EQUAL TIME Fox’s Wainwright getting it wrong as MLB analyst
THE preconditioned knew this would happen the day Fox announced it had signed Adam Wainwright to become an ingame analyst. Throughout his career as a Cardinals pitcher, Wainwright was never shy. He was most always pleasant, engaging, friendly, happy to make your acquaintance and to talk baseball, especially the humorously anecdotal. He was the guy you’d be happy to sit beside during a game.
But would Fox encourage him to just relax, pay attention and speak only when he had something worth hearing? Or would it have him copy the foolish, wasteful plan of its No. 1 analyst, the dreary, threehour forensic pitch examiner and telecast butcher, John Smoltz?
Thus far, it’s leaning toward the latter. Saturday, during Mets-Rays, Wainwright analyzed and overanalyzed far more than what we — or he — needed or wanted.
But has there ever been a TV game analyst criticized for not talking enough?
Is there no one at Fox to guide him, to have him play the hand the game deals as opposed to filling in every moment that a televised game presents? I know; silly question.
➤ The media could cause misfortune in black cats. Last weekend it was widely reported that the Kentucky Derby is known as “the fastest two minutes in sports.”
No, it ain’t. It’s known as “the most exciting two minutes in sports.” After all, notes Mike “The Chef ” Soper, “Whether you’re a horse or a human, two minutes are two minutes.”
➤ The epidemic of senselessness will not end. Friday, the Cubs led the Brewers, 1-0, going into the eighth. Cubs reliever Richard Lovelady had pitched the seventh, went 1, 2, 3 with a strikeout on 15 pitches. Not good enough. Cubs’ manager Craig Counsell brought in Adbert Alzolay. He retired one batter while allowing four hits and three earned runs. Cubs lost, 3-1.
And they’ll do it over and over and over.
➤ Reader Don Scarpelli: “The bigger our screens get, the more the networks try to fill them with useless graphics. TV should have quit after giving us the computer-generated yellow first down line.”
Stan Van Gundy has coached over 1,000 NBA games. That’s over 1,000 more than I. But when he declared on TNT, this week, that, “I just don’t understand the need for all these replay stoppages,” we now have that in common.
Wonder how many proHamas demonstrators find the location of the next vandalize-the-campus rally by consulting Waze, the ingenious Israeli-invented direction finder?