If he knew tonight’s annual tribute to him at Dodger Stadium wasn’t easily available to fans in Los Angeles, who are likely to settle in, flip on the TV and get blindsided by the fact this all exclusively on the Internet, streaming on their smart phone via something called Apple TV+ ? You mean … That’s it?
One side benefit about the @Dodgers blacking me out on opening day for yet another year is I don’t have to watch Dave Roberts pull another pitcher throwing a perfect game.
If he saw the MLB image of him created for this occasion depicted him wearing a white wrist band? How did that subliminal piece of design work its way in? Really, who is this, Dusty Baker?
If he was informed the first 40,000 who come to the game get a “free” Jackie Robinson jersey. That is, if they’ve already paid for an inflated ticket that starts at $50 and goes to $1,250 (the range given on the team’s website). That also grants the ability to whomever has this entry pass to slip on the shirt and take a selfie next to the Robinson statue in the center field plaza. (Actually, could any of this be worse than when a beer swill company hijacked his ghost for a sketchy 2019 campaign that claimed to pay him “honor”)?
If he was asked to write the forward to a few more books written about him that strategically align with the diamond anniversary of the first time he stepped on an MLB diamond?
Given, the first three things connected to tonight’s Dodger Stadium activity almost wasn’t going to happen. The prolonged labor strife that was said to have wiped out the first week of the season was ready to chew up more of the schedule before the realization that it wasn’t a great PR move to have April 15, 2022 slip past everyone as collateral damage.
But now 50 years after his death, and 75 years after his MLB debut, these “WWJRD” are worthy asks. It is echoed in the words colleague Ron Rapoport wrote for the L.A. Times this week, an essay headlined: “Baseball reveres Jackie Robinson, but Robinson didn’t revere baseball. Here’s why”
So the feel-good institutionalization of the annual Robinson tributes has led me to a conclusion that might be uncharitable, but here it is. Baseball is lucky that Robinson died at the young age of 53 because to him the self-satisfied celebrations of Jackie Robinson Day would be just another example of white America’s patronizing indifference to the struggle of Black America.
Still, one can’t ignore this anniversary, and another opportunity to open up the Robinson-related lens for scholarly interpretations, public reflection and, of course, some shared profits along the way.
Thankfully, it is with a regal prose and elegance storytelling that Kostya Kennedy, the former Sports Illustrated senior scribe, comes up with a new framework for interpreting Robinson’s impact and legacy. Don’t expect a sweeping start-to-finish narrative here. Those have been done over and over, some exceptionally wall. With all the options to pick from, Kennedy may have leaned into his previous books on the historical importance of Joe DiMaggio and Pete Rose and set himself a path to choose a quartet of pivotal years in Robinson’s life:
It is with mixed emotions, messages and metaphors that I go against the shift in front of me and attempt to safely swing away at a new batch of baseball book reviews for 2022*.
Our favorite illustration from the last few months as the baseball labor stupor lingered on.
*- subject to our whims, whimpers and wistful memories of how much easier this once was.
Sixty one years after the 1961 season, and in my Year 61 of Life, we are all about the asterisk – that five-point heraldic star that just floats around the sentence to indicate “hang on, we need to explain more” or “don’t look at these missing letters because it can get nasty.* “
* Holy f***.
I intend to put my ass at risk, knowing there can be a huge downside to all this.
For those who aren’t up to our speed ball, it has been an exercise in empathy for the authors and efficiency on our end trying to crank out 30 reviews of new spring baseball books and post them, once a day, during the month of April. It was deemed something of a success for many years starting in 2011*.
Photo above: The baseball career of Gil Hodges is memorialized on a 52-by-16-foot mural in his hometown of Petersburg, Indiana, painted in 2009. Photo by Richard G. Biever of the IndianapolisConnection.org.
Story updated with names of Golden Era Committee members who will vote:
Our latest piece for Angelus News focuses on how Gil Hodges’ long and winding road toward an induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame will be re-enforced and augmented this time by a new documentary that highlights his Catholic faith and influence on others in “Soul of A Champion: The Gil Hodges Story.”
The vote by another one of the Hall’s Veterans Committee offshoots — a lever that was finally pulled to get the Cooperstown induction of Pee Wee Reese in 1984 and Walter O’Malley in 2008 — takes place Dec. 5.
Results will be announced that day at 3 p.m. PDT on the MLB Network.
The 16-member Hall of Fame Board-appointed electorate charged with the review of the Golden Days Era features Hall of Fame members Rod Carew, Fergie Jenkins, Mike Schmidt, John Schuerholz, Bud Selig, Ozzie Smith and Joe Torre; major league executives Al Avila, Bill DeWitt, Ken Kendrick, Kim Ng and Tony Reagins; and veteran media members/historians Adrian Burgos Jr., Steve Hirdt, Jaime Jarrin and Jack O’Connell.
The ballot with 10 names not only includes Hodges, but former Dodgers Maury Wills and Dick Allen, plus Minnie Minoso, Ken Boyer, Jim Kaat, Roger Maris, Danny Murtaugh, Tony Oliva and Billy Pierce. If we had a vote — and there is no limit on how many can be approved — we’d push for Hodges, Wills, Allen, Minoso and even consider Maris.
