LIE ... LIE AGAIN
CORPORATE CEOs and politicians now vow to become “more transparent.” It’s one of these new, silly-slick expressions, like “robbery gone bad.” “More transparent” sounds great — until you realize it means, at best, “less dishonest.”
Beyond that, the see-through are no less likely to conceal a lie than reveal a truth.
Sunday, during Fox’s World Cup telecast of Croatia versus Denmark, play-by-play man Mark Followill couldn’t have made it more clear: Of the next day’s Brazil-Mexico match, he dutifully said, “Nine Eastern, six a.m. Pacific, is the start time.” That was followed by a graphic: “BrazilMexico, 9 a.m. ET, 6 a.m. PT.”
The game began as scheduled — at 10 a.m., ET. Thus, as it has throughout Cup play, Fox tried to sucker viewers with a one-hour lie.
That afternoon, as Tiger Woods and unimportant, unseen others chased runaway Quicken Loans National winner Francesco Molinari, CBS’s golf crew reported the heat and humidity were conspiring to defeat Woods. No one else, just Woods, as TV continues the transparent sell of Woods to the exclusion of both other golfers and golf.
In fact, as if we’re too stupid to see through the stupid Tiger tricks, he was the only one of several tied at nine back to make the first page of CBS’s leaderboard.
That night, after Brett Gardner beat out an infield hit against the Red Sox, ESPN analyst Jessica Mendoza, rather than allow selfevident TV to speak for itself, again proved that saying something — anything — has become transparently preferable to saying nothing on sports telecasts.
Gardner, she said, beat it out by “using his feet to get down the line.” As if he had options, a bicycle, bus or Uber.
The next day, early in the BrazilMexico game, Fox play-by-play man John Strong noted that Brazil’s superstar, Neymar, even by soccer’s overly dramatic standards, has a history of transparency — laying it on extra thick to entice refs into calling fouls and issuing yellow and red cards to opponents.
Strong understated it. Late in regulation, Neymar was spiked in the right ankle. He then rolled around in protracted, writhing, screaming agony. Nurse! Hearse! Clearly, the only way to humanely treat this critically wounded young man was to perform an immediate amputation of his right foot.
But Neymar courageously played on! And 25 minutes later he stood firmly on his gangrenous right foot while booting the ball toward the stands in winning jubilation.
That night on YES, Paul O’Neill came as close to total transparency about the cheesy, cheap-thrill dimensions of new Yankee Stadium as any Yankees announcer can be without losing his or her job.
After the Braves’ Johan Camargo hit one of those half-swing, pop-fly home runs to right, O’Neill, a lefthanded batter, seemed wistful that he didn’t play in this Yankee Stadium:
“It’s nothing more than just dropping the barrel of the bat. Short right field porch. … Just drop the head of the bat, and it’s gone.”
During that same telecast, Michael Kay, who recently had mocked the very idea that AL pitchers must waste at-bats or risk injury running toward bases in games at NL parks, did what he didn’t have to do: He stuck a pin in his own balloon by telling a transparent truth. Red Sox pitcher Rick Porcello not only just hit a threerun double against the Nationals, but did so against unhittable Max Scherzer.
The Braves won Monday’s game over the Yankees in the 11th on a Ronald Acuna Jr. home run. Only 20, Acuna enacted a sad, transparent truth about new-age, top-level, monster-salaries baseball.
After lofting an opposite-field pop to right and despite the game circumstances, Acuna just stood near home, watching. The ball cleared Aaron Judge’s glove and the wall by no more than 3 inches. Acuna’s batter’s box “exit velocity”? It apparently didn’t register.
Tuesday, Mickey Callaway delivered word that Yoenis Cespedes was running “at about 75 percent,” which was stunning news as Cespedes’s career average, on offense and defense, is, transparently, about 50 percent. But what do you expect for only $110 million?
The next afternoon, July 4, Yankee Stadium was transparently short of customers, or “guests” as the Yankees call them, in the hideously overpriced good, better and best seats. Throughout the holiday game, it was impossible not to see pockets of empty seats behind the plate and up both lines, several rows deep.
In the sixth, Yankees up, 5-2, and the Braves with a runner on second, YES presented a shot clearly showing many empty seats behind the Braves’ dugout. Regardless, Kay next said, “A crowd of 46,658, announced here in the Stadium. That is a sellout, the 15th sellout of the season.”
It was also an insult to those who knew better, because for more than three hours and 8 ½ innings, they could see better. The ignored truth was more transparent than trying to be “more transparent.”