Monday, September 26, 2022

Telling sweet little lies to power.


 "Tell me lies, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies."

With apologies to Fleetwood Mac, that's exactly what we got last night on ESPN, the hopelessly compromised sports "news" channel that in fact once again proved to be just a lickspittle for another, Big Sports business partner, MLB. 

Or maybe that's unfair. Because really, I'm sure it was ESPN driving last night's farce. No lickspittle they, but the corporate co-conspirators in yet another episode of making life as miserable as possible for their customers—something that seems to be the prevailing business ethic of America.

Last night's rain-soaked debacle was a Chronicle of a Cock-Up Foretold. I know: I foretold it. 

Some 46,707 fans were lured out by the chance to see Aaron Judge break or tie the Real Original Famous Home Run record, only to be doused not just by the elements, but by still more incompetent umpires and an entirely predictable rain "delay" that dragged on for an hour-and-a-half before everyone was sent home—the Yankee Stadium reserves of rat dogs and watery beer apparently having been exhausted at last.

Hard to think of a worse experience at the ballpark, especially at the extortionate prices now charged at YS III. And all easily avoided by anyone with access to a weather map.

The game COULD have been switched to the afternoon in plenty of time to give the fans notice. Instead, Judge lost at least one at-bat—and maybe two, or even three, considering this team's difficulty in putting even bad clubs away—and we may have lost our last chance to see him set the record at home. 

Or at the very least, HAL and company might have tried to compensate the hardy souls who braved the weather with something

Free Cracker Jack, mayhap? A ticket to a game next year? HAL's father, wretched as he was, once compensated fans with free tix just for sitting through a particularly awful doubleheader, back in the plague year of 1982.

But no could do. The Yankees happily pocketed their loot. Not only is the club leading the AL in attendance, but it will soon go over 3 million again at the gate—largely because of Aaron Judge's home run spree. 

And afterwards, of course, nobody dared say boo to them, on ESPN or anywhere else.

Ma Boone was particularly craven, dodging altogether a question about what the fans had to put up with. Nobody even popped such a query at Judge, who instead had to field such inanities as, "How hard IS it to hit home runs?"  

(Judge, after fumfahing for a bit, came up with a typically thoughtful answer: "A lot of people think home runs are pitched, instead of hit." His good-natured presence will be sorely missed around the Bronx next year, if the Yanks try to shortchange him again.)

After that came an extended version of ESPN doing its best imitation of a news organization—which wasn't very good at all. The bantering anchors who came on SportsCenter pretended to argue over whether or not Judge was actually close to setting a new "record":

"Will it be a new record?"

"No. The record is 73, set by Barry Bonds."

And then:

"Do you think he'll get to 62?"

"Winning a Triple Crown would be a much more impressive feat."

So goes the no-doubt scripted corporate line:  "We'll allow some adoration of Judge for a Triple Crown, if he wins it. But no questioning the integrity of our game, which we already ruined 25 years ago!" 

Barry Bonds MUST always be acknowledged as the real home-run champ, for a season and a career, no matter how farcical that insistence becomes. MLB MUST insist that it is still the same game, even as it institutes the Manfred Man, regular-season games that count in London and a corn field, designer clown gear, and a playoff season that 40 percent of the teams now qualify for. All in the desperate pursuit of a constantly shrinking fan base.

They just don't get it. TREAT. THE. FANS. BETTER.

It's not hard. No gimmicks involved. No need to put in great big bases, or advertising on the jerseys. Lower your prices, make day-of-game tickets available, stop shaking down hard-pressed cities for public money, and treat everybody with respect.

And if the Lords of MLB can't see this, then it's the job of a free press—looking at you, ESPN!—to make sure they do.  

26 comments:

  1. Great Post MrHC.

    Plus, it includes the magic word of the day…LICKSPITTLE!!!

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  2. MLB is a business. That's why Hal works well within its system, like the apparatchik that he is.

    Nobody has to say anything to each other at the ruling levels of MLB. Everybody understands how it works, Politburo-style.

    It's just Chinatown, Jake.

    And you made me miss Rays on 11th Street, Hoss. It was actually NOT the first and only one - somebody would run an article every five years to dissect that - best consensus was the one on Elizabeth and Prince, which did have killer slices - but the one on 6th and 11th was most beloved, especially by teenaged potheads in the 1970s. I knew a few - ahem - oh well.....

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  3. Damn - I lived on Prince and Elizabeth.

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  4. Remember the Rays that used to be there? They had opened in 1957 and lasted past Y2K. Remember Y2K? I thought you would...

    Back to the future!

    Fuck Hal, Fuck Brian, Fuck Booney and Blitzen!!!

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  5. Thanks, guys, and very true, Bitty! I loved it when the features departments got bored enough to send somebody out to resurrect that story.

    Speaking of slices, how old were you when you discovered that most places in the U.S. do not have pizza by the slice, and that nobody else knows how to fold a slice to eat it on the street? I think I was in my 30s.

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  6. some people crease and iron their slices

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  7. Hoss, you said: "TREAT. THE. FANS. BETTER."