Alas, Hodges has been dead now longer than he was alive, and more than 50 years after his passing, one of the game’s most treasured and revered figures who somehow lacks the validation of a plaque among the game’s other elite. At the end of his playing career, he was the greatest right-handed hitting home run leader in National League history, for starters, and a key member of two World Series titles in two different cities for the Dodgers, bridging that history.
But if there was a silver lining, Gil Jr., told us recently: “You know if he’d been voted into the Hall 50 years ago, we wouldn’t be talking about him today. He’d almost be an afterthought. But because of these votes every so often, we get a chance to look at his life again and appreciate it. So maybe that’s not a bad thing.”
In that regard, we are not apt to refer to Hodges as a victim here (even though that’s what is says in the third paragraph of our Angelus story, inserted by perhaps an overzealous editor). We also aren’t keen on referring to this an “injustice,” as was inserted into the headline in the Angelus story.
We suspect Gil Hodges would rebuff that characterization as well. As we continually review the process by which he has been as close as one vote in 1993 to get in, but has received less than three votes in a recent attempt, this begs for more refinement to make sure that, despite what many agree is an egregious oversight, eventually it can be corrected. This time, perhaps, while his wife, Joan, is still with us at age 95.
It’s no wonder our reboot idea has made it to the next level. Just as it’s kinda wonderful that this reboot of “The Wonder Years” really does mean it was never destined to be a one-hit wonder. Rinse and repeat — and please vax up, mask up and power wash — as the latest edition of the Sports Media Misery Index follows the format we revived in September. Let’s Oktoberfest the pumpkin spice out of this thing together as we discuss what’s really a mess, what we might be able to somewhat tolerate, and what we are welcoming:
A NOT-SO-LOW THRESHOLD
Have you seen the one with Jamie Foxx (for MGM?) that goes, "Football not doing it for you like it used to? Can't bring yourself to care? Try betting on it. If you stand a chance of losing money on something, you'll start to care about it again."
In a money-green suit, slamming footballs on an unsuspecting gridiron amidst flamboyant pyrotechnics, this Oscar-winning, Grammy-winning, Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice-nominated, NAACP Image Award-winning actor who last June had a show on Netflix called “Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!” actually canceled after one season (!) is trying to apparently get someone fired up about the MGM Sports app.
On any given Sunday, this bizzarro version of Steamin’ Willie Beaman comes off either as ultra angry or over anxious. Perhaps he made a large wager on the Miami Sharks to triumph, and it didn’t happen (it’s cool if you bet on your own team to win, ya know), but there was a comp hotel suite and a free fish sandwich coupon at the next Las Vegas Raiders’ home game to make up for it.
Over there, J.B. Smoove is a modern-day Caesar, leading a parking lot rave attended by Patton Oswald, who proudly calls himself Carl from Waukegan. Can’t fool us. All hail Leon Black and Remy the Rat.
Both scream back and fourth about the value of Caesar’s Sports Book as the official sports betting partner of the NFL. And this isn’t just a one-off spot, but an ongoing series that may already be plotting a course as the next promo-turned-Ted Lasso series, worthy of Emmy recognition and fame.
And while Martin Lawrence might have become a new voice in DraftKings ads, the same betting company has faith that 117th leading scorer in NFL history, Martin “Automatica’ Gramatica, can try to kickstart his own educational video series by explaining how to put down a $1 bet and right away be handed $200 in free-play dough, just for allowing yourself to partnerup with the official sports betting partner of the NFL.
What a kick in the groin to us all.
Bet MGM: Here's Jamie Foxx on a green screen with explosions.
The NFL’s “new play,” as we were warned at the start of September through a New York Times headline, is about how the league is “embracing betting ads and watching the money pour in.” Where fantasy football jibber jabber may have initially been the soft body blows to in this audience in this normalizing conditioning process, the latest paid spots tied to official NFL gambling partners with elevated juice feels more like a round-house wallet punch.
Based on our consumption of the first few weeks in the league’s 102nd season, which seems to be drawing ratings up nine percent over last year and up four percent over the last “normal” schedule in 2019 (as per the Sports Business Journal), this new game plan that promotes the subtraction of your not-so-disposable income through the addition of celebrity-driven gambling endorsements is somehow going to equal a win-win proposition. Depending, of course, on how you spell “Wynn.”
While these new TV spots might constitute less than 10 percent of total sales pitches we witness in a typical broadcast, we finally started to realize how obscenely assaulting it hits our senses and sensibilities, based on what we’ve experienced in the past.
The NYT story clearly points out the hypocrisy of how this professional sports organization was once clearly on the record against any gambling pretense. It was presented as not just unlawful but unmoral, threatening the integrity of anyone who was involved. But this over-the-top pivot toward previously unshared financial windfall seems to be dependent on unsuspecting participants asked to carry endless supplies of try tinder to this firestorm.
Somehow, the Art of the Deal and the collateral damage tale of Art Schlichter have overlapped in the Venn Diagram of profiteering. Principles gave way to a group of businessman’s financial prerogative.
After a run of prison sentences that spanned two decades — brought on by a gambling addiction that led to financial fraud, theft and shattered an NFL dream — former Colts quarterback Art Schlichter has been released from prison.https://t.co/dlRi98XMh9
The Shield insists you can shield yourselves from any guilt or shame, investing not just your time and enjoyment but now all that valuable knowledge you’ve accumulated to claim a stake in the outcome of an over/under, parlay or the accumulation of some player’s statistical performance. The message is you’ve apparently have nothing to gain by passively lounging around on a Sunday afternoon it your can’t-give-it-away-on-eBay Rams’ Jared Goff jersey and begging your schizophrenic puggle tragically named Spuds McKenzie to alert someone that you’re ready for your third mojito before the two-minute halftime warning.
