Hear about the optician who backed into his lens 🍌grinder ﷽and got a little behind in his work?
In November 2016, the Mets wishfully, fancifully signed Yoenis Cespedes, represented by current general manager Brodie Van Wagenen, to a🉐 four-year, $110 million contract. It didn’t matter that Cespedes’ yawning approach to baseball had made him, at 29, expendable to thre♋e prior clubs.
Furthermore, the Mets ignored Exhibit A from just three months earlier: Freshly placed on the disabled list, Cespedes played golf. Sandy Alderson, then the Mets’⛎ GM, called that a case of “bad optics.”
That’s the thing with “bad optics.” Wh🥂at looks bad often looks bad because it is. And bad optics are often caused by an excessive sense of self-entitlement as invited by employers.
For example, would Mike Francesa remain a lying, boasting, fabricator♚ of facts and self-inflating stories had his bosses long ago demanded he cut it ou♔t?
Regardless, we’re stuck — or blessed — with our own values. Mine aren’t necessarily yours. I’d be less than honest if I approved or ignored optics th🐼at gnaw at me enough to write about. Can’t help it.
Saturday, Jim Boeheim showed up on national TV to coach a Syracuse basketball game, 2½ days after accidentally killing a man. Bad optics. His ostensible bosses at the university appꦕarently approved.
It was widely reported that Boeheim, before Saturday’s game, was devastated. I have no doubt that he was and may always be. How could 🧔🌳he not?
It also was widely reasoned that Boeheim, on Saturday, was faced with “a tou🅘gh call.”
How so? On Saturday morning it was reported Boeh🥃eim would coach that day, thus the decision was made within two days of the fatality. Too soon, fellꦑas.
By coaching — by not missing even one game after an imponderable tragedy — Boeheim and Syracuse made a bad choice. He should’ve sat this one out, thus no one co🔯uld fault him and all would understand and admire him rather than risk debate.
Optically, he appeared꧑ to have chosen less than the mostꦿ decent thing he could do.
Then there was excessively self-entitled Charles Barkley. He’s the beloved star of TNT’s NBA studio show on which everything is open for smug, bold, wise-guy discussion — except for the flagrant miscon🌊duct of Charles Barkley.
Last week, Barkley :
“America, let me tell you something: Do not commit crimes wi🔥th checks. If you’re gonna break the law, do not write a check. Get cash, man. … Do not write checks when yoꦅu commit illegal activity.”
Laughter followed. It was funny. But what many readers couldn’t miss was that the bad optics provided by Barkley again went untouched. Thus, w🤡e didn’t hear:
“America, if you’re gonna be drunk while being servic𓃲ed by a suspected prostitute, don’t do it while driving, get a room, don’t be arrested in a car.”
“America, if you’re an admitted problem gambler, don’t leave $400,000 in gambling markers in a Vegas casino until legal ac꧂tion is threatened. Not everyone is as entitled as I. Heck, I star in Capital One commercials, yet run up debt like that!”
Barkley has admitted to having lost millions to gambling, yet neither he nor the DraftKings folks —ꦰ who so clearly aim to create young sports gamblers via get-rich-quick come-ons — had the decency to exclude Barkley as the top TV salesman of an enterprise predicated on losing money to gambling.
What kind of man — let alone one who regularly dispenses life-skills lessons on🎉 national TV — sells his name and body to peddle what he knows to be poison? And why don’t his pull-no-punches TNT pals, nor anyone else from the pandering media herd, ask him?
But we’re bound to our own sense of optics and entitlements. Some folks can 🦩get away with anything, others choose to 🧸never try.
Losing sight of genuine racism
It lately has been reasoned that claims of racism have become a commodity, and the demand has surpassed the legitimat💦e supply to the trivialization of genuine racism.
Last week, Gary Dolphin, radio voice of Iowa basketball for 22 years, was suspended for the rest of the season. After a Maryland-Iowa game, he praised 6-foot-10 Maryland player Bruno💙 Fernando, who is black, for playing like “King Kong.”
Analyst Greg Hansen, noting Fernando’s rebounding — he h🎐ad 11, five of them offensive, and two blocks in a 66-65 road win — casually agreed with Dolphin’s casual assessment.
Dolphin will be reinstated for spring football, but this now is on hisဣ permanent record as well as Wikipedia.
Odd, the only public sports figure I’m aware of to have used an ape analogy to degrade a black man was 🐎Muhammad Ali, who repeatedly mocked Joe Frazier as “a gorilla.” Ali p🐻opularized trash talk and put-down insults, a legacy from which we remain afflicted.
Yet, ESPN named its ��annual Humanitarian Award f🔴or Ali.
Three weeks ago, in a negotiated settlement with ESPN, tennis analyst Doug Adler was at last cleared of the defamation and infamy that he 😼suddenly and for no reason called Venus Williams “a gorilla” when he clearly was admiring h𝕴er “guerilla” tactics.
Between Adler’s redemption and Dolphin’s suspension, a TV ad appeared for “Gorilla Glue.” The young couple seen pleased with Gorilla Glue’s performance are ꦕblack.
And while Venus Williams chose not to defend Adler, her sister, Serena Williams, 𒅌is a major investor in the company SurveyMonkey.
Dolan’s plan right on schedule
Rumors that Jim Dolan soon ꧅will sell the Knicks and Rangers are preposterous. Why would he do that just two years short of his 30-year team rebuilding plans?
C🍎raig Carton’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed to March 15.
The Oscar for the most ungracious, brattish, self-entitled, only-I🤡’m-worthy sore loser goes to … Knicks mascot Spike Lee!
Colleges continue to offer multiple “second chances,” but not to scho𝔍lars — unless they can help win ballgames.
Texas’s Kerwin Roach, despite three suspensions this season for “violations of team rules,” may return — and this season ♊— according to coach Shaka Smart. Well, R🅰oach is the Longhorns’ best player.
Capitals 6, Rangeᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚrs 5 in overtime Sunday, ran 2:39. That’s 4:29 in MLB time.
Saturday, after Tiger Woods four-putted, then three-putted the next hole, NBC’s instant-mourning mode was p🌠alpable. I was expecting the leaderboard to be draped in purple and black, the pins lowered to half-staff.
Desperate to shovel some dirt into the money pit it dug to play Big Ten football, Rutgers recently approved beerꦗ and wine sales in its Piscataway stadium.
Piscataway Mayor Brian Wahler told T🌟he (Newark) Star-Ledger last week that no one from his office had agreed to the university opening “a 52,000-seat bar꧋” in the township.