COVERING ALL THE BASES
Touching on many issues in sports
MY LIFE is an open notebook: Extraordinary sight, last Friday. The Brewers, stuck for a starter, called up Robert Gasser, who’d been injured and hadn’t pitched more than four innings in a game — all in the minors.
Well, he pitched six innings, allowing two hits, striking out four, no walks. All he did was throw assorted pitches into assorted areas of the strike zone. A 24-year-old, smallish — by modern standards — lefty with no discernible flash, he was what today is easily missed or dismissed.
He threw easily and breezily, as if he were Whitey Ford. He shut out the Cards until he was removed.
Gasser won his next start, allowing one run. Yet this time he wasn’t allowed to pitch past the fifth, thus he’s now likely earned the right to be relegated to the analytics pile.
Now Gasser can do it the new-fashioned way: Throw as hard as he can for four or five innings then await a replacement and the results of an MRI.
Not that it matters, but Whitey Ford threw 156 complete games.
➤ The Coarsening of America continued: More than a few readers have suggested that since the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, this week casually and publicly spoke the “F-word,” I should cut the vulgar hosts on WFAN and throughout sports broadcast media some slack.
➤ Ron Darling still speaks antiquated but applicable here-and-now sense.
Wednesday, during MetsPhils on SNY, the Mets scored on a wild pitch in the dirt. Darling then noted that with a runner on third, Phils’ catcher J.T. Realmuto tried to “pick the pitch with his glove” rather than try to keep it in front of him “by blocking it with his body.”
➤ Doesn’t matter the sport, ESPN will wreck it with excess.
Saturday on ESPNU, in the first round of the NCAA Lacrosse Tournament, huge underdog Albany led Notre Dame, 5-4, when at the firsthalf buzzer ND scored to tie it. But would it count? Was it scored prior to the clock reading 00:00?
ESPN replayed the shot with the telltale game clock superimposed on the screen — but that clock was totally hidden by ESPN’s redundant, indiscriminate scroll of other sports results and ESPN/ABC promos.
We eventually were told what ESPN didn’t allow us to see: ND scored a second too late. But the FreiburgHeidenheim match in the Bundesliga had, for the 20th time, ended, 1-1.
➤ While we’re still supposed to favor replay reviews because “they get it right,” they’re still too often nothing better than second opinions — guesswork far removed from the scene.
The second period of Tuesday’s Bruins-Panthers was unplugged to review whether a goal would be called back. All the on-air ESPN observers, including ex-NHL ref Dave Jackson, said it would be disallowed as the goalie had his stick illegally knocked from his grasp.
Finally, the on-ice decision: Good goal. Oh, OK. Never mind. Tuesday’s Pacers-Knicks looked like a replay film festival. There were five replay stoppages — in just the first half!
➤ Follow the sucker money: Reader Steven Epstein notes that the Mets now have six different uniforms but only five pennants.
➤ At age 67, Spike Lee, the Knicks’ self-appointed, selfentitled, intrusive pixie-costumed, attention-starved, scene-stealing, transparent, courtside jump-up-anddown jerk who otherwise lectures on what’s wrong with the rest of us, remains a court wart.
But the media tells us we all love Spike! So it must be true.
Of course, if you or I acted as he does, we’d have long ago been banished, placed in Jimmy Dolan’s facial recognition Garden Zapper.
➤ May have to revise my opinion of ESPN NBA firstteamer Doris Burke. Throughout Pacers-Knicks she was pretty sharp, especially noting violations that weren’t called — including flagrant steps on Tyrese
Haliburton. (Not that steps and flagrant palming/carrying the ball are any longer disallowed.)
She was still too often superfluous — teams “running downhill” and stats-for-stats sake — but mostly she was worth hearing, even if ESPN’s courtside audio quality control so often made her difficult to be heard.
➤ Enough! No matter how foolish it strikes golf fans, the Tiger Woods pandering continues beyond both reason and promotional logic.
The PGA this week sent two mass consumption media releases promoting the PGA Championship. Both included one photo on Page 1 — one of Woods swinging, the other of Woods lining up a putt. Woods was listed as a 125-1 shot.
Thursday, though Xander Schauffele opened with a wowzer 9-under to lead, CBS’s phone app heralded only Woods’ 1-over to trail by a mere 10.