Our front-row seat to witness the league’s latest tone deaf approach toward its own de-evolution already features enough celebrity endorsers like Man Bun Aaron Rodgers going grunge rock on Jake from State Farm, Snoop Dogg trying to be nice by handing out Coronas on the beach that have a great chance of being recycled as beer-less glass bongs, and Liev Schreiber’s bizarre hard sell for a new soft new mattress, when everyone knows it just takes a handful of Melatonin if we’re truly concerned about our circadian rhythms.
Where is the Helpful Honda Person to perform a trademarked “random act of helpfulness” by snatching a not-so-smart phone out of your hands and tossing it off a pedestrian bridge before the any impulsive, self-inflicted stupidity can occur?
For everyone’s benefit, the very least someone in standards and practices could do it insist in enlarging the typeface of the endless paragraph in the bottom half of the TV screen at the close of the Caesars’ ad. That toxic pile of legalese supposedly absolves them taking responsibility, meant to be checked off like the terms of a new software upload.
Please hit pause, and read it. Note how many references there are to a confidential crisis counselors’ 800-number.
NBC, CBS, ABC/ESPN, Fox and even the league’s own NFL Network are confidently complicit in all this ad revenue generated from these deals. Sportico reports the NFL’s sportsbook partners have spent $50.7 million on in-game advertising since the the season started Sept. 9.
Now it’s your job to filter out the flimsy folly. It isn’t that easy with more and more media platforms launching themselves into this problematic income stream.
The folks at USA Today would be pleased if, in addition to a subscription, you understood better the basics of how to make a sports bet. It says so in these ads the insert into stories now. You will unlikely be making the face of exultation that the gentleman in this ad is making right here.
As Disney-led ESPN hints of wanting more a cut of this business, you might be confused seeing recent ESPN discards like Trey Wingo and Kenny Maynerevive their NILs careers as Caesars’ “ambassadors” in the gambling world by providing their personalized content. They don’t work for the four-letter company any more, but it doesn’t look like a clean break.
Mike Greenberg isn’t shy about supporting the official draft fantasy league of the NFL (that would be DraftKings) on his daily ESPN radio show because “it’s safe, it’s secure and it’s reliable,” so use my name as the promo code. CBS’ Phil Simms and Boomer Esiasion are equally all-in by promoting their picks as part of a FanDuel promo during NFL broadcasts on their network that goes back to a Super Bowl ad they did together last season. The Associated Press also notes in stories that FanDuel is its official odds supplier.
A Sports Illustrated Sportsbook is on its way 📑
Internet gambling operator 888 Holdings has obtained exclusive rights to the SI brand for sports & casino wagers online, as well as iGaming products.
We are getting so much pressure — and we’ve got to do these things for sponsors, No. 1 But now we’ve got to do two or three segments about fantasy football and gambling. I want to talk about the game, and I don’t want to talk about how many yards Nick Chubb is going to have tonight. That might be part of the story, and [NBC Sports executive producer] Sam [Flood] is always saying, ‘Weave that in.’ I’d like to just tell that story, rather than say ‘I think Nick Chubb is going to get 75 yards, so make sure you click there and dial that up so you can make a million dollars.’ I’m very frustrated by that. I think it’s going to nose its way into our business, and I don’t think it’s good.”
About all these ads floating around, Carlton told King: “We can stop glamorizing gambling. Stop making it seem like it’s the cool, hip thing to do. There are marketing messages out there that are not on board with gambling responsibly. I think both the leagues and operators can do a far better job in those two areas. You’re making it seem glamorous because it’s not. And changing some of the marketing plays to get people to come gamble for the first time. I think we can do better in both those areas.”
On many levels, this list is somewhat obscene. As is this from @FOS: American Gaming Association sees a record 45.2 mil Americans betting on this NFL season, up 36% from last year. AGA predicts online sports betting will grow 73% from last year to 19.5 million knuckleheads. https://t.co/bg43jKkEDM
NBC’s Al Michaelssaid before the season that “we’re in a brave new world of sorts” on going from passive gambling references “in the side door” to where now “I guess they’re allowing me to come in the front door, which is not as much fun as doing it subtly.” The funny thing is, if this is part of our brave new world of consuming NFL games on TV, we’ve become more reticent, irresolute and unsettled on this side of the betting line.
If we were the betting type, we’d wager that someday, HBO merges “Real Sports” with “Hard Knocks” to craft one of those cautionary tale series, about a series of unsuspecting NFL fans who drank the free Gatorade and still can’t buy how they squandered their income, family, respectability — go ahead and pick one — with no idea about what to do next. Bryant Gumbel will ask the question: When do you think this started? We have an idea about where to find the answer: Sometime in September, 2021. Because I was led to believe it might be a fun idea.
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OFFICIAL: @KABCRadio is the new radio home of the USC Trojans!
