FAIR WARNING
WE finally caught a break, this weekend. FOX let us know from the top, Friday night, to dig in for Yanks-Astros because we’re going to be treated like idiots.
John Smoltz’s Game 1 “Lincoln [autos] Keys To The Game” seemed designed to promote public transportation.
For the Yanks, as seen in a graphic, it was, “Continue To Play Fearless [sic],” which Smoltz explained as trying to continue to win — a good idea. The Astros’ “Key” was “Hitters Don’t Expand the Zone,” which meant don’t swing at bad pitches, another good idea.
Sadly but without surprise, Smoltz has become another unguided say-anything burden on the senses. In the fourth, he confirmed the rumor that, “The Yankees like to elevate the ball beyond the outfield fences, for home runs.”
In the fifth, that big play at the plate — Greg Bird thrown out — included conspicuous evidence that as Bird slid, on-deck batter Gary Sanchez stood off to the side, just watching. He was in no position to gesture if Bird should slide, let alone to which side of the plate.
And while that went ignored — or at least unspoken — more silence when Sanchez led off the sixth, striking out swinging. The ball kicked away. But instead of running toward first, forcing a throw, Sanchez walked to the dugout. The Lincoln Keys To The Game did not include, “Big game; play fundamentally smart, winning baseball.”
When Masahiro Tanaka was pulled after six despite allowing only four hits, Joe Buck and Smoltz praised Tanaka for superb pitching. Okay, but then why, especially with the DH, was he pulled so early? Smoltz, who pitched a complete game in the 1997 playoffs, didn’t say.
Smoltz’s Saturday Game 2 “Keys” provided an early warning, as well. For the Yanks, it was “early traffic,” which Smoltz explained as the Yankees trying to get their leadoff batters on. Nurse! Hearse!
And as FOX, Buck and Smoltz obsessed over whether Opie Taylor out there in right, interfered with Carlos Correa’s HR that made it 1-0, the scene would have and should have been avoided had the 6-foot-7 Aaron Judge made a play on the ball.
As for TBS’s NLCS Game 1, trustworthy Ron Darling seemed to treat the national audience dishonestly, to have us believe what he said, not what we saw.
L.A.’s Yasiel Puig is a notorious me-first showboater who has even been sent to the minors to try to instill the importance of things such as running to first when he thinks — often erroneously — he has hit a home run. Friday, manager Dave Roberts said Puig “loves the red light,” which translated to: He plays as much for TV cameras as he does the Dodgers. Darling knows this. Yet, with the Dodgers down 2-0, runners on first and second, Puig stood at home raising his arms in incurably premature home run self-glory — until the ball banged off the lower half of the wall in leftcenter. After getting a late start, Puig made second; his three-run homer became a one-run double.
But Darling chose to explain his common, obvious new-age stupidity with the preposterous: Puig was in self-aggrandizement mode because he knew “He hit it hard enough to get the gap.” Instead of stating that Puig, yet again, went into his premature HR pose, Darling praised him for performing his “gap” pose. And it was insulting.
But, from the start of the League Championships, Friday, we were warned.