Lots of notes to share. And with recycling day approaching, we’re mindful of the pre-Revolutionary War flags — when George Washington worked for the Brits — that declared years before the Fourth of July, “Don’t shred on me!”
No refunds. Blackout restrictions apply. Here goes:
One of the hard-earned benefits this messed up country has removed from its citizenry is the benefit of the doubt. Even our sports world now breeds cynicism.
Consider that Draymond Green, among the most persistently mendacious, team-undermining reasons to eliminate the NBA as a civilized sport, now hosts a podcast from which he dispenses advice on how to play winning team basketball.
A recent Green lecture scolded the Knicks for acquiring Mikal Bridges from the Nets as a feckless addition.
Late this past season, Professor Green was ejected from his 21st NBA game, a must-win for his Warriors, just four minutes in. But what he thinks and says, as opposed to what he does, attracts serious media attention and contemplation.
Figures that MLB, in its relentless pursuit to destroy MLB, has focused its attention on “fixing” a sideshow gimmick within the All-Star break, having first destroyed the All-Star Game — once the only one of its kind worthy of attention.
Now that even modern strikeout-compiling sluggers increasingly can’t be bothered to participate in MLB’s version of another perfect-for-ESPN played-out song-and-dance routine, MLB’s has changed the format of its version of tired slam-dunk contests.
It has modified the “rules” of its Home Run Derby to include, well, who cares other than Chris Berman?
The only rule worth changing is to clear the outfield of those dozens of kids fighting to catch or avoid line drives attached to gushing over exit velocities. Or did Rob Manfred think it a good idea for kids to play with M-80s on the Fourth, not to mention matches?
Howie Rose’s Mets radio partner Keith Raad continues to grow on us for his useful, understated observations.
Sunday, after Brandon Nimmo homered to tie the score in the seventh, Astros pitching coach Bill Murphy headed to the mound. But when Raad noted that Murphy was walking quickly, he hinted it was unlikely that reliever Bryan Abreu would be yanked before facing his fifth batter.
Abreu remained.
Pete Alonso on Sunday made a nice diving catch after which Gary Cohen said, “Pete does an amazing job on plays where he leaves his feet. He led the league last year in that category.”
That’s now a category? Someone actually examines every game to compile how many times fielders leave their feet? LTF probabilities to follow?
Too often Keith Hernandez is, well, full of it.
A week ago Tuesday, after Harrison Bader hit a line-drive single over second against the Yankees, Hernandez said Jeff McNeil, the Mets’ runner on second, had to stop at third because he “didn’t know where the middle infielders were. That’s why he hesitated.”
But before and after the play, Ch. 11/SNY showed the middle infielders playing close to second and McNeil glazing over his shoulders to see that. That’s why he hesitated. Further, the ball was hit both hard and right at the center fielder, thus even thinking about scoring would have been folly.
During Saturday’s telecast, Hernandez praised McNeil for “always having his head in the game.”
Ryan Ruocco — Michael Kay’s noisy, annoying Yanks TV backup — doesn’t stop talking. Every batter and pitcher is attached to a bio. Whatever he says.
But Saturday, when Spencer Horwitz pinch hit for the Blue Jays, Ruocco gave us the silent treatment.
Might not a New York audience have been interested to know that Horwitz is not only Jewish, he’s a 24th-round, 717th-overall draft pick who graduated an Episcopalian high school in Maryland?
UEFA championship telecasts on Fox have been surrounded with “Visit Qatar” signage.
Yeah, while visiting Islamic terrorist haven Qatar, visit the “Women’s Rights Gift Shop” or stop by the port where scores of dead imported Fourth World workers were shipped home after dropping dead while building the desert infrastructures after Qatar’s highly suspicious selection to host the 2022 World Cup.
ESPN’s ESPY Awards — designed from their start as a self-promotional “Look who’s here!” show when it could have been created, sustained and valued as a legitimate version of the Academy Awards — continues to be aimed at the easy.
Why else would ESPN choose Harry, formerly known as Prince, to be awarded its Pat Tillman Award for above and beyond courage, other than Harry’s preeminence as a supermarket checkout line magazine cover attraction?
Courage Award? How about Doug Adler? He’s the ESPN tennis analyst who lost his career, reputation and health in 2017 to the fabrication of a starved-for-attention New York Times tennis stringer, now gone from The Times since 2022. Adler was then fired by gutless, frightened ESPN after this fool accused Adler of calling Venus Williams “a gorilla” — fired as a racist! — when he had admired her “guerilla method” of poaching the net.
But maybe Serena Williams — the ESPN-celebrated career-long rotten winner and loser chosen to host this year’s ESPYs — will admit from the stage that she and her sister, as well as ESPN’s Chris Evert and John McEnroe, allowed an innocent man to be sentenced to life.
That, too, would take courage — and a conscience — the real kind, no matter how long justice is delayed.
Fox soccer voice Derek Rae, one Scotsman in no need of an interpreter, after a Slovenian forward booted a chance toward Sandusky vs. Portugal: “High, wide and not particularly handsome.”
Brings to mind Marinho, the blond Brazilian party animal who played for the 1979 Cosmos. He’d shoot well over the crossbar from everywhere, as if auditioning for the Giants in Giants Stadium. Fellow beat writers Hank Gola and Jack Bell nicknamed Marinho “Mezzaninho.”
This past winter, an online gag, quickly exposed as an antisocial media prank, claimed that Marquette guard Tyler Kolek, just drafted by the Knicks, is an illiterate who nearly flatlined an IQ test.
Even Kolek got a kick out of it.
Yet last week, as can be seen and heard by the frauds-exposing @BackAfterThis account on X — named in honor of countless dishonest claims made by Mike “Let’s Be Honest” Francesa — Michael Kay, and ESPN NY Radio confederates Don La Greca and Peter Rosenberg discussed that fleeting, bogus rumor as if it might be true.
After repeating the fabrication, Kay said, “Terrible thing that this would be leaked. He couldn’t read!”
Yes, a terrible thing. Even if they repeated a rumor long ago dismissed as a bad joke, they repeated it on air as if it might be true.
Life’s confusing. Sunday, as Ch. 7 was airing the Pride Parade, replete with dancing drag queens, two stations over Fox-Ch. 5 was televising NHRA drag racing.
NEWS CREDIT
