Dear Uncle Bud,
You should have been here! Yesterday was the best day of the spring, warm and sunny. Great day for a ballgame. And the Yanks were home, against the Red Sox.
Dad said he might’ve taken me, the way his dad used to take him. But then he said something about having to take out a second mortgage. (I had to look up the spelling of mortgage, but I still don’t know what it means.) Then Dad said it made no difference because they didn’t start the game until after 8 at night.
I watched the first two innings on ESPN then had to go to bed because I had school today. There were lots of empty seats behind the catchers. Mom said Dad made it until the sixth inning then fell asleep. He takes the 7 a.m. bus to the City.
Your nephew, Skippy
Given that it’s TV — a visual medium now in high-def, 3-D, on ESPN12 and on flat screens the size of billboards along the Jersey Turnpike — a reverse reality has set in: We’re not supposed to notice those things we can’t possibly miss.
Saturday, with the Yankees up, 3-2, Alfonso Soriano hit a high fly toward the opposite-field fence, in right. The last we saw of Soriano, until after the ball barely cleared the wall for a home run, he was posing near home plate.
Fox Sports 1 returns us to Soriano after the ball landed. That’s when we saw that he’d just — finally — arrived at first. By now, no fan needs an explanation of the perils of such non-base running invites. There is no upside.
But on FS1 neither Kenny Albert nor new analyst Tom Verducci even mentioned it, as if too-cool-to-run baseball might have met with their approval.
Verducci co-wrote a book with former Yankees manager Joe Torre. During Soriano’s first stay with the Yankees, Torre was critical of Soriano’s can’t-be-bothered regard for running to first. Back then Torre noticed what we still can’t miss but still aren’t supposed to notice.
Masters of horror: Listening to Francesa watch TV
Ya think Fox Sports cable and WFAN got their money’s worth, Thursday and Friday, when Mike Francesa’s audience got to listen to him — or is it Him? — watch the Masters? Just like they got to listen to him/Him watch the Big East Tournament then the NCAA Tournament?
Doesn’t seem as if the “limited-commercial interruptions” Masters is nearly as limited as it used to be.
CBS’s Peter Kostis’ “well-holed” stuff, after putts of over 4-5 feet, is more of his faux-wise TV golf-gibberish. Not only is it self-evident, are such putts anything else? It’s either in or it’s not; it can’t be “poorly holed.”
Why must those waiting all day for Masters telecasts to begin next have to endure long, syrupy sessions on why the Masters is special? I don’t know. Sunday’s early coverage was interrupted by promos for … the Masters.
In likely the worst conference in NBA history, Jimmy Dolan’s $90 million-payroll Knicks couldn’t manage to finish eighth. Cable subscribers will pay for this! Best thing going for Dolan, this week, is that the Flyers again have goaltender issues.
With Met Bartolo Colon being blasted in the first on Sunday, Dan Warthen called time. SNY’s Ron Darling: “This might be the first time a pitching coach came out to say, ‘Can you throw a ball?’ ”
Chico’s voice will be missed
Glenn “Chico” Resch, 66 in July, has retired after 18 years as the Devils’ TV analyst.
Resch had an appealing balance. While he was always enthusiastic, he rarely took the game or himself so seriously that he got in the way of the view. He’d even use replays to correct himself — “Oh, there it is! I missed it the first time” — evidence of modesty and good faith.
Resch also was an SPG guy, producing for most a smile-per-game; he thought out loud with a ditzy-ness that worked to his and our advantage. A smile-per-game, over 18 years? Pretty good average.
Two weeks ago, after what appeared to be a judicious use of MLB’s new replay, Michael Kay, on YES, declared, “Replay works!”
Saturday, after replay failed to rule that Yankee Dean Anna was out when he was tagged at second — Anna was off the bag when he was tagged, but the original safe call stood — Kay, along with everyone else, couldn’t figure out how replay works.
We keep hearing about players with “flu-like symptoms.” How are they treated, with cure-like remedies?
Russian gets Sirius to share a laugh
Nice thing about SiriusXM is that there’s channel space for experimentation. Recently, Igor “The Professor” Larionov, now a hockey agent after starring for the Soviet Russian team then for Detroit, sat for several chats.
In one session, he recalled being in Canada for a series against Team Canada when Wayne Gretzky invited several Russian players to his parents’ for a barbecue. Larionov had to run it past the Russian team’s stick boy, who Larionov and his teammates knew was a KGB agent.
The “stick boy” said that coach (and noted stone-face) Viktor Tikhonov would never allow it. But when Larionov invited Tikhonov, barbecue on!
As the Gretzkys hosted the players, the coach and the “stick boy” — the latter, according to Larionov, “went everywhere with us” — Walter Gretzky offered everyone a beer. “LaBatt’s Blue,” recalled Larionov.
But Tikhonov said no. “We drink water, not beer!”
So then Mr. Gretzky invited the players, one by one, to his basement, to see “the Trophy Room.” The basement had a fridge filled with beer. “We made trip after trip,” said Larionov. “It was a very nice experience.”
The Larionov interviews re-air on Ch. 92, Tuesday, 2-6 p.m.
Has anyone at UConn broken the news to senior Shabazz Napier that the NCAA didn’t do dirt to UConn and him, that it was UConn that did dirt to UConn and him?
The sticky-stuff issue that Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda perpetrated, made Phil Pepe, a N.Y. sportswriter who used to cover the cover off of baseball, laugh. Pepe recalled when Jim Kaat was accused of applying a “foreign substance” to the ball. “It’s not a foreign substance,” said Kaat. “It comes from North Carolina.”