It’s Saturday, let’s not play a ballgame

UNCLE Rob Manfred’s claim to embrace kids as MLB’s top priority was on full display, last Saturday, as only one afternoon game was scheduled, and that was for Giants-Athletics, a 4:05 ET start for Fox.

Craig Carton’s remorse via that HBO documentary seems a matter of feeling sorry for himself as much as his family. He also came across as what he was pre-arrest: defiant, belligerent and narcissistic — an uncured ham.

Think Pete Alonso regrets all his LFGM!, I’m-the-man! second-season preseason bravado?

Reader Nathan Mayberg has a good question: When did “He’d like to have that pass back” become legitimate, in-game quarterback analysis?

Here’s hoping TBS doesn’t rush Curtis Granderson onto center stage before he’s ready. No one easier to root for than Granderson, a mensch. And thousands of kids have his autograph to prove it.

One of Vince McMahon’s most popular wrestlers, Road Warrior Animal (Joseph Laurinaitis), died this week at 60. That’s a long life by pro wrestling standards. His Road Warrior/Legion of Doom partner, Hawk (Michael Hegstrand) died of a heart attack in 2003 at 46. Not that WWE yahoo Peter Rosenberg of “The Michael Kay Show” cares.

Reader Steve Arendash: “While I’m watching the NFL on CBS, I’m told by CBS that I’m ‘watching the NFL on CBS.’ Next they’ll tell me that the postgame show follows the game.”

Alex Rodriguez’s “Baseball Has Never Been More Fun To Watch” Games of the Week:

On Sept. 20, Howie Rose tweeted, “Last night’s [Mets] game started at 7:07. It wasn’t until 7:32 that the first ball was put into play, a two-run single by Robinson Cano. 25 minutes in – and Cano was the 8th batter. 4 BBs, 3K’s, plus a pickoff.

“Maybe I’m missing something, but is this what we really want? Hard to imagine it is.”

Same with this: The Cardinals beat the Pirates 7-2 last Friday in the second game of a doubleheader. There were 21 strikeouts — in a 6 ½-inning game.

And with this: That same night, in 8 ½ innings, the Brewers used seven pitchers to beat the Royals, 9-5. And all six, by new, feckless rule, pitched to at least three batters.

Doug Adler, the longtime ESPN tennis analyst fired in 2017 as a racist after a New York Times freelancer and frightened ESPN execs determined that he had, out of the blue, called Venus Williams a “gorilla” — he was admiring her net-poaching “guerilla tactics” — returns to the air Sunday on Tennis Channel’s coverage of the French Open.

Adler, who had also been drummed out of French Open coverage after nine years following the preposterous accusation — and then suffered a stress-related heart attack — last worked the French in 2016.