As a reputable institute guided by decades of knowledgeable folk in the business world, USC must have weighed all its due diligence when it decided in May of 2019 to break away from its previous radio home at ESPN’s all-sports 710-AM and rush over to sign a five-year deal with talk radio KABC-AM (790) to carry its football and basketball broadcasts. It must have known this wasn’t the KABC that once had its games in the 1970s, as well as the Dodgers, Lakers, Kings and Galaxy, as well as an exceptional sports-talk show hosted by Steve Edwards. Those talking the talk weekdays on KABC are a slew of conservative-based pablum, opinionated puffery that gives way to those advancing conspiracy theories, re-framing accurate information and won’t stop believing there’s a return to greatness. Kinda like the USC football team’s program. If only because of the Trojan Sports Network, we’ve kept KABC on our pre-set touch screen. Not any more. When we last punched up the station, USC had that Saturday afternoon contest at Washington State, middle of September, following the Clay Helton firing. When we arrived home somewhere in the third quarter, we parked the jalopy in the driveway and finished watching on the big screen. Fast foward to Monday afternoon, jumping back into the car to run some errands. KABC was left on. But as much as we’d like to hear all sides of a discussion, this disgusting ssault on reality was like nothing we could have anticipated. Back when USC’s decision makers (led by once Pennsylvania GOP governor candidate and athletic director Lynn Swann) decided to go in this direction, it must not only have known the station’s bent and financial demographics of its listeners, but believed they aligned with its own value system. It seemed somewhat deviant to leave an all-sports station home base that provided daily discussion about the teams on all its programming. But it does make sense now. We’ve deleted 790 from our pre-set, having found on our Sirius XM menu there’s more than often an ESPN Radio national broadcast of USC travails. The residual effect of getting a more concise down-the-middle account of what’s happening is also beneficial — Jorge Sedano and Tom Ramsey filled that role wonderfully on that particular afternoon as we went back and fourth from satellite to pedestrian feeds. USC’s alignment with Today’s KABC may be exactly what it desires. But we’ve found it to be a huge disconnect. Fright on.
MID-LEVEL UNCOMFORTABLE
MAD ABOUT MANNINGCAST!
I wrote about the Monday Night Football “alternate cast” featuring Peyton and Eli Manning, who apparently are brothers, and – get this – also played football themselves.
Three episodes in, and already the Peyton and Eli Manning version of “The Man Show” meets the “Coaches’ Room” from the College Football Playoff championship game MegaCast have incited reaction and review that could prove to be premature jubilation. It probably won’t, so for some, it’s good to get ahead of this and lead the charge by breaking it down and connecting the dots. We get it. “Monday Night Football” is a much easier watch now that we don’t have to watch “MNF” on the regular ESPN feed. We appreciate having “O Manning Brothers: Where Art Thou?” in this parallel universe of ESPN2. But changing television? It’s not like Norman Lear is producing this. They’ve really only made an iconic sports series that ESPN has darn-near drowned come back to life a bit through Week 3, when we’re all just trying to get our bearing again.
From the first “ManningCast” (Sept. 13: Baltimore-Las Vegas) drawing about 800,000 viewers, it has more than doubled for Weeks 2 and 3 (Sept. 20: Green Bay-Detroit’ Sept. 27: Philadelphia at Dallas) with 1.86 million and 1.89 million respectively. That shouldn’t measure its new success, considering there’s about 13 million each week who’ve stuck with the main ESPN feed, perhaps fearing they’ll get a pair of “We’re No. 1” fingers pointed at them.
Eli Manning's double bird during last night's MNF ManningCast is the latest meme from that broadcasthttps://t.co/bqbdH61y6J
Progress is evident with each new week as it finds its rhythm, its purpose and its value. They figure out when and where to engage in the action versus the plausibility to allow guests to come in and not just sidetrack things but get involved in the conversation of play guessing. Last Monday’s insertion of LeBron James not only gave him the opportunity to talk about his own football career and being once coaxed to try out for the Cowboys and Seahawks, but Peyton and LeBron could relate to how difficult it us to play against a zone defense in the NFL vs. the NBA, and LeBron had the chance to predict a Dallas rushing touchdown based on how he saw the game progressing to that point.
There’s no downside for ESPN to offering this alternate free “MNF” feed. Frankly, it’s almost two years too late, considering what viewers had to once endure with the Holey Moley of Joe Tessatore, Booger McFarland and that other NFL player who was so out of sync he decided it was easier to go back and play. The current “MNF” team better suited for a Saturday afternoon SEC broadcast — Steve Levy, Brian Griese and Louis Riddick — have nothing to sweat (for now) as ratings bear out more will see them than the Manning Family Values feed. But if you’ve got nothing invested in either the teams or players, this is a place to watch and learn, and then ESPN can also promote the educational aspects of this on its website with stories about “what we learned” from the lecture hall.
As many in the media world already are forecasting, this will also be a training ground for either/or Peyton and Eli to take their talents to a traditional broadcast booth for a major network — especially with ESPN/ABC in line for a 2026 and 2030 Super Bowl. Keep experimenting. OK, we’ll allow that the Brofest is bro-rific to this point. And, yes, it’s a crummy time to hit pause as this Monday’s Raiders-Chargers game from SoFi Stadium is coming up. So we’ll take a break, see you back in Week 7, and see if you’ve come up with fresh ways to execute the right amount of socially distant atomic wedgies and crying to dad for a bigger allowance before we exalt any of this to higher levels.