And while the media continue to portray Woods as the greatest human to have allowed us to breathe the same air — the PGA recently bestowed an obscene $100 million on him, reward money for not bolting for Saudi government millions — the PGA of America’s release opted not to use the mug shot from Woods’ passed-out-on-opioids DUI booking.
➤ Rob Manfred and the Yankees made sure to minimize viewership of Wednesday’s Yanks-Twins by placing it behind a streaming paywall in exchange for short-end dough. Keep teaching fans to live without!
Roger Goodell’s NFL will be back at it with even more pay-more paywall streaming exclusives this season.
➤ If it were truly about diversity, as President Joe Biden declares, rather than unfair play designed to exploit — if not destroy — girls and women’s sports, why aren’t females who transitioned to males excelling at men’s sports?
➤ Great to see the storied Celtics in a playoff game on TNT, Wednesday, dressed in their traditional all-black uniforms! But the NBA is just another U.S. sports league that takes orders from despotic Communist Chinese-partnered Nike. Perhaps LeBron James, selective, knee-jerking, hideously hypocritical social activist and Nike shill, will lead the CCP military in its hostile takeover of democratic Taiwan.
➤ The Sky Has Fallen: ESPN’s PGA Championship pregame show yesterday was devoted to gambling on players, specifically through ESPN BET.
➤ The all-times superimposed strike zone box seen on YES during Tuesday’s Yanks-Twins was from the belt line to the knees — not even close to MLB’s prescribed strike zone of letters to the knees. But they’re seldom seen correct on any network telecasts.
➤ TNT’s NBA studio shows continue to be larded with platitudinal filler, childish put-downs and wind-bagging from Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal, thus if you want applicable basketball talk one must await Kenny Smith’s turn to speak.
Meanwhile, is there a TNT or TBS exec who will answer this:
Why was malevolent, miscreant Draymond Green added to the show during the playoffs? Was it because of his basketball skills? His communicative prowess? Because he’s known for putting the NBA’s best foot forward?
Or because he’s a malevolent miscreant?
➤ Wednesday, Pete Alonso fell asleep. He fielded a grounder to first then threw to second to start a double play — when there were already two out. As Pete might shout: WTFU!
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Rory McIlroy, with the specter of his recently revealed divorce in progress, did not show a lot of signs of stress in Thursday’s opening round of the PGA Championship at Valhalla. McIlroy shot a 5-under 66 and, among the morning wave of tee times, stands four shots behind leader Xander Schauffele. There already was a massive amount of attention on McIlroy, the No. 2 ranked player in the world, based on the fact he’s returning to the site of his last major championship victory. McIlroy won the 2014 PGA at Valhalla. He’s also been heavily in the news with his involvement in the PGA Tour battle with LIV Golf. And he was coming off a resounding victory at the Wells Fargo Championship, which has become his personal playground. If that wasn’t enough attention and scrutiny, then came Monday, when news broke that McIlroy had filed for divorce from Erica Stoll, his wife of seven years and the mother of his daughter. Asked after Thursday’s round how it felt to get back “inside the ropes and just concentrate on golf [with] obviously other things going on this week,’’ McIlroy said, “It’s always nice to be inside the ropes.’’ Asked a follow-up question about “compartmentalizing’’ off-course issues and on-course work, McIlroy was equally as terse when he repeated, “Happy to be here.’’
He called his first round “scrappy for the most part,’’ adding how pleased he was to shoot a low score in spite of it.
“I thought I got a lot out of my game today,’’ McIlroy said. “Some good up-and-downs, [a] chip-in on 6. I’m not really happy with how I played, but at least happy with the score.’’
McIlroy bogeyed the 17th hole, his eighth hole of the day because he started on No. 10, and then got himself into trouble on the par-5 18th when he thought he hit his tee shot into the water.
“I was pretty sure it was in the water, and then when I got up there, I guess the two ball-spotters or marshals said they didn’t really see it or couldn’t really hear it,’’ he said. “I went over to the other side just to check, but was pretty sure it was in the water [and] dropped and took my medicine.
“[I] made a great up-and-down from about 120 yards to make par, which was important after making bogey on 17. That kept any momentum that I had going into the next nine.’’
McIlroy made the turn in 1-under 35 and closed with a 4-under 31 on the front nine, his back for the round.
“It was huge,’’ McIlroy said of the par save on 18. “I could have easily bogeyed 18 and been back to even par.’’