phil.mushnick@nypost.com A REALLY BAD DAY
Everything goes bonkers on Thursdays
THURSDAY used to be something of an off day. They don’t even write songs about Thursday. “Good-bye Ruby Thursday?” “Thursday will never be the same?” “Thursday, Thursday, can’t trust that day?”
This past Thursday was nuts, starting on the Golf Channel with the Ryder Cup’s ridiculously bloated opening ceremonies, excessive pomp for the circumstance, mimicking a coronation.
Was this an event once intended to be a friendly competition between cross-Atlantic golfers, or the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles?
It was a sign of the times: Anything worth doing is now worth over-doing.
(By the way, despite NBC/Golf Channel’s and other media’s patriotic indignation and outrage, some thought what Danny Willet’s brother wrote about American golf galleries — “irritants stuffed on cookie dough” — was funny, not to be taken seriously.)
Next, there was the NFLN/CBS game, Dolphins at Bengals. In this one, Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, with video support, didn’t pander to fools, as had become their unfortunate, disappointing habit. In fact, they twice identified the biggest play within a dreadful game: an unnecessary roughness call.
In the third quarter, the Dolphins, down 19-7, forced a punt from their own 18. Miami would get the ball on its own 40.
But this is the neo-classical NFL. Kevin Huber, who already has punted and landed on both feet, was shoved to the ground by Miami defensive end Terrence Fede. The Bengals were gifted 15 yards, the ball back and, soon, a field goal.
Nantz called the foul both “inexplicable” and the game’s pivotal moment. Correct! But few NFL games now go unaffected by such senselessness.
Thursday’s kicker was RedsCardinals, seen on MLB Network. It doesn’t matter what went down, nor if it would cost the Mets or Giants a playoff spot. What matters is that those who continue to chant that they like replay rules “because it gets it right,” continue to suffer selective blindness.
At 3-3, bottom of the ninth, two out, Matt Carpenter on first, Yadier Molina hit a shot to left that hopped over the wall for a ground-rule double. Carpenter would have to stop at third.
But the ball banged off a secondary wall and back on to the field.
So with the ball only seeming — to some — to be in play, Carpenter kept running, “safely” sliding home. The Cards and umpires took off, game over.
The Reds, confused, lingered on the field and in the dugout. What was going on here? Where’s the replay rule? Apparently, Reds manager Bryan Price didn’t challenge quickly enough.
In other words, when the replay rule was really needed and could fulfill its original but rarely applied intent — to correct egregiously in- correct calls — it went unused.
Soon, Harold Reynolds, from MLBN’s studio, was fabulously flabbergasted. He kept repeating the game — an important one — isn’t over, couldn’t be over; the Cards should be called back on the field; this is crazy. “The Reds can’t leave town! Get this done, now!”
Nope. A ground-rule double to left scored the winning run from first to alter a playoff race. That’s the beauty of replay rules — it gets it right.
Except on Thursdays.