Listen up: At the end of one-hour doc that ESPN pulled together this week to recognize the 20th anniversary of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon’s run on “Pardon The Interruption” — even though Oct. 22, 2001 is the official launch, but why let that trip things up? — Kornheiser quips: “The magic of the show is 11 words: ‘Black guy, white guy, yell at each other, love each other.'” It always was, and always has been, and any network that has tried to replicate it (including ESPN) must figure that out the hard way. It is the relationship we all yearn for, if sports has to be the platform to do it, that Kornheiser and Wilbon have made look too easy going back to their days in The Washington Post newsroom — something modern newsrooms don’t even realize they’re missing. Chemistry can’t be fabricated. Maybe that was even obvious when CBS tried to create a sit-com called “Listen Up!” based on Kornheiser in 2005 with Jason Alexander in the miscast lead role (as he was also excutive producer, with Malcolm Jamaal-Warner as Wilbon). It lasted one season and 22 episodes. Maybe someday Paramount+ will give us a chance to binge watch it and reassess its value.
If you’re a daily sports news junkie and need some context for argument’s sake, this remains a valuable barometer and should have on its resume more than just three Emmys for Daily Outstanding Studio Show (2009, ’16 and ’19). It’s a little disjointed since Kornheiser has been sequestered at home during COVID, and too often guest co-hosts jump in and reveal they are OK to lip through a topic but really don’t have the foundation the show is based on to make it more than a poor substitute. As a show, it has set a new standard with the graphic menu of topics and segment titles that gave structure to what could otherwise be something the could easily slide off the rails. Their pledge “to do better next time” is also reassuring they don’t believe themselves to be perfect. But they’re as close to perfection as they can get. Also check out the four-episode podcast hosted by Pablo Torre launching Saturday.
A better-late-than-Neverett book report in 2020 words or less: If not for Orel Hershiser’s forward or all the shots provided by team photographer Jon Soohoo, we’re not sure what else could be labeled as compelling about “COVID Curveball: An Inside View of the 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers World Championship Season” scratched out by Tim Neverett, the outstandingly average fill-in TV and radio play-by-play placeholder who loves to show off his World Series ring. A “riveting inside account” is relative to how much you believe you’re getting from someone far more on the fringes trying to look in and piecing things together. Evident by basically introducing himself to readers in the introduction and going down his resume, any long-term connection to Dodgers’ followers is basically missing from this equation. In the intro, he also admits he kept his “daily chronicles a secret from the Dodgers and everyone else I worked with through the entire season so that no one would offer or withhold information, and people could operate around me without having to think that I was writing a book. I didn’t want anyone to act or do anything differently than they normally would.” In another interview, he adds: “I didn’t try to take anybody inside the clubhouse because I didn’t get there myself.” All of that can be an issue, for all involved. In an interview with the Pandemic Baseball Book Club, Neverett admits the content could have been far more tedious because “I was basically writing a journal, I had stories about everyday goings on around L.A. as well as a number of negative things happening in the building where I lived. My editor told me that I should focus on baseball, and I eventually agreed. He was right, I think—there’s really not a good spot for a lot of that stuff in this book. Ultimately we cut about 100 pages.” A 4,000-word essay for DodgerDigest.com might have been better digested. Using a publisher that doesn’t seem to be have a track record with such sporty things, and with an unreasonable delay in getting it out to the public until late August, it seemed like a missed opportunity to at least have it all done before the 2021 season began, or else it was ancient history to some. By the way, Neverett has never seemed to be anything but a nice, affable fellow, according to those who work with him. He has showed his serviceable worth at the end of September — always be available — when Dodgers’ top-notch play-by-play man Joe Davis had a positive COVID test and had to sideline himself for a time (he tells us he hopes to be back for the final two home Dodger games this weekend, with Orel Hershiser off until the appearances in the studio for the playoffs). In this wordsmith business, Neverett has never moved the needle past pedestrian, somewhat cliché and often lacking much in depth. It comes across in the book as well. Take it for what it’s worth — except the $28 ask might be more satisfying on a Dodger Postmates meat-less order of “Vegan Loaded Nachos” ($13.95) along with “Championship Rings” (that’s $5.95 onion rings) jammed inside a somewhat porous plastic helmet.
Meet Baseball’s Least Exciting Announcer – KC's Denny Matthews (not Angels' Terry Smith?) – via WSJ https://t.co/So29ikl1XB
More on how the meritocracy of mediocrity manifests itself in the Southern California professional baseball broadcasting world: True enough, Terry Smith is finishing his 20th season on Angels’ radio (and rare fill-in TV) play by play. That’s longer than anyone has done it in the team’s 60-year history, as pointed out in a newsletter blast by media connoisseur David J. Halberstam for his Sports Broadcast Journal website. Smith, after almost the same decades-long period more suitable with the Yankees’ Triple-A organization, somehow got this gig to share the radio booth with the late Rory Markas, also hired in 2002. Markas was the primary voice, with Smith as a second fiddler, until Markas’ passing in 2010 at age 54. More notably, a third voice was added that season: Jose Mota, starting on the Spanish-language side. His versatility doing of play-by-play, analyst, sideline reporter and pre- and post-game host in both English and Spanish has been worthy of Baseball Hall of Fame recognition, with an expansion of that role this season. Mota’s 20 seasons (see his 10 paragraph bio on the team site) contains far more historical impact than that of the remarkably bland four-graphs-and-out allotted to Smith. Also note that current Angels’ TV analyst Mark Gubicza also has 20 years with the team — the first five as a studio voice, the last 15 as one of the best in the business blending well with a variety of play-by-play partners (including three new this season). At some point, a night-after-night Mota-Gubicza team on TV would make the most sense. As for Smith’s tenure, it can only be explained by the assumption he comes as inexpensively as one wants to fork out. A team well off enough to control its own radio station doesn’t seem to ever want to invest anything more to improve that area of its business. The sameness of Smith, who we’ve referrred to as the “Smithers” of sports broadcasting, will remain as captivating and riveting as his name implies. Another season of the Angels’ failing to reach the playoffs must support the team’s longterm plan of selling themselves short on the radio.