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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  8. Making refsnyder try to field that ball in the driving rain just so judge has a chance to get up and get plunked by a wet ball -- now that was laughable

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  9. Some people use a knife and fork...which is very un-New York...

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  10. I wonder if the real reason the bases are being enlarged is to give the sponsors a bigger advertising canvas to sell, once they do decide to sell. and they will, if the owners are willing to put their players in some of those alt jerseys, they definitely will sell adverts on bases.

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  11. Canada jokes:

    Q: How do you spell Canada?

    A: C, eh. N, eh. D, eh.

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  12. C -

    "Judge lashes a line drive to right, He rounds Spiderman 3 and is headed for Kentucky Fried Chicken, it's going to be close! And... he's in there, beating the throw by a drumstick!"

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  13. Rufus, pretty funny, eh!

    There was a Ray's on 8th Ave. between 13th and 14th that I used to go to when I lived around the corner in the mid-80s. Sometimes I'd only have a couple of bucks left before payday and could always get two slices.

    I went by there a couple weeks ago, and the sign is still there but the storefront is empty. Lasted a damn long time.

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  14. Sadly, you're probably right, C...

    Rufus: love it!

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  15. I never was west of DC until I was 30, so I had no idea how pizza poor the whole US is.

    Where "Served by the slice" is treated like a unicorn, where people don't know how to eat a slice - in Yonkers, we learned young how to fold a slice. is there any other way? - and where most pizza sucks, simply because it's not made with the water from upstate, rich in magical minerals and magic dust. I also attribute some of the magic to the particular yeasts that float in the air in the tri-state area, but you must remember that I did a lot of acid back in the 70s and 80s, so I see all kinds of weird shit. The pizza, though, I don't have to chalk up to hallucinogens. I have tasted pizza all over. New Haven has some decent pizza and I"m sure Chicago has its brand of tomato pie, but it's not really pizza. Los Angeles, sadly, never comes close AND they have the nerve to market their better pizzas as "New York Style" pizza, as does southern Florida, where you can have the illusion of good pizza, but not the aftertaste.

    I say that the most basic street storefront slice in NYC is better than the best anywhere else. BY THAT SAME TOKEN, though, the most humble Mexico food in California is better than almost any Mexican in New York City. We play to our strengths, just like Hicks and Stanton...

    Wait, is this a baseball blog? Are we going to have to endure that strange silent stadium in Toronto, where the fans sit there politely and the silence is deafening? Luckily, I am barred from watching anything this season by my special pact with the J*J* gods. Signed an NDA, folks. Sorry, can't talk about it.

    I love you all.

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  16. Finally glad to see all the concern about Judge being deprived of at-bats after the apparent indifference on this point by the advocates of his batting third.

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  17. Refsnyder seems to have a knack for these weirdo plays. Remember the chopper to his face when they tried him at third during ST? And the ST HR straight through the camera eye in CF wall? And the faceplant into the CF wall in Baltimore? Now this one. He's had an odd career without these incidents. With them, he's a borderline folk hero.

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  18. I'll be the heretic here and say New York pizza is not the best in the world.

    Best in the US, definitely. I much prefer Napoli, found anywhere from Rome to the Amalfi coast. Super thin crust, more sauce than cheese, buffalo mozzarella, and cooked for 90 seconds in a wood fired oven whose temp is close to the surface of the sun. And you better eat it with a fork and knife in Italy, our the goombahs will talk about you.

    New Haven is good too. Chicago pizza is not pizza, high calorie death wish maybe. I'd rather have bread with red gravy to dip it in. Pineapple belongs in women's drinks and not on pizza. Most other pizza I find in the hinterlands is the greek version.

    Sarasota actually has a place with good pizza, Mediterraneo. It's the Napoli wood fired version.

    Reposted from previous thread due to enormous applause I heard. (Mr. bit, you were not the only one with hallucinations).

    Q: How many seasons does Toronto have?
    A: Two. Eleven months of winter and one month of bad hockey weather.

    Don't forget to tip your servers, ladies and germs.

    OK, I'll stop now. Back to your previously scheduled programming.

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  19. 13,

    My favorite Italian Restaurant in Yonkers is Carlos on Tuckahoe Road. What was yours?

    The best ethnic food in CA is Vietnamese because the grandma's are still in the back making the food. Twenty pho places within a couple of miles. Like the good old days in NYC where there was pizza on every corner and several Jewish delis per neighborhood.

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  20. A Frank Pepe’s (New Haven staple) pizza joint just opened near us. Not bad. Not spectacular, but for these these parts (VA, near DC) it’s pretty good.

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  21. Holy fuck. Can someone muzzle Stat Boy, aka "Barney" aka "EBD"?

    What a pious douche for the ages.

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  22. Mhention Carlos' on Tuckahoe Road and I get PTSD. Grew up right near there.

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  23. Old Forge pizza's the best, as Yankees farmhands will attest. Short drive from Moosic.

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  24. NYC pizza is my line in the sand.

    But, I'll trade one of Hal's testicles for a slice of that Old Forge pizza if you can have it delivered. Yes, it's the new parlor game from Hasbro.

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  25. Hey Reggie Goat, AKA Rufus, Happy New Year!

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