Mid-Week Ramblings

Gary & Howie & The Rest

I always get a bit of joy when I see a news item about an MLB franchise holding an induction ceremony for its Hall of Fame. Of all the team sports baseball does the best job of celebrating its history - sometimes to its detriment but that’s a topic for another day - and holding annual celebrations to honor a handful of figures from a franchise’s past seems like the ultimate no-brainer. Last weekend the Mets added 4 new names into their team Hall.

It was yet another sign of the Wilpons’ neglectful stewardship of the franchise to see the way they let the Mets Hall lay fallow. The Mets Hall was established in 1981, but the first several induction classes were filled with managers and off-field personnel. It wasn’t until 1986 that Bud Harrelson and Rusty Staub became the first actual players inducted, and between 1986-2002 a total of a dozen former players received the honor. That’s not much of a pace. The hope was that the opening of CitiField would serve as an impetus to rejuvenate the Hall, and 6 new names were inducted between 2010-2013. But then, nothing for years. Now, I don’t want to say that the Wilpons were too cheap to want to pay for plane tickets and hotel rooms for potential inductees and their families, but on the other hand I know how they roll, so draw your own conclusions.

Thankfully, Steve Cohen recognizes that value of celebrating team history, and former Mets greats Howard Johnson and Al Leiter had their well-earned celebrations. But I want to acknowledge the other 2 gentlemen honored on Saturday, as long-time broadcasters Gary Cohen and Howie Rise were also inducted.

There are many reasons why I love baseball as much as I do, and one of the biggest is the day-to-day nature of the sport. Baseball is such a part of the summer soundtrack, and the everyday nature of the game means that even if your team suffers a devastating loss, there’s almost always a game the next day to make up for it. And the play-by-play men serve as the friendly voices that guides you through the journey. Cohen and Rose stand out even further because not only are they in my completely unbiased opinion two of the best in the game, but they both grew up as Mets fans. When they describe sitting in those upper deck general admission seats at Shea Stadium I can absolutely relate because I did the exact same thing for years.

Congrats to all 4 inductees, as well as long-time PR man Jay Horowitz who received a special honor on that day as well. May I lobby for a Felix Millan induction next season? The guy turns 80 later this year; give him his day before it’s too late.

Jim Hines 1946-2023

The 1968 Mexico City Olympics, largely due to the location’s high altitude, produced some of the most historic performances in track & field history. In addition to Bob Beamon’s legendary long jump record, the track also saw Lee Evans break the 44 second barrier in the 400m, Dick Fosbury win the high jump gold with his revolutionary Fosbury Flop, Al Oerter win his 4th consecutive gold in the discus, and Wyomia Tyus repeat her 100m gold. And of course it was the scene of Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s Black Power salute on the medal stand.

100m gold medalist Jim Hines’s accomplishment in those games was just as noteworthy, yet he seemed to have fallen through the cracks of history. Even back when track & field was much more visible in America than it is today, I don’t recall hearing his name come up that often. In Mexico City he not only won gold, but set a world record in doing so, becoming the first to run a sub-10 second 100 in Olympic competition. That world record stood for 15 years.

Hines passed away earlier this week. There are many great American sprinters both before and after him who achieved greater fame, but he deserves to be just as well-remembered as the other legends have been.

Samantha Rivera FTW

We’ve all seen it a million times. A newscaster is doing a live shot and someone tries to intrude upon the report. The combo of high-octane masculinity and consumption of adult beverages makes this more prevalent at sporting events. This classic clip is the perfect example.

This reporter took it in stride, but the dynamic changes considerably when the reporter in question is female. You can never know if the guy is simply a drunk fool, or someone who has danger in mind. So, kudos to Samantha Rivera from CBS’s Miami affiliate. She skillfully kept an idiot in his place, never breaking her stride. But really, enough of this. Nobody intrudes on your work when you’re simply trying to do your job, show the same respect in return.