And what an odd finish. You go from the rush of a @TrentRushSports call of this NCAA game then throwing it on 830 AM to Arizona to the sound of a funeral home embalmer like Terry Smith on an Angels exhibition game revealing the outcome. Nice seguay, Smithers. https://t.co/JUVXbKqEpt
Los Angeles has been so lucky to have enjoyed the talents of Jaime Jarrin for over six decades. I'm thrilled my dear pal will get to spend precious time with his family in retirement. All the best to you Jaime. https://t.co/5bQ0U58jLs
A warm embrace to Jaime Jarrin, who has announced it’s time to end his “vacation” and step back from his Dodgers’ Spanish-language broadcasting perch after the 2022 season. As much the same way as Vin Scully showed how to step aside with class and dignity, and following the exits of L.A.’s elite team broadcasters like Chick Hearn, Bob Miller and Ralph Lawler, Jarrin has always brought that sense of connection and community for those who’ve listened to his descriptions over the decades. One of them, maybe not surprisingly, is ESPN’s Jessica Mendoza, who on Tuesday’s network telecast of the Dodgers-Padres game talked about how he was “a voice I grew up listening to … in my Spanish-speaking household, my father from Mexico listened to Jaime … one of the sweetest human beings you’ll ever meet.” His Ford Frick Award/Baseball Hall of Fame credentials may not be obvious to those in other parts of the country, but in L.A., his achievements are constantly on our radar.
Jamie Jarrin, second from right, saw through my Twitter feed that I was in town visiting my son’s family and welcomed me (center), my son Andrew (far left) and his wife Cristina (right) into the broadcasting booth at PNC Park in Pittsburgh when we were there in August, 2015.
We’ve known him for many years and appreciated his generosity. For those with a deeper connection, Jarrin has been called “the spiritual godfather of every Latino in media.” Scully made it to 67 seasons; Jarrin will have 64 down after next year. What other team can claim two broadcasters with those two parallel runs and now the opportunity to step aside on their own terms?
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Many thanks to @iancass for the terrific feature piece on myself an how the writing of "YOU ARE LOOKING LIVE!" happened. https://t.co/A0wwbKusHj
From our growing list of subject matter we felt was someday deserving of a book — and one we’d hope to have time to write – the evolution of the NFL pregame show from Point A to modern times in the TV media business was high up there. Monitoring the way CBS’ “NFL Today” launched as the first half-hour network “let’s get ’em ready” show in 1967 led to a 50th anniversary recognition in 2017, and gave us an opportunity of reliving some of that with former studio analyst Irv Cross, the ex-L.A. Rams defensive back who also just wrote his autobiography at the time. He died last February at age 81. If anyone had the unimpeachable credentials of pulling this kind of oral history together of how CBS’ “The NFL Today” raised the bar for everyone’s attempt at doing it the way it is today, it would be Rich Podolsky, and he shows it so well with his new book: “You Are Looking Live! How The NFL Today Revolutionized Sports Broadcasting” (Globe Pequot / Lyons Press, 240 pages, $29.95, out Oct. 4). The sportswriter became a writer for CBS Sports programming, including this show, for more than five years and called it “exhilarating. … a dream come true,” able to go out with the crew afterward to share in storytelling and drinks. And gain valuable insight now revealed. For an excerpt, we yield to what the Sports Business Journal did recently in how anchorman Brent Musburger ended up as the one who made the call on who would replace Phyllis George.
George, hired in ’74, was the first female host on any major sports network show. After three seasons, her deal was up (although she came back from ’80-’84, then went to CBS News). Eventual George replacement winner Jayne Kennedy explained:
“There were 16 of us [auditioning] and I was maybe number 14. So I did my thing with Brent on camera and the five-minute athlete interview, and after I was done Brent stood up and said, ‘That’s it. It’s either Jayne or nobody.’ He didn’t even stay to interview the other two girls. He just left the studio.” Who were the other two, or the previous 13? We now need to know. The story continues: “Everyone — director Bob Fishman, (producer) Mike Pearl, (executive) Kevin O’Malley, and (networks sports president) Frank Smith, agreed that Jayne was their choice. ‘It was unanimous,’ said O’Malley, ‘and I remember Fishman saying, ‘You couldn’t make her look any less gorgeous if you tried.’” She thought the job was hers. Then she was told she had to wait for one final approval. ” ‘They couldn’t hire me, for fear of the Southern affiliates walking. They sent my audition tape to the Southern affiliates and asked what they thought. CBS was afraid it would be a problem because now they would have two Blacks and one white on the set. That’s when they decided to put Jimmy The Greek on the set too. That way they had two Blacks and two whites [to satisfy the Southern affiliates].’ ” Kennedy was only given a six-week contract. It was only expanded to the full year when she, through her contacts, was able to land an interview with Muhammad Ali prior to his Sept., 1978 fight with Leon Spinks. Kennedy was eventually let go with more drama and … that was how the show kept rolling forward. Podolsky has more to explain about the book when he appeared on the NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football.”
As for more on Ali … The recently completed four-part PBS Ken Burns documentary didn’t really teach us anything news through the famed filmmakers’ filter, much like his piece on Jackie Robinson. But it’s worth having in the archives, available for streaming for those who still want to consume it versus seeing various based-on-a-true-story films or books done on Ali over the years. If you’re into the search of other things that landed this past month but are worthy of having tucked away, there’s the HBO four-part series “Level Playing Field,” which launched in mid-September and has one more episode left, available on HBO Max, produced by Vox Media Studios. HBO also gave us (and HBO Max continues to have access to) the six-episode docuseries “The 100 Foot Wave” with surfer Garrett McNamara that aired in August and has been renewed for a second season.
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My dad just called me to tell me about Jessica Mendoza and Melanie Newman calling the Dodgers/Padres game tonight on ESPN because, “it’s important, awesome and something you should watch and be proud of!” -my dad. He’s a good one.
Hearing Melanie Newman, Jessica Mendoza and Billie Jean King have conversation about baseball during a Padres-Dodgers game is giving me all the feels! #mlbpic.twitter.com/24b2qiEYIn
First things first: Yes, less could be made about this “first female narrative” that continues to come up with some twist of phrasing. Hey, it’s 2021. We’re on board. Just do it. ESPN’s remote pairing of Melanie Newman and Jessica Mendoza calling Wednesday’s phenomenal ending to the Dodgers-Padres telecast from Dodger Stadium (blacked out in the L.A. market) gave the network pause to proclaim it was creating the first “all woman broadcast team for a nationally televised MLB game” as well as “the first time ESPN has had an all-woman broadcast for a MLB, NBA or NFL game.” Put it out there in a post-season matchup, and then we’re talkin’.
Orioles broadcaster Melanie Newman will have another “first” tonight when she joins with Jessica Mendoza to broadcast a MLB game on ESPN. Yes, she’s helping to blaze trails for women broadcasters. But who is she? Where’d she come from? My profile piece: https://t.co/uQ17QX8Jf5
ESPN had already elevated Mendoza to an MLB “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcast position but then “reassigned her” (maybe it has something to do with her side job with the New York Mets?) in 2020. Last July, the MLB production of a Baltimore-Tampa Bay game exclusive for YouTube had an all-female broadcast team where Newman, who works for the Orioles, did the play-by-play. She’s also come on recently to do ESPN mid-week games. For other “female firsts” this past month, we saw the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks hire 45-year-old Lisa Byington as their new full time TV play-by-play broadcaster (with Marques Johnson) upon the retirement after 35 years by Jim Paschke. Her hiring was called “the first full-time female TV play-by play announcer for a major US men’s pro team.” Said Byington: “I applaud the Bucks for taking the first steps toward making hires like this more of the norm in the NBA. Because it’s time.” A couple weeks later came this:
Bay Area broadcaster Kate Scott is poised to become the voice of the 76ers, only the second woman to hold a full-time, play-by-play role with a major U.S. sports franchise. Story: https://t.co/qgS0lIj44R via @sfchronicle
Also in September, Jamie Little finished a season on Fox’s ARCA Series as the first female play-by-play broadcaster, elevated from her role as a NASCAR pit reporter. Coming up this weekend, The Golf Channel/NBC Sports has an an all-women broadcast team to call the ShopRite LPGA Classic in New Jersey, framing it as the “first-ever all-women golf broadcast team in U.S. television history.” Over the years, we have been on board writing about these “firsts” in gender experiences, some of which are just a one-off, a test-run, and for whatever reason don’t go far enough. Maybe they still need to be pointed out so we can get past this latest pendulum overswing of justice and try to accept it as far more normal than the media tends to trumpet it.
