#MLB and the media delivering distractions and virtual silliness
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“#MLB and the media delivering distractions and virtual silliness”
Stop! We get it! We’ve gotten it since March. Everything has changed. So stop treating us as idiots. But that’s too much to ask.
Fox’s MLB telecasts will include stands filled with “virtual fans.”
As Fox sports exec Brad Zager told colleague Andrew Marchand, “It is not like we are trying to make people feel like there is a crowd there. We are trying to make them feel that in the normal pitch-by-pitch, shot-by-shot baseball it is what they are used to. We aren’t trying to fool anyone.”
OK, then why bother? Why add another artificial distraction? Why not throw in a couple of jugglers? Better yet, rent some Super Bowl pole dancing video from Roger Goodell!
We know there are no fans there! We don’t need cardboard cutouts, out-of-sync piped-in artificial crowd noise — though a laugh track might work — and split-screen remotes to show announcers talking Zoom from elsewhere. We’ve been watching TV in that last format the past 18 weeks.
Now, more than ever, we don’t want to watch a game only to be distracted by additives or excesses. We’re tired of ESPN-like anything-but-the-game “coverage.” Even if this is the first MLB season played exclusively for TV and gambling money, it still would be better watched as a baseball game and not a television show.
Predictably, the pandemic preseason games that included the Mets and Yankees begged ridicule, especially as it related to Yankees home games appearing as “normal” given no one was seated in the best seats, a shameless unremedied consistency since the new Stadium opened in 2009.
Readers even borrowed from Yankees management’s preposterous claim that the empty seats belong to those watching the game on big-screen TVs in the luxury dining room. Yes, they spent tens of thousands of dollars on the best tickets, every year, then travel to the Stadium to watch the games on TV!
But the Yanks seem proud of their sustained greed, even when their fans see their empty-by-health decree stadium as a standard visual. What a thing for a world famous franchise to now be immediately recognized!
But 11 years in and the Yankees clearly don’t care to solve this. And the baseball broadcasters and sports media pretend we can’t see what we can’t miss.
The Mets presented ridicule on a cardboard platter with those personalized $86 cardboard cutouts. Naturally, readers asked if the buyers are charged game-by-game tack-on “ticket convenience fees.”
Questions included Patrick Kennedy’s: “When it rains, will the cardboard cut ups assemble beneath shelter until things clear up?” No, they will be issued cardboard umbrellas.
Another asks if the $5 Subway foot-longs advertised at Citi Field will still cost $14 but taste like cardboard?
This fan-less season presents a great opportunity for TV to show the game, the whole game and nothing but the game. There’s nothing else to show!
But though we might see it that way, the chances of it being seen that way remain zero.
More boring baseball is on the way
Didn’t see anything in preseason games to indicate interest in curing what last year so badly afflicted MLB. Looks as if this season again will be a home run-or-strikeout slog. Even with this new extra-innings rule of starting with a runner on second, I didn’t see anyone working on bunting or shortening up to make contact on 0-2 and 1-2 pitches.
In fact, MLB Network has resumed its assault on modesty and sportsmanship with its latest instructional for kids on how to flip your bat then pose long before you know you’ve hit a home run. Winding up on first instead of third is fun!
It’s unfathomable that adults working for MLB are trying to exploit baseball — a team game — to turn kids into conceited creeps. Next week: How to jog into double plays.
Gee, the Washington Football Team. That should reduce some of the confusion.
TV still treats golf audiences as fools with its transparent Tiger Woods treatment. Saturday, after three rounds, CBS listed Woods in first place — among those 3-over and 12 back!
My advice for those NFL’s Washington team employees accused of sexual misconduct is to hire Louis Farrakhan. He’s very influential and, to applause, declared, “When a Sister says, ‘No,’ she really means ‘Yes!’ ” He certainly sounds supportive of sexual assault. Of course, his hate-filled ignorance is ignored by his NFL, NBA, BLM and female political supporters.
Follow the TV money: First the Mets eliminated Saturday afternoon games, now no scheduled games on local over-the-air-TV, cable only, no Ch. 11.
LeBron James will open the NBA season with the singing of the Red Chinese national anthem. Translated, it begins, “One nation, under Nike …”
Reader Jack Shoemaker on the NCAA’s decision that major college football teams can claim two automatic victories over canceled games against paid-to-lose teams: “Is the reverse true? Can Bowling Green now claim it lost nail-biters to an Alabama and a Clemson?” Sure! Who can forget!
Morning duo lay ‘Boom’ on a caller for no reason
WFAN’s Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti have met every modern requisite of a morning radio drive team. They’re smug, crude, cruel and rude.
Monday, a man who sounded elderly and slightly impaired, called to discuss the close of Sunday’s PGA tournament. He reminded all that had winner Jon Rahm signed for the wrong score, he’d have been disqualified. He smartly noted such rulings have been made off tips from TV viewers.
The man got off to a struggling start as, with many callers, he didn’t know if he was yet on the air. Giannotti seized that to belittle the man and never cease. Then, disallowing the man to speak, he was yanked from the air. Giannotti then declared the man “a douche.”
And how did Weekday Boomer respond to that classlessness? He laughed. Couple of champs.
If, at 8 years old, you gave the same answer as famous thoroughbred trainer Bob Baffert on NBC on Saturday, you may have been sent to your room.
Before and after Baffert’s heavy favorite, Authentic, won the Haskell Stakes at Monmouth, NBC interrupted its 90-minute worship service of Baffert to ask about a 15-day suspension he’d just been issued for two horses that had won their races in Arkansas for a total of $336,600, but were then drug-tested to be way over the limit on the pain-killer lidocaine.
Baffert explained that his assistant, Jimmy Barnes, was wearing a lidocaine patch for a bad back, and somehow the lidocaine must have made its way, in abundance, into the systems of the two horses. Yet, such patches for the back are worn on the back.
He kept a straight face.
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