I’m a self-tortured soul. Since those two Boeing Starliner astronauts have had their return delayed, I’ve pictured their baggage going ’round and ’round for weeks on a luggage carousel at Newark Airport.
Yes, I’ve become a grumpy old man. But what made me grumpy at 32 makes me grumpy at 72. There’s just now a lot more stuff to make me grumpy.
I could hop on the Happy Fertilizer Truck with the rest of the obedient and compliant, ignoring indisputable truths. Multi-millionaires can’t bother to run to first; successful big-price-tag college sports are now predicated on buying illiterate young men at auction; sports promote sucker gambling before, after and during games; and the lowest acts — a Draymond Green, Megan Rapinoe and Snoop Dogg — are the very special guests. But I used to be sent to my room for lying.
You want bad-is-good pandering? Fool held out the ball before crossing the goal line then performed a how-great-I-art touchdown dance with his team down 24, so play blind and stupid? Sorry, I wouldn’t do that to either of us.
Having been assigned to cover broadcast sports in 1982, I have never experienced a time more bereft of dignity, credibility, honesty, decency and common sense than today, with tomorrow’s promise to grow worse.
SUNDAY EXHIBIT A: The simple lifelong matter of watching, let alone enjoying, a Yankees telecast as a diminished sport with diminished TV audiences — an all-time low for last season’s World Series, for crying out loud! — has gone neglected and untreated.
Arrogant greed has unilaterally forced 20 percent of Yankees games to disappear behind paywalls as good seats remain empty at obscenely priced Yankee Stadium, and subject to even independent media silence.
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And it’s not just a matter of unquenchable avarice, but of quality. Yankees telecasts have, far more often than not, become a matter of abandoned standards and repetitive bad decisions by those annually incapable of making good ones.
Sunday’s Yankees-Rockies on YES wasn’t an inning old when Juan Soto lined a foul down the third-base line. Michael Kay described it as just that. Paul O’Neill might’ve allowed the view and Kay’s description to stand on their own but had the need to add, “Soto hit it hard but was not able to keep it fair.”
We already knew and saw that. OK, not much, nothing to launch you from your La-Z-Boy, yet the harbinger of what would have to be endured over 2:55.
In the bottom of the fifth, Giancarlo Stanton’s bat snapped at the handle, the fat part connecting with the neck of home plate ump Nick Mahrley, who was so stunned he tried to follow the play before falling to his knees in distress.
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During the first replay, Kay and O’Neill captured it well with gasping “Wows!” and “Oohs!”
The rest was well and fully covered by YES’ cameras.
But as Mahrley was being treated until he was removed by a cart, Kay “enhanced” the scene with a collection of mawkish, banal and insulting words — his version of NFL announcers’ solemn, “This puts everything into perspective” spiel:
“You know, you see the concern on the faces of the players, and obviously there’s sometimes arguments between players and umpires, but there aren’t too many people on that field who aren’t in that fraternity, and there’s a certain feeling that they all feel toward each other.
“They travel the same way, they’re on the road a lot, they’re away from their families a lot, so nobody wants to see somebody hurt.”
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Thus, Kay’s YES audience — and the players, coaches and managers — were populated by those who enjoyed watching an umpire struck in the neck by a broken bat? So many that Kay was moved to preach that it was no laughing matter? Without Kay’s help, who knew?
As Mahrley, now out with a concussion, was wheeled off, more from Kay: “And everyone will have Nick Mahrley on their mind and hope that everything is as good as it can be.”
Thank goodness, too, that Kay’s pancake slather sermon straightened out all those viewers who were overjoyed to see Mahrley go down and stay down.
SUNDAY, EXHIBIT B: Then, with the Little League World Series final on ABC/ESPN, the chosen sounds and scenes grew worse, as ESPN continued to reduce sports to a carcass that would starve vultures.
The telecast opened with ESPN’s hosts lining up the U.S. team to demonstrate their immodest, choreographed showboat dance — with one awkward and borderline obese 12-year-old serving as front man. Though this kid would soon ground into a bases-loaded double play then strikeout with men on, ESPN selected him as its Star of the Game — before it began.
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Why it would make a predetermined fool of the kid and present game as another opportunity to emulate the me-first self-destruction of our national pastime as exploited by self-smitten, fundamentals-bereft big leaguers is just another good question to which there is no good answer.
Play-by-play man Karl Ravech, with no sense or feel of a game being played by children, called the game as if it were Game 7 of MLB’s World Series. Of course he did.
The LLWS under ESPN has become warped, starting years ago when a despondent pitcher, knocked out of the game early, was shown sobbing in the corner of his team’s dugout — a clip that was mirthfully later shown on “SportsCenter” to ensure the kid’s further humiliation.
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Sunday, ESPN even included clips from the LLWS Home Run Derby.
And throughout the game, gambling odds scrolled — WNBA, preseason NFL and MLB betting lines. ESPN couldn’t have suspended the appearance of sports gambling info for even two hours? “Hey, Dad, what does it mean by Cards, plus-3, against the Broncos?”
But in keeping with ESPN’s twisted habit of emphasizing acts of self-aggrandizement, no matter the score, during team contests, ESPN remains in need of psychological treatment, perhaps starting with child psychiatrists.
Tuesday, two days after the LLWS, I received an email from a trusted reader and friend of the head of an Upstate umpires association:
“He had to refund the pre-pays for 125 out of 600 games this year because of the umpire shortage, as umps have become disgusted by the misbehavior [of players, coaches and spectators]. So many trained umps have quit that he has had to resort to playing on two different days in order to have enough umps to accommodate each game.”
And Rob Manfred claims — and TV increasingly demonstrates — that the best way to attract kids — future parents — is to show big leaguers flipping their bats, pounding their chests, posing at home plate and acting like boastful creeps.
And kids, as long as you run to first base and don’t practice touchdown dances, you’re more than welcome to play on my lawn.
