The Game 1 verdict was unanimous. It was harsh and came quickly — bottom of the second inning.
It was rendered by three adult women not inclined to watch baseball unless the Mets or Yankees are in the World Series.
Juror 1: “These guys talk so much I don’t hear a thing they say.”
Juror 2: “They haven’t shut up, yet, not for even a second. Do people like this?”
Juror 3: “Do they ever stop talking?”
No, no they don’t. The Fox team of Joe Davis and John Smoltz doesn’t stop talking — “not even for a second” — thus a game as often riveting as Friday’s had to be suffered — endured — before it could be watched, let alone enjoyed.
There was no moment that went unpoisoned by Davis’s excitable exaggerations and reminders that we were watching — or trying to watch — the World Series. He finished nearly every sentence with the unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted.
He habitually chooses superfluous filler over welcomed silence. And so, apparently, does Fox.
Heck, when Fox cut to a shot of a crowd of Japanese fans watching the game in Tokyo, at 9:57 a.m., he repeated that info as it appeared in the graphic then added they were watching “the Dodgers-Yankees World Series!”
Smoltz topped himself for pitch-by-pitch examinations that, as Juror 1 noted, quickly dulled our senses to every succeeding word and thought he spoke. Friday, he gave us double doses by predicting what and where the next pitch should be once he was done with his autopsy of the previous pitch.
And may I say on behalf of baseball fans throughout the nation: “Aaargghh!” There, that feels better.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:
- Yankees’ season ends in heartbreak as they choke away Game 5 of World Series
- Aaron Judge’s crucial mistake erased breakout World Series moment
- Yankees’ Austin Wells hit with catcher’s interference call in brutal World Series moment
- Juan Soto’s season ends with million-dollar questions with Yankees future now murky
Eleven years of this colossal butchery, and Fox execs are apparently still alone in believing we enjoy Smoltz.
Or perhaps it’s a matter of deserving him to atone for our past sins. Gee, never before considered that.
Game 1 Notes:
For all of Smoltz’s excesses, a curious matter was left hanging. Why, with the Yanks up, 2-1, top of the sixth, was Anthony Volpe intentionally walked in order to pitch to Austin Wells, who then singled? Why would the Dodgers be eager to push the batting order closer to Juan Soto and Aaron Judge?
Fox had a great unanticipated shot of Alex Verdugo blowing a gum bubble as he chased Freddie Freeman’s first-inning triple. Perhaps, though, Davis and Smoltz were too busy talking to notice.
Now that Giancarlo Stanton has resumed hitting pose-at-the-plate homers when not whiffing, the revisionist history of him — first on TBS, now on Fox — as a team-first, all-in player persists. Thus, as usual, believe what you’re told and not what you’ve seen.
This old grump feels bad for Nestor Cortes, as he won my heart for his gentlemanly, no-big-deal treatment of Jim Kaat after Kaat, 85, accidentally called him “Nestor the Molester.”
Weakest announcers love meaningless stats
We can often gauge game broadcasters’ grasp of the sports they’re hired to speak by how they treat statistics. The better the broadcaster, the fewer the statistics.
Marv Albert, Vin Scully and Doc Emrick never immersed themselves nor cluttered our minds with half-thawed statistics.
The “value” to viewers of Fox’s lead college football and basketball voice Gus Johnson lies in his eagerness to holler or growl at anything and everything in his purview. Additionally, it’s weighed by his application of stats, especially his romance with misleading and irrelevant numbers that he parrots as telltale.
Last Saturday on Fox, Indiana led Nebraska, 28-7, with 3 seconds left in the half. Indiana QB Kurtis Rourke had played a superb first half — a self-evident fact — that Johnson felt compelled to support by reciting his high first-half QB passer rating — a modern stat that gives “proof” and “truth” to an infinite number of ignored circumstances, not the least of which are dropped passes.
So with three seconds left and Indiana with the ball at midfield, it was clear to all, except Johnson, that Rourke was going to heave a little-to-lose bomb toward the end zone against a defense stacked deep to prevent a catch. The ball was intercepted and the half ended, but Johnson was able to add, “That just brought down his quarterback rating.”
So a sensible play at a sensible time and with a sensible result, Johnson gave statistical meaning, as if Rourke and Indiana had just committed a blunder — or, as football has borrowed from tennis, “an unforced error.”
Johnson — hired, sustained and copied for his forced excitability — remains on the long list of those who know far less about the games they call than their viewers.
Incidentally, Dan Marino is No. 80 in career NFL QB passer rating, Troy Aikman is No. 82. Transient Jimmy Garoppolo is much better at No. 10, and fellow traveler Tyrod Taylor is No. 37.
Selective outrage at ESPN summit
ESPN’s latest “espnW: Women + Sports Summit” will be held this week, and again, “empowerment” will be the theme.
There is always an Afro-centric angle put to these seminars, and five of the seven women seen in photos promoting this event are black.
Yet it consistently disturbs me that ideology trumps reality, as these women consistently ignore the growing presence of sexually degrading, vulgar and N-worded targets of black rappers’ fame and fortune on and around sports events.
Everyone’s now in. Be it pornographic Snoop Dogg as an NBC Olympic host, ESPN “special guests,” cohosts and podcasters, those honored to throw out the first pitch of MLB games, NBA team theme chants and, of course, Roger Goodell’s annually choice of boastful, crotch-grabbing misanthropes to headline Super Bowl halftime shows for the nation’s enjoyment.
How can these sportswomen — rise-up activists — remain so blind, deaf and selective as to what lays them low by relegating them to the multigenerational wham-bam-scram desires of those who demand one-way respect and sexual obedience?
Many rappers’ gutter lyrics and arrest records are there for the reading, if not recital. They perpetuate the worst stereotypes of black America.
How does the silent indulgence and perpetuation of backward benefit those who attend and are heard during ESPN’s Women + Sports Summit?
Whatever happened to “keepin’ it real”?
Following what appeared to be a late hit out of bounds in East Carolina-Army on ESPN2 last week, one of the broadcasters, either Roy Philpott or Sam Acho, asked, “Was it a legal hit in terms of football rules?”
Those were our only options?
Reminds of the airplane steward who asked a passenger if he wanted lunch. “What are my choices?” the passenger asked.
“Yes or no,” the steward answered.
Jets-Patriots, Sunday on CBS, 1 p.m. Spero Dedes with wordy Adam Archuleta. … Congratulations to Roger Goodell’s NFL, which has not had one player shot inside or just outside a strip club at 3 a.m. since Broncos WR Josh Reynolds last week.