PGA Tour Follows The Money

After months of blasting the players that left the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, commissioner Jay Monahan showed that the PGA isn’t all that principled after all, as a merger of the tours was announced yesterday. Money talks, and you know the rest of the saying, but this one really does not smell right. The players that had remained loyal to the PGA feel justifiably blindsided by the turn of events.

What made the announcement worse is that the players were not given a heads up, they found out about it the same time the rest of us did. So the players that took the blood money and jumped to LIV came out of this with healthy windfalls, while those who had stuck with the PGA must feel like suckers for doing so. Remember Monahan’s quote about how you never need to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour (as opposed tomLIV)? That aged well.

There were no winners. Monahan comes out looking disingenuous, the LIV golfers still look like greedy mercenaries, and the PGA players are livid, having lost out on the LIV money and seeing no real consequences for those that had jumped. It will bear watching over the next few months to see how long these hard feelings linger, as well as to see if Monaghan’s position remains tenable.

Forget It, Jake

Gut punching news came out of Arlington with the report that Jacob deGrom will need Tommy John surgery. The recovery time for the surgery means he won’t be on a major league mound again until late next season, possibly not even until 2025. He hasn’t pitched a full season since 2019, and a 2025 return means his comeback will be in his age 37 season.

My controversial opinion is that any sport is better when the best players are available to compete, so yet another extended deGrom absence is a real bummer, not only for the Texas Rangers but for the game as a whole. His starts in New York were events; nothing was beyond the realm of possibility. There was always the sense that fans would see something special - seven shutout innings of 2-hit ball, double digit strikeouts, 100MPH pitches, etc. followed with an inevitable no decision as the Mets had a chronic inability to score runs whenever he was in the mound. Unfortunately there was always drama on the negative side as well. As his injuries piled up, fans held their breath with every pitch waiting for the other shoe to drop any time he would noticeably wince or show bad body language.

Here’s hoping he is eventually able to come back as strong as ever. We as fans need to see him at his best. As insignificant as pitcher wins have become as a stat, it’s still a little jarring to see that for all his greatness he still has a career total of only 84 victories. At this point the Hall of Fame seems to be off the table, but even beyond that it would seem so wrong for him not to at least reach 100 career wins.

A Little CNN Schadenfreude

It’s fitting that I have been rewatching the Jean Doumanian produced season of Saturday Night Live at the exact moment Chris Licht is running things at CNN. Like Doumanian he has taken over a cherished institution (although at the time SNL was only in its sixth season; who imagined the show would still be running strong more than 4 decades later?) and is similarly running it into the ground. Terminally addicted to bothsidesism, he has turned it into Fox Lite, epitomized by the Trump Town Hall.

That debacle has backfired big time. Don’t get me wrong, he is the almost certain Republican nominee in next year’s Presidential race, so he is as newsworthy a figure as there is. But knowing his penchant for lying it was irresponsible to put him on live TV without the ability to add needed perspective to his constant fibs. Pre-taping the town hall so that they could add context and correct his lies would have been the better way to go, and if he wouldn’t agree to that, that’s his problem. It made no one happy; network staffers were livid about the production, and CNN’s ratings have plummeted dramatically since the town hall aired. The network’s primetime ratings have even fallen below those of Newsmax. It gives me no joy to see that Newsmax has an audience, but jeez, that is a massive embarrassment for CNN.

Licht’s fatal error was that he seems to believe that the Fox audience is there for the taking, but the core Fox audience despises CNN. There’s little chance that they could poach Fox viewers, and all he has done is piss off the CNN audience as well as key staffers. Tim Alberta just published a fly on the wall report on Licht; it describes an organization with record low morale. As of now, his corporate bosses continue to support him, but his position sure appears tenuous at best. The larger question is how much of the damage he has been doing to the CNN a brand is irreparable.

And while I’m on the subject of destroying valuable brands, a report came out that Twitter’s ad revenue has dropped 59%. I’m no business genius, but that sounds suboptimal. It’s almost as if corporate brands don’t wish to advertise on a platform that’s welcoming to Nazis. Strange, isn’t it?

Closing Credits

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