As we’re daily antagonized by the preposterous, we find comfort and succor in the words of philosopher and former Yankee, the fireballing right-hander, Joba Chamberlain, after a thorough blasting. 

“At the end of the day,” he said, “the sun comes up.” 

Perhaps Chamberlain shares a locker at the planetarium with Kyrie Irving. 

As chronicled by colleague Andrew Marchand, TV’s mindless excesses have been on full display as networks scramble to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at NFL voices who strike most of us, if not all not us, as short of special. 

The money being offered by TV’s shot-callers to those who are so often burdensome, objectionable obstructions to viewers and viewing is staggering. 

Yet, TV execs remain convinced that what they, more than most, should know can’t be done — hire announcers with the ability to have us tune in to hear them as opposed to watch the game. It’s simple: no game, no audience. How can these execs be so detached? 

This senseless waste — hey, let’s send five or six laugh-at-nothing studio guys to the sites of games where we can’t hear them shouting over the background noise at halftime! — can only be the result of four things: 

1) Sports TV execs can’t distinguish bad from worse. 

2) TV execs never listen to their games. 

3) TV execs must be free of foresight. 

4) Some lunatic has stolen the networks’ checkbooks. 

Troy Aikman is a lovely fellow to chat with at functions. But in his 20 years at Fox he had not perceptibly improved to become a fluid speaker of the games before him. 

He was stuck on prefacing his remarks with repetitive and dull idioms, while his sense of the conspicuously remarkable — a flagrant late hit to give the opposing team a first down — was treated with cotton-coated caution such as “an ill-advised play” and “not smart.” 

His new deal with ESPN, $90 million over five years, is further proof that ESPN is a bad food chain, open 24 hours. 

Aikman’s longtime Fox partner, Joe Buck, is also primed to jump for lots more money. He, too, is a lovely fellow to chat with and swap comical texts, but his on-air persona is one of a stat-parrot who tries to decorate telecasts with a transparent slickness that translates to an unnatural tries-too-hard act. 

Why would Aikman and Buck be in such great demand? When I discover the answer, you’ll be the second to know. 

Now ESPN’s lead college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit is apparently in play. In 1996, Herbstreit broke in at ESPN glazed with promise. He was candid, succinct, sharp. 

But he soon became a tough indulgence, an overbearing blabbermouth eager to speak genuine pigskin gibberish to dazzle audiences and know-nothing TV execs rather than best serve both by speaking plain, applicable English. 

NBC will retain Cris Collinsworth with a $12.5 million per deal to continue to talk down to us and tell us that what we just saw he could see coming. 

So now the obvious and redundant: Has there ever been a sportscaster who makes us tune to a game, actually watch what we otherwise had no plan to watch? Of course not. They’ve a better chance of chasing us away. 

The best the best can do is enhance the telecast. A Doc Emrick and Marv Albert could keep us tuned to a blowout. 

In the third period of lopsided games, Emrick went into his anecdotal mode, his charm, hockey wisdom feel-through friendship with audiences holding their attention. 

Albert exploited NBA “garbage time” to bring out the fun side of his analyst, to humanize him even if it took a metaphoric hot foot. His late-game, chops-busting exchanges with the late John Andariese and Mike Fratello were special. 

Other than that, the late Skip Caray, son of Harry and longtime TV voice of the Atlanta Braves, put it wonderfully. Late in blowouts he’d say, “If you promise to patronize our advertisers, you are dismissed.” 

Why the hubbub about Harden NY ‘return’?

Over the weekend, a mailing from the second-market broker TickPick informed us that tickets for this past Sunday’s 76ers-Knicks game were growing more expensive in response to James Harden’s expected return to play in New York. 

Fascinating. Given that Harden was a Net for about 20 minutes, such a sentimental sell at inflated prices seemed odd. Even if the Garden was loaded with Philly fans, such deep, expensive regard for his “return” to New York was surprising. 

Perhaps that explains why the Yankees will retire Harden’s number. 

The fellow who should have received the most attention during the ABC/ESPN telecast of the game was the Sixers’ team doctor for performing an overnight miracle full of Harden’s chronically troublesome hamstring, the one that prevented him from playing for the Nets. 

It’s worth noting that Harden forced his trade from the Rockets to the Nets after he’d made it clear he no longer wished to play for Houston. 

Or perhaps Harden last week boarded that fabled miracle flight to Palm Beach International, the one in which old folks are escorted to the gate in wheelchairs then dash off the plane when it arrives. 

MLB fans strike out with Rob

There is so much Bud Selig in Rob Manfred you could retch. 

When MLB installed interleague play, Selig claimed it was “a gift to our fans.” Baloney. It was a gift to team owners who immediately jacked up the costs for tickets to those games. 

Even when Barry Bonds was identified as a PED slugger, Selig allowed team owners to jack the prices to games when the Giants, with Bonds, came to town. And when new Yankee Stadium opened, his claim to have personally found all tickets affordable remains a conspicuously sustaining crock. 

Now Manfred asks us to believe that he was fulfilling the wishes of “our fans” by lobbying the MLBPA to further diminish both the regular season and postseason by making as many as 14 teams eligible for the playoffs. Yeah, like Selig, he’s a populist. 

Not that baseball fans lately are easy to find, but have you heard even two clamoring for more rounds of playoffs? 

More playoff layers will benefit only team owners, as per ticket and TV revenues. 

Meanwhile, MLB is making further moves to sell exclusive rights to games to additional-pay streaming services, making baseball less accessible to its devoted but thoroughly abused and ignored fans/customers/suckers. 

News of an open-ended delay in the start of the season has allowed remaining MLB fans to enjoy a well-earned sense of schadenfreude, a German word meaning taking pleasure in others’ misery. 

Chris Kirk is a late-blooming PGA Tour comer, perhaps late to bloom as he’s a recovering alcoholic. Every time Kirk appears on TV, his alcoholism is noted. NBC’s Dan Hicks did so last weekend as Kirk challenged for the lead. 

Funny, Tiger Woods’ drug rehab stay — after he was found in his car passed out on several opioids — has been totally ignored by Hicks as well as most U.S. TV golf voices. Kind of ruins the angle that he’s the greatest guy on earth. 

Reader Steve Arendash reasons that the Knicks’ game-plans start and end with which uniform they’ll wear.