A few more specific links to stories and other assorted whatnot that brightened up our previous September:
This may be the best-written MLB-related sports story you'll find composed this season and without even talking to the person it's about. Congrats to @TimKeownESPN on this gem:https://t.co/hGgW26SELC
Heartwarming to see a documentary @MikeTollin (with Mandalay Sports Media) has been waiting decades to have the perfect climax for the late great @DickAllen_15 — meaning, will there be a @baseballhall induction or not? –now has a target date to finish.https://t.co/O70bFFNYLw
After his History Channel documentary picked up a handful of Emmy nominations, Russell Westbrook is getting back in the producer’s chair before the Lakers’ season tips off.https://t.co/01gM9V3nlN
A Netflix show finally made Americans care about Formula 1, @amandamull writes. In an era of declining interest in sports, other leagues should take notes. https://t.co/fAmVO0umKy
But you don't want to sound insensitive to what's really going on in the world. However … if a stadium can pack 50,000 fans these days, and the press boxes are sparse, it seems so doable. The calls you can't make are noticeable, but not always critical, so hang in there. https://t.co/jDogh8mqtD
Back, back, back when we were once lancing free at the Los Angeles Times, the creation of the maniacal Sports Media Misery Index was our small-but-regular check and balance on the temperature of what sort of things we learned, liked and loathed at various points in time during our media consumption. Our own dysfunctional erectile thermometer pointing true south. With the complete acknowledgment that perhaps we’ve missed this more than you did, here’s a calculated risk in trying to make a call to the bullpen and bring this back when we feel it becomes slightly necessary. Like, now. With summer all but gone, and the fantasy of football coming back to haunt us, the Sports Media Index labors into September, 2021:
A NOT-SO-LOW THRESHOLD
There is still joy in listening to Vin Scully call a game, reinforced the other day on SportsNet LA — one of those “Timeless Dodger” telecasts from June, 2016, Vin’s final season. The headline was giving us the chance to watch Corey Seager’s three-homer game versus Atlanta during his Rookie of the Year season. But we didn’t stick with it because of that. At one point, the TV camera points to the dugout. There’s the 22-year-old Seager, after one his fencebusters, sitting next to and talking with the 19-year-old Julio Urias. Scully comments, rather matter-of-factly, about how these two young men will someday lead the team to greater feats and accomplishments. As if he knew that would give us chills five years later when were to recall how the 2020 World Series played out. How does he do that? Still? With all the anxieties and imperfections and upside-down MLB decisions that keeps getting thrown at our psyche, who couldn’t use a refresher batch of a Scully Marathon. Not just to fill programming on a 24/7 channel loop, but do wonders for the soul. Sirius XM has channels devoted to the Beatles, Springsteen, Elvis and the Beach Boys (which somehow they moved and we can’t find it, just as they’ve released a new retro boxed set). They devote a channel to the Rolling Stones after the passing of Charlie Watts, and it’s brilliant to hear their songs again, to interpret the drum beats and the authentic way he contributed to their sound. The Sounds of Scully could be alone the price of the monthly RSN fees for SportsNet LA, which doesn’t seem to be doing too badly these days in its musical chairs distribution game. That said, at least during this SportsNet LA airing, there were no commercials popping up for the latest Scully-related things to knee-jerkingly consider purchasing.
Scully, who will turn 94 in November, was telling us recently that he’s doing good but a bit lonely. He’d been watching a lot of things on TV in his room — especially English soccer. A sport he says he’d have the nerve to call because “I have no idea what’s going on.” We had a nice long talk, and I posted a few highlights. Nothing on the record. Then the L.A. Times’ Bill Plaschke did his own Q&A with Scully shortly thereafter, and that’s the story, morning glory.
Last September, Scully was talked into getting a Twitter account, which could then promote the fact he was going to sell off a bunch of his memorabilia — rings, awards, golf clubs. He raised about $1 million and said the proceeds were going to charity as well as his family. All fine and dandy. But lately, something popped up called shopvinscully.com, where someone is in the process of peddling “Vin Scully merch.” It’s not clear who is behind it, where the proceeds go, or, most importantly, why it’s needed. Adult T-shirts are selling for $35 each, a youth shirt at $30 and an adult sweatshirt for $67. If only there was a small blanket we could wrap ourselves into in a time of need, but … who’d really be getting fleeced? This comes on the heels of Scully’s business manager, Dennis Gilbert, introducing him the bizarreness of selling off NFT — something of course Scully had to have explained to him.
How to milk an NIL 101: Yes, Vin was explained what an NFT is:https://t.co/NrSIg3DKVm But c'mon. So, so sad that Go-Go Gilbert is the point man leading Vin to some quick cash in the process. Why not write a book? Please, let's stop at cameo calls and reverse mortgages https://t.co/GjMEi4OhWA
The auction included a chance to go to a game with Gilbert in those backstop seats — Scully said he wasn’t part of the package. It topped out at $5,800. All 140 of Scully’s story about Kirk Gibson and the 1988 World Series sold out at $88 apiece. There are still less than 100 left of the original 255 of Scully talking about Sandy Amorous’ 1955 World Series catch at $32 each. How about as we go forward, pump the breaks on Scully Branding opportunities tugging at our nostalgic heartstrings — fungible or otherwise. His relationship to Twitter still draws a smile, especially when he discovered how he could personal make something trend. His participation on Twitter now is a sweet deal — it hasn’t moved to a pay tier yet, but that’s always a business plan someone might consider. Twitter is free, but still doesn’t seem to fit his personality. There is too much sniping on the social media site that forces some of us to just give it up on some days. With Vin, it’s a win-win situation to dictate a post, just to check in. But it now seems to have ulterior motives, to keep his brand fresh with hip demographics so that it can be monetized when the mood strikes. Unfollow. And, for the record: Please, no Go-Go Gilbert ideas about Vin pitching reverse mortgages or Cameo calls. Or as Vin might be paraphrased, if you want to make God smile, tell him your memory-milking schemes.
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A legal-binding shot-gun wedding this past June blissfully uniting Fox Sports with Clay Travis apparently bypassed any sort objection by someone who didn’t want to hold their piece of credibility. It is a marriage of convenience — the parent company network that leans on its crutch of fact-challenged bloviation united with one who provides the same guaranteed nerve reactions in the sports world by Travis’ Outkick.com platform.
A place that really isn’t “OK” as the logo implies, and asks one immediately if they want to sign up for “facts” delivered to their inbox every morning, with the choices of “Yes, Count Me In” or “No, I Prefer Mainstream Bias.”
Give an idiot two choices, and he’ll pick the one that he doesn’t even realize proves what everyone else already knows about him. Or her. Or them. Or whatever they hate these days. This relationship’s first act of attention-grabbing anarchy is having Travis become an element of their otherwise predictably re-unwatchable (now that Urban Meyer has left) “Big Noon Kickoff,” where Clay will be traveling to Fox- and FS