IT’S the same old story. Something particularly ugly – but not nearly as rare as it used to be – occurs: An interactive fan at Giants Stadium breaks an equipment coach’s jaw with a snowball, an on-field or downtown riot erupts after a college game, beer-muscled drunks jump out of the stands to attack an umpire or first-base coach.
Then everyone laments the state of both society and modern sports fandom. Woe is us!
The next day, however, it’s back to business as usual, back to the commerce of inspiring young, attention-starved and attitudinal wise guys – especially entry-level beer-drinkers within sports milieus – to do their worst.
So, even given last week’s recidivist patron criminality at the Royals-White Sox game, we shouldn’t have been surprised that a Budweiser commercial that aired this past weekend delightfully depicted a fan jumping from the stands and invading the field of competition in pursuit of a keg of beer. Funny stuff.
* Both the Mets and Yanks, last week, played nine-inning games that lasted over four hours. In his new book, “Still Pitching,” Jim Kaat’s blazing rapidity – as opposed to his heater – is recalled.
In 1975, while pitching a complete game, 11-1 win for the White Sox over the Angels, Kaat, timed from his first pitch of each half-inning until the final out of each half-inning, was on the mound for a total of just 35 minutes and 40 seconds in a game that ran 2:09. Actually, that was a bit long for a game, that year, in which Kaat went all nine.
By mid-August Kaat had pitched nine complete games, average time: 2:01. He pitched 181 complete games in his career – before becoming a reliever. Twice in a season, Kaat pitched more than 300 innings. Last year, Randy Johnson led the majors with 260.
The book also notes a 2-0 game Kaat lost to the Tigers’ Vern Ruhle, now the Mets’ pitching coach, in 1:35. Goodness, 1:35. That’s about the time that fans who stick for an entire night game can expect to get home. Yep, at about 1:35.
* At $100 per season, one can purchase “MLB TV” – webcasts of out-of-market baseball games, except those that appear as national exclusives Wednesdays on ESPN and Saturdays on Fox. Pretty neat, too, we’re told.
But if there’s a problem, such as the sudden and unexplained removal of Red Sox webcasts from the New York market, don’t expect MLB TV to answer its customer service phone number, nor to return the messages one leaves – after a long delay encouraging you to hold on for a service rep – on MLB TV’s customer message machine. Subscribers have tried for weeks.
And on weekends – baseball’s prime business hours, given that all teams are scheduled to play – the recorded message tells callers to call back, “during normal business hours.” Then Monday, the futile process begins anew. Hey, just like cable!
* Jack Donohue, the Power Memorial (high school), Holy Cross (college) basketball coach – and later coach of the Canadian Olympic Team – who died last week at 70, was a character of a politically incorrect bent. As a luncheon speaker, Donohue would describe his Catholic parish in The Bronx as one that would call the bingo numbers in Latin “so the Protestants couldn’t win.”
Apparently, Michael Kay regards YES boothmates, Kaat and Ken Singleton, as the two funniest men in television. A mildly amusing crack or anecdote from Singleton or Kaat gives rise to loud, sustained laughter from Kay. Or is Kay, too, a graduate of the Sportscasters’ School of Forced Laughs?
The NHL has done such a good job in speeding up its games that Stanley Cup telecasts of games ending in regulation – games slotted within three-hour windows – have left time to kill. Saturday’s Leafs-Flyers on ABC left more than 15 minutes of postgame studio fill.
* Ya never know: Yesterday’s freakout-filled sudden-death playoff between Davis Love III and Woody Austin on CBS at the MCI Heritage at Hilton Head was more intense and excruciating than anything seen a week before on CBS in The Masters.
