ENJOY him while you can, sports fans. Jim Kaat is heavily leaning toward packing it in at season’s end. In fact, it would shock the folks at YES should Kaat choose to re-enlist.
And thus, in less than two months, will end the second of two distinct and highly distinguished baseball careers, 25 as a pitcher, then 21 as a broadcaster.
Kaat, who will be 68 in November, has never been the kind who would knock us out, nor did he try. Kinda the way he pitched. Over the course of any telecast, he’s more likely to win us over with friendly, calm and intelligent commentary than with anything that leaves even a trace of self-indulgence.
Even Kaat’s first-person historical accounts seem designed to enlighten us about something or someone else. He’ll never unilaterally even drop a hint that he three times led the AL in innings pitched or that he threw 181 (!!!) complete games.
As for his boothmates, Kaat seems to establish a sophisticated tone, although never condescending and always all-age appropriate. That’s not easy, unless, of course, it comes naturally.
It doesn’t strike us as coincidental that much of the fanciful and even delusional takes on baseball that have poured out of the Yankee TV booth this year have been spoken when Kaat, with a reduced schedule, is absent.
Kaat might even serve as something of a noise filter, as there seems to be a lot less hype and needless hollering when he’s present. If so, he makes everyone better.
Kaat’s not likely to allow YES to make an issue of his last game. But we can guarantee when that telecast is over, he’ll have gone out in a blaze of dignity.
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Tuesday was a rare day. Not once, but twice a sportscaster was heard to make contextual sense of commonly misapplied and misunderstood stats.
First, Mike Golic, on his ESPN Radio/ESPN2 morning show, was asked by co-host Mike Greenberg whether the Packers, 4-12 last season, had an underrated defense because it was ranked No. 7 in the NFL.
“No,” said Golic. “This is misleading because they were No. 1 against the pass. They were No. 1 against the pass because teams were ahead of them most of the time. [Opponents] never had to pass; they ran the ball all the time.
“By the way, the Packers were 23rd against the run. So that’s very misleading. They were not a top seven defense.”
Golic’s take made for an oxymoron: rare common sense. Yet, the vast majority of paid football experts recite such numbers, sans context, while telling us that such offensive and defensive rankings are significant.
Moreover, why even bother feeding the confusion by rank ing offenses and de fenses based only on total yards gained and allowed? Heck, based on total passes, completions and yards, the best passing team, by far, last season, was the Cardinals, the 5-11 Cardinals.
Also, Tuesday, the Yanks had the bases loaded and Jorge Posada up when Michael Kay pointed to a graphic showing Posada to be a lifetime .306 with the bases loaded.
Kay correctly noted that “most good players” should hit above their career averages with the bases loaded, as pitchers, especially early in the count, are least inclined to nibble or throw anything other than a strike.
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While we’re no longer surprised by networks’ cross-promotional excesses, Tuesday’s Orioles-Yanks on Ch. 9 broke new landfill for obnoxious and relentless exploitation of a sports audience.
Inning after inning, the telecast was devoted to focusing on stars – mostly unknown – who will appear in new Ch. 9 shows and were in Yankee Stadium only to provide cause to pump those shows, which next provided reason to cut to a string of video promos for the shows.
And those videos were loaded with – surprise! – sexual content that took a summer’s night baseball audience even lower.
Ch. 9 is now pitching itself as “My 9.” To that, we say, “My . . . ” Ahh, never mind.
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During the Yankee Stadium groundbreaking ceremony, Yankee president Randy Levine declared that the new park will be “affordable.” To that, we ask, for whom?
We also wonder whether Levine spoke while holding a shovel.
