frame. QB Lamar Jackson knows where to find him after that.
Sorry, but after Sunday’s loss to the Pats, the Jets have no options. They must fire Robert Saleh. . . . What’s that?
