Thursday used to be something of an off day. They don’t even write songs about Thursday. “Good-bye Ruby Thursday?” “Thursday will never be the same?” “Thursday, Thu🥃rsday, can’t trust that🐟 day?”
This past Thursday was nuts, starting on the Golf Channel with the Ryder Cup’s ridiculously ❀bloated opening ceremonies, excessive pomp for the circumstance, mimicking a coronation.
Was this an event once intended to be a friendly competition between cross-Atlantic golfers, or the ratification of ಌthe Treaty of Versailles?
It was a sign of the times: Anything worth doing is now worth ovꦅer-doing.
(By the way, despite NBC/Golf Channel’s and other media’s patri🐓otic indignation and outrage, some thought what 🧸Danny Willet’s brother wrote about American golf galleries — “irritants stuffed on cookie dough” — was funny, not to be taken seriously.)
Next, there was the NFLN/CBS game, Dolphins at Bengals. In thi☂s one, Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, with video support, didn’t pander to fools, asღ had become their unfortunate, disappointing habit. In fact, they twice identified the biggest play within a dreadful game: an unnecessary roughness call.
In the th💦ird quarte🌞r, the Dolphins, down 19-7, forced a punt from their own 18. Miami would get the ball on its own 40.
But this is the neo-classical NFL. Kevin Huber, who already has punted and landed on both feet, was shoved to the ground by Miamiꦉ defensive end Terrence Fede. The Bengals were gifted 15 yards, the ball back and, soon, a field goal.
Nan✃tz called the foul both “inexplicable” and the game’s pivotal moment. Correct! But few NFL games now go unaffected by such sens🀅elessness.
Thursday’s kicker was Reds-Cardinals, seen on MLB Network. It doesn’t matter what went down, nor if it would cost the Mets or Giants a playoff spot. What matters is that those who continue to chant that they like replay rules “because it gets it riဣght,” continue to suffer selective blindness.
At 3-3, bottom of the ninth, two out, Matt Carpenter on first, Yad🔯ier Molina hit a shot to left that hopped over the wall for a ground-rule double. Carpe꧋nter would have to stop at third.
Bu🐟t the ball banged off a s෴econdary wall and back on to the field.
So with the bal♈l only seeming — to some — to be in play, C🥃arpenter kept running, “safely” sliding home. The Cards and umpires took off, game over.
The Reds, confused, lingered on the field and in the dugout. What was going on here? Where’s the replay rule? Appa💝rently, Reds manager Bryan Price didn’t challenge quickly enough.
In other words, when the 🦂replay rule was really needed and could fulfill it🔴s original but rarely applied intent — to correct egregiously incorrect calls — it went unused.
Soon, Harold Reynolds, from MLBN’s studio, was fabulously fla༺bbergasted. He kept repeating the game — an important one — isn’t over, couldn’t be over; the Cards should be called back on the field; this is crazy. “The Reds can’t lea🦄ve town! Get this done, now!”
Nope. A ground-ruleꦦ double to left scored the winning run from first to alter a p💯layoff race. That’s the beauty of replay rules — it gets it right.
Except on Thursdays.
As much media loves Arnie, Vin, they promote opposite
We lost Arno𒉰ld Palmer last Sunday, at 87. Vin Scully, 88, wraps it up Sunday in San Francisco.
The eulogies for Palmer and the salute🔯s t🍸o Scully could be interchangeable: men of class, true professionalism, cherished sportsmen, gentlemen, unconditionally modest and aware that they’re no bigger than their games they leave.
The vote was unanimous.
So then, why do we not celebrate and reward those who ♎now behave as Pa✨lmer and Scully did?
Why do media, especially TV and advertisers, choose the preeners, garbage-taꦜlkers, braggarts, bat-flippers, home plate-posers, TD dancers, muscle-flexers and chest-beaters — the conspicuously immodest — as the VIPs of sports?
How many who now behave as Palmer did will be left to eulogize as genuine, cherished sportsmen when we’ve determined that such folks are not worth TV’s attention and fꦆavor; they don’t meet modern requirements?
Why are those who behave like Palmer — or might otherwise be encouraged or inspired to behave like him — rejected as commercially unacceptable, as lacking the “edgi💎ness” and “attitude” to promote sport and prod𝐆uct?
Same with Scully. For all the TV a🍎nd radio voices who have expressed their enormous 🌳regard for Scully’s calm, clear and literate style, why have so few tried to be anything like him?
Whඣy are the hollerers, hype-headed and rehearsed cꦿheap-trick artists now the preferred hires?
A Vin Scully today wouldn’t mꦬake it 𒅌past the first audition. He was that good.
ESPN never tires of emphasizing the absurd as significa🗹nt.
Wednesday, Orioles’ pinch-hitter Hyun Soo Kim hit a ninth♑-inning homer to give the Orioles a 3-2 lead in Toronto. “Spo🐬rtsCenter” reported it was Kim’s “first home run in the eighth inning or later.”
෴For crying out loud, Kim’s a rookie! He previously has hiꦐt just five homers!
But what moderately intelligent sports fa🦩ns would reject as stupid, ESPN presents to the nation’s sports fans as insight, knowledge, wisdom.
Fun use of fuzzy math
Reader Ray Starman: “The next time someone asks me to give them a ballpark figure, I’ll ask if they mean Yankee Stadium, or Fenway Park. Even generalities have to♒ be qualified.”
Though the Red Sox this season clearly sold out their home games, t🅠he Yankees exaggerated their attendance, often by at least 10,000 per game. (Fenw♕ay seats 38,000, new Yankee Stadium, 54,000.)
If we’re to view the average the Yanks’ home attend🎃ance claims as inflated by, say, a conservative 8,000 pꦗer over 81 games, that’s a total exaggeration of 648,000 people — the population of Boston.
English as sports’ second language: How can someone make “a tackle in space” when there wasn’t enough spa🐈ce to prevent the tackle?
Friday during the Golf Channel’s Ryder Cup coverage, PGA of America CEO Pete Bevacqua told Mike Tirico that he and his staff want to give the players and captain💜s “emotional ownership of this event.” Nurse! Hurry!
Monday’s presidential debate was riv♔eting. Nearly as good as those𝓀 now-gone Stephen A. Smith-Skip Bayless duels on who will win that night’s Astros-Reds on ESPN.
Say, whatever happened to Bayless? I keep reading that FO✨X Sports 1 hired him at $4 million per plus a $4 million signing bonu💖s. No way! Ridiculous. Impossible. But apparently true.