WHEN WILL sports-talk radio hosts cease doing all their shopping at the Emperor’s New Clothes factory outlet?
Stephen A. Smith, ESPN Radio-NY’s latest bad idea, seems to have a lot of Mike Francesa in him. And even a little is far too much.
Thursday afternoon, Smith took a break from talking complete nonsense to stage a Q & A (Smith handled both) with Isiah Thomas that was downright Francesian. Smith’s goal seemed to be to use Thomas to let the audience know he knows his stuff and that he and Thomas are tight.
At the interview’s conclusion, Smith thanked “Zeke” for his time. Zeke is Thomas’s nickname.
There was, however, one problem. Zeke, er, Thomas didn’t cooperate. He didn’t sound half as impressed with Smith as Smith sounded impressed with Smith. And Thomas didn’t sound half as tight with Smith as Smith sounded tight with Thomas. Emperor’s same old new clothes.
Wardrobe!
By the way, Francesa on Friday conducted his annual pre-Derby I’ll-tell-you-what-I-think “interview” with jockey Jerry Bailey, a ritualistic session during which Francesa exploits Bailey’s presence to show how much he knows about horse racing. Bailey isn’t expected to answer questions as much as he is expected to affirm Francesa’s superior knowledge.
Wardrobe!
Cliff Montgomery, a World War II naval hero and the QB and MVP on Columbia’s 1934 Rose Bowl team that upset Stanford, died last month on Long Island. He was 94.
The obituaries we read had plenty about him – how he won the Silver Star for commanding an operation that saved 400 sailors from a burning ship at Okinawa and how, in 1963, he was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame – but not enough.
For example, they didn’t tell how scores of kids, now past middle age, knew Montgomery only as the coach, 45 years ago, of the Babe Ruth League’s Roslyn Heights Orioles. That’s how Bill Jerome knew him.
Jerome, a host on classical music station WQXR-FM, recalls how Montgomery gave him the encouragement to buck a baseball taboo: to become, once he could find a left-handed catcher’s mitt, a left-handed catcher.
“He wasn’t a big man, maybe 5-8, 165,” said Jerome. “Back then none of us knew that he’d been a football star or a war hero, nothing like that. We knew him only as a friendly, nurturing man who taught us baseball, and taught us well.
“He coached my younger brother’s Little League team, too,” Jerome added. “He made sure everyone played before such things had to be legislated. We never knew him as more than that or for more than that. He never told us anything about himself. I regarded him as special years before I knew just how special he was.”
In 1997, Bullets owner Abe Pollin, sensitive to the staggering murder rate in the D.C. area, changed the team’s name to the Wizards.
But because no one wants to be left out of the lucrative throwback jersey business, Bullets jerseys have returned. Not that we’re surprised, but there’s even a Michael Jordan No. 23 throwback Bullets jersey. It’s a big seller – even though Jordan played for the Wizards, never for the Bullets. Thanks for the memories.
As sports journalist and former Wizards season-ticket holder Pete Williams wrote to reminds us, the Bullets/Wizards and the NBA have done historical dirt to Charles Jones, a forward/center wore No. 23 for eight years during the 1980s and early 1990s for the Bullets. Jones played 613 games for the Bullets – 613 more than Jordan did with the Bullets.
But history, even when marketed for its historical context, can’t compete with money.
ESPN Radio’s late weekday mornings man Colin Cowherd had a hard time this week accepting the Browns’ word that Kellen Winslow Jr. had “damaged” his shoulder in a motorcycle accident, saying: “Damaged is the word my wife uses when she totals the car.”
Kurt Campbell, a DB/LB, last month became the first SUNY-Albany player ever selected in the NFL Draft. The Packers took him in the seventh round, 245th overall. … From reader Bill Parrinello: “The only problem with The Post’s ‘Yankee Immortals’ medallions series is that many of the immortals are dead.”
Promise this will be the last time this month (fingers crossed!) that I address the lunacy of the save rule. The Rangers’ Francisco Cordero led the AL with nine saves through Thursday although he is having a rotten year (11 hits, six walks and six earned runs in 11 1/3 innings). But if Cordero keeps it up, guaranteed, he’ll make the All Star team … if he doesn’t get released first.
