FOLLOW THE BIG MOOLAH
MLB is only playing so owners can collect TV cash
It’s the October pot of TV gold that motivates the Lords of Larceny, and their arrogant commissioner, to put financial interests ahead of player safety. If MLB’s TV bagmen, aka Fox, Turner Sports, ESPN, were not delivering billions of dollars for rights to air playoff games and the World Series, it would have been easy to do the right thing and shut baseball down this season.
It would have been easy to protect players who now, if the joke-of-a-sixty-game-season ever starts, will be performing in dangerous conditions, on and off the field, with coronavirus running rampant and no end in sight for the pandemic.
But there are billions of TV dollars available. The money is more important to the owners and MLB than keeping a player off a ventilator.
Without the October cash windfall, there is no motivating force for the owners and commissioner Rob Manfred. With no ticket revenue, and local TV/ radio rights fees being severely slashed, the postseason TV money appears to be worth the risk of death itself.
Manfred showed he is singularly motivated by large green when he once referred to the symbol of baseball greatness, the World Series Trophy, as a “piece of metal.” And to keep overall costs way down this season, most owners don’t even want to get to the Fall Classic. They would rather just glom their share of the TV pie and watch the World Series on television.
This is reality. Don’t expect to hear much about it if the season does ever start. Whimsical columnists are already busy celebrating the return of the game and its positive influence on Their America. They will have no time to emphasize the multiple dangers of playing in the middle of a killer virus outbreak and who is responsible for putting players at risk.
Inside the Valley of the Stupid, Gasbags are already busy feeding the machine with important stuff — like which team’s pitching staff is better equipped to navigate a 60-game season.
If the season does start, look for the voices to ignore why the games are really being played. They will be too busy hyping the virtues of a 60-game season being an “every game counts” scenario. Got to juice those ratings.
Will the play-by-play mouths and analysts even extensively report on the next player to go on the IL with coronavirus?
And who is really responsible for him being there?
TOO MUCH TALK
There has been some consternation from TV outlets over players not agreeing to wear a mic this season (if there is one).
It’s not a big deal. With networks using their usual field microphones and no noisy fans in either Yankee Stadium or Citi Field, sounds of players spontaneous yakking will still be picked up live.
If team voices are allowed to broadcast on-site from their regular booth, it will be interesting to see if the radio broadcast seeps into the TV play-by-play. Think about it. John (Pa Pinstripe) Sterling and YES’ Michael Kay being heard simultaneously.
What a treat. One we’re sure the players will be thrilled about if their able to hear the voices too.
STILL THE JETS
Thanks, Jamal.
The Jets Mr. Adams, tweeting and talking about his desire to 1) Get a new deal from the Jets or 2) Get traded, has blessed us all with some legitimate sports news, a respite from lists like “Jets to watch this season.”
Instead of creating the next gimmick-game to kill time, VOS Gasbags can use time to talk about Adams and mostly trash him. On the other side of the equation is ESPN-98.7 bloviator Richard W. DiPietro Jr. He makes a good point: All the fans bashing Adams are the same ones who call in to trash how the Jets organization operates.
Can you have it both ways. Of course, you can. It’s known as being a hypocrite.
THE DOLAN QUESTION
Nothing spreads more false hope than a Knicks regime change.
It was no different this time around when new prez Leon Rose threw a socially distanced coming out party Wednesday with a sole guest interrogator, Knicks in-house mouth Mike Breen. This came the same day Rose officially hired William Wesley, aka World Wide Wes, as an executive vice president.
This all was followed by plenty of media blah, blah, blah. Boss scribes, left holding their pens while Breen got all the access, were pushing how Rose & Co. are going to work behind the scenes to build a complete team and select a most righteous coach.
One Gasbag, ESPN-98.7’s Alan Hahn, who is also a Knicks analyst on MSG, even said Rose does not seek the limelight. What does that mean? That he’s no Steve Stoute? Breen asked good questions, but, because he values his MSG gig, neglected to ask the most important one: Leon, I’ve seen a lot of executives come to the Knicks with great plans and high hopes. But they all were “victims” of, and couldn’t handle one man, the owner, Jim Dolan . No one has stopped him from meddling. How do you do it?
Breen wasn’t the only mouth to neglect the Dolan factor. In a very passionate ESPN soliloquy, Stephen A. Smith, went on and on and on about how “well connected” Rose and Triple W are. Does being “well connected” mean the two execs can handle Dolan?
SAS might want to answer that question when he can fit it into his busy schedule.
AROUND THE DIAL
As he gets his life in order, Craig Carton, who was released from prison Tuesday after serving one year of a 3 ½ year sentence, will have plenty of time to let the Free World know what kind of a guy he is. One vehicle that will shed light on this subject is an HBO documentary on Carton that, according to an industry source, is still in the works and “on track.” Like other productions, shooting of the doc was hampered by the coronavirus pandemic. As far as speculation that he is headed back to WFAN, where he once teamed in the morning with Norman Julius Esiason, radio sources said Carton will have other options in a market desperately looking for broadcasters who are proven ratings generators. … It wasn’t exactly a Mensa meeting, but WFAN’s Thursday night, one-hour reunion of SNY’s Marc Malusis and Sal Licata (they worked 10 years there together before coronavirus shut things down), was a fast-paced, humorous session — especially when they waxed poetic about their fondness for Entenmann’s bakery products. This was totally high brow stuff. Next stop: The Food Network?