FORGET Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, here’s the deal: I run a big factory for a bunch of owners, 30 of them, to be precise. You run the union to which the factory’s workers belong.
Together, we discover that the workers are showing up on dangerous and even illegal or illegally obtained drugs. But these drugs have led to a considerable increase in productivity, demand and cost for the product and profit for all. Thus, together and over years, we choose to ignore the drug problem.
One day, however, the news media and some former union workers begin to blow the whistle. The factory owners are even shamed into commissioning an investigation, one that concludes that everyone, across the board and top to bottom, knew exactly what was going on, but did nothing about it because the ill-gotten money was just too good.
Well, that’s exactly what went on in baseball for the last dozen or more years. And it would still be going on if both sides weren’t shamed into at least pretending to care.
The only thing missing from what’s written above is the scene at the Federal courthouse, where you and I and everyone else are charged with racketeering, engaging in a widespread drug conspiracy and other felonies-for-profit.
Testimony before Congress? More? Again? Why? This should have been a Justice Department issue, a case for the Attorney General’s office, federal prosecutors, U.S. Marshals, the FBI, the DEA and the IRS. Say it ain’t so, J. Edgar, but that’s the fact. If it had been our factory, and, unlike MLB, we lacked friends in the highest places, we’d both be doing hard time.
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For all the outrageous ticket scams and scalps regularly and increasingly perpetrated by New York’s NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL teams – gouging ignored by the local news media – that the Bucs temporarily prevented some Giant fans from buying tickets to yesterday’s game in Tampa became a big, we’re-not-gonna-take-it story, here.
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Even the better analysts are given to speaking in senseless extremes. NBC’s Cris Collinsworth, Saturday, at 28-14, Seattle, the Skins with the ball at midfield, 4:36 left, asserted that the Skins were still alive because there’s, “Plenty of time in this game.” Really? There may have been time left to perform a miracle, but certainly not “plenty of time” left in which to perform it.
Play-by-player Tom Hammond also was having a solid telecast until he, too, went too far. When the Skins scored to tie it, 13-13, he became maudlin: “And Sean Taylor watches from the heavens above.” Yeesh.
And NBC by now should have chosen: Football reality vs. stat sheet fantasy. If we’re going to be told that that was the third Todd Collins pass dropped by a Skins’ receiver, stop posting and speaking QB ratings, which give the same ridiculously misleading value to all incomplete passes.
During its post-game, on-field chat with Jags’ QB David Garrard, NBC did a sweet job positioning its hand-held camera to show losing QB Ben Roethlisberger lingering in the background, waiting for Garrard to be finished. NBC smartly stuck around to show the two embracing.
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If you were paying attention, you could tell from the start, yesterday, that Jeff Garcia was working off a quick snap count. Then there was Fox, which didn’t get back from a first-quarter sideline shot until after Garcia threw a pass on second-and-14.
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Interesting, NBC running ads for EAS nutritional supplements during Saturday’s NFL games. EAS was once black listed by the NFL for pushing products ephedrine and androstenedione products. While with the Broncos, wildman LB Bill Romanowski, eventually an admitted steroid user (as if we couldn’t tell) and TE/muscle-flexer Shannon Sharpe, now with CBS, served as front-line EAS endorsers in defiance of the NFL’s position.
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Replay rules in the sports that use them have badly and naturally hurt officiating; they’ve made officials more indecisive, less reliant on their eyes and training and more back-of-their-minds reliant on video.
Friday, the Magic’s Adonal Foyle, at the buzzer, tipped in a shot that would have sent the game to OT. The three officials caucused in front of a TV screen before concluding that the shot came a fraction late; Rockets win.
Before that, however, no call was made! The first and only call came after viewing the replay! To paraphrase the complaint of Magic coach Stan Van Gundy, how can refs pursue conclusive evidence to reverse or sustain a call when no call was made?
