Rene Descartes, who skated on a line with H.D. Thoreau and Jean Beliveau, famously concluded: Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.
I think, too, I think. Therefore, I don’t know what to think anymore.
I feel as if I’m stuck in a batting cage, someone having deposited my lifetime’s supply of tokens, set the machine to “Fastballs, Extra Wild” then bolted for Al Alburquerque.
Late on Sunday afternoons, after chronicling a week filled with tough-to-ignore absurdities for Monday’s paper, the next absurdity appears the next time I look up.
Late on this past Sunday afternoon, Brian McCann hit an extra-inning, game-ending homer, moving YES’s Michael Kay to an excited but natural call, “Driven deep to right field. Fair ball, the game is over! The game is over!” and so on. Good stuff.
But then the absurdities. Kay had the moment won when he chose to Plaxico himself. He hadn’t yet hollered his “See ya!” home-run call. Oops. So, as McCann trotted around first, Kay needlessly and transparently obliged himself. Better never than late, he shouted, “See ya!”
That was preface to more absurdity. On his way to the plate, McCann tossed his helmet to duck a helmet-invited head-slapping by his teammates.
Still, after touching home, McCann was given a violent Gatorade bucket dump, the bucket smacking the front of his head before covering it. That bucket was quickly hauled from the dugout and dumped over McCann’s head by Brett Gardner.
Such excessive, tired displays now will be overdone until they come up with the next thing to overdo. Shucks, some of us can recall when the Yankees, after winning the pennant, would just happily run off the field.
But as my pays-close-attention pal Lloyd Stone immediately noted, that wasn’t the most absurd part. McCann had recently returned from a concussion. Speed-reliant Gardner didn’t play because of an injured ankle. And as YES’s Meredith Marakovits interviewed McCann, one could see a large, fresh bruise on his forehead, one likely made by that large, hard plastic, liquid filled bucket.
Over to ESPN, where no absurdity is too great in the network’s quest to ruin, or at least bruise, everything it touches. During its tennis coverage, ESPN, long committed to excessive, needless intrusions, goes the other way, making the box that provides the names of the players and the score too small to read.
Even through squinting eyes, ESPN’s U.S. Open score box again appears as a smudge.
Either ESPN ignores viewers who complain about such an easily fixed absurdity, or its production execs don’t bother to watch. Either way, why post any graphics if we can’t read them?
Next, I’m going to pull a Doc Rivers — as per his “Hell, no!” position on Donald Sterling: I refuse to play for or coach the San Diego Chargers unless longtime radio analyst and former Charger Hank Bauer is condemned by those who angrily checked in on the Sterling eavesdrop, including President Obama.
On Sunday, Bauer and Josh Lewin, the latter Howie Rose’s Mets radio partner and for the last 10 years the Chargers’ play-by-player, were working the Chargers-49ers preseason game. Late in the game, Bauer, described by a frequent listener as “a harmless moron,” lost his harmlessness when he told an unfunny “Jew joke” at Lewin’s expense. Lewin is Jewish.
After Bauer noted that high-priced seats in the stadium emptied early, Lewin said he’d have stuck around.
“But then again,” said Bauer, “you know how copper wire was invented? Somebody dropped a penny between Josh and his family members.”
When Lewin, displeased, said he would ignore that, Bauer added, “I say that respectfully and endearingly, my partner.” Of course.
Although it took until Tuesday — and the slur, given the fallout following other ethnic, religious and racial slurs, made little news or noise — Bauer was suspended from the team’s last preseason game. He then tweeted an apology that was more offensive than his respectful, endearing sense of humor:
“I made a hurtful insinuation that I regret and I would like to express how sorry I am.”
If he’d only left it at that. But he continued: “My poor choice of words were unfortunately open for negative interpretation …”
That’s right, the fault lies in those who misinterpreted what he said. And it’s on behalf of those misguided souls — cheap bleepin’ Jews, among them — that Bauer will generously and graciously take a one-game hit. What a guy!
Back to ESPN, where Josina Anderson, as well as her producers, apparently think that NFL shower rooms are common venues for heterosexual sex — until homosexual rookie Michael Sam ruined all the fun.
Anderson’s report on the showering schedules of Rams players vis-à-vis Sam’s appearances, even by ESPN’s standards, was stunning for its social naiveté, fantasy-driven virtual voyeurism and untreated absurdity.
At least I think it was. It might be worth more thought. Anderson is known to dress in a, shall we say, journalistically immodest fashion, as do many of sports TV’s demographics-demand-it, we-know-the-score, boom-chicka-boom female hires. Maybe she figured — or thought — that such was expected of her.
Anyway, this week on WFAN and CBSSN TV, “Weekday” Boomer Esiason, who has dutifully adhered to the go-low drive-time formula, spoke about swollen testicles. “Weekend” Boomer Esiason, from CBS’s NFL studio, has scolded players and coaches for acts of incivility.
He thinks, I think, therefore they’re both him.
Ticket dumps no real surprise anymore
I erred here Monday, writing that the Giants were selling tickets to Thursday night’s preseason game against the Patriots for $58. The Giants claim they do not sell any tickets below face value.
The seller was a secondary-market broker.
But look where that takes us: For such pricing to be worth the brokers’ money, Giants PSL/ticket-holders had to have dumped their tickets, carrying an average face value of $300 each, for far less than $58 each.
Thus, what Roger Goodell claimed — PSLs are “good investments” — has annually created, in New York and New Jersey alone, more than 100,000 virtually worthless, outrageously expensive tickets.
All sports commissioners know right from wrong; they know that forcing their best customers to pay full regular-season prices for NBA, NFL and NHL rehearsals and tryouts is indefensible. Thus, as those to whom the welfare of the sports are putatively entrusted, they’re paid to choose wrong.
And, given that new Yankee Stadium remains the can’t-miss-it home of empty, too-expensive seats, the days of similar, greed-fueled regret draw near.