Memo to networks: Nobody is watching for the announcers
THE EPIDEMIC of insanity worsens. Now Fox plans to hire Tom Brady, no broadcasting experience, as its lead NFL analyst for 10 years at $375 million. That’s a lot of Subway sandwiches.
We’ll let reader Doug McBroom take it from there:
“Brady’s words will fall on viewers’ ears like 24 karat gold petals. He will feed the minions with his words alone. Babies will cease crying. Shakespeare will pale in comparison. All war will cease. Disease will be eradicated. The clouds will part. Angels will weep.
“What else could justify a football analyst being paid $37.5 million per year?”
➤ Perhaps the best part of the Yankees playing winning ball is that they minimize Aaron Boone’s tortured postgame explanations. Minimize, not eliminate.
Monday, after the Yanks’ 1-0 win over Texas, Boone excused DJ LeMahieu’s failure to run to first on a grounder to second. Had he run, he’d have likely been safe as the throw initially pulled the first baseman off the bag.
Boone called LeMahieu’s lapse “inconsequential.” Really? He was leading off the eighth in an 0-0 game.
➤ Ex-Jet Bart Scott, another sports radio genius, recently said that NFL teams need at least “two felons” to become good teams. He didn’t seem to be kidding.
To that pleasant end, FS1, about to add Craig Carton to its morning lineup — he’ll remain with WFAN in afternoons — has filled that need. FS1 will have two felons, Carton and Michael Vick.
➤ Is it me, or do the Mets and Yankees inspire bad baseball in opponents?
Wednesday, the Blue Jays, in a 5-3 loss, couldn’t do enough to help the Yankees.
Bo Bichette, who had doubled, was totally oblivious to what would have been a wild pitch had he run to third. Soon, Alejandro Kirk was tagged out at second because he tried to go in standing rather than sliding.
In the ninth, Aroldis Chapman appeared ripe for the picking. He’d allowed a double, then a wild pitch, then walked pinch-hitter Vinny Capra, a career 0-for-4, on five pitches.
The Jays, with two on and none out, then went into home run-swing mode. George Springer flied out on the first pitch, Bichette struck out swinging like a mad man and Vlad Guerrero Jr. ended it with an infield pop on a cut designed to hit the ball to Mahopac.
➤ Jack Sheehy, for years the co-host of Bill’s Gay Nineties — a since-shuttered, three-story restaurant, pub, Broadway and sports museum — and joy to patrons who enjoyed the warmth and charm of him and his partner, Barbara Bart Olmstead, passed away this week at 88.
Sheehy — a Cornell basketball star, Class of ’55 — was a great character presiding over a great place that guaranteed great times. And it didn’t hurt that Jack and Barbara placed Rich Jeffries ,a man of letters beyond V and O, behind the firstfloor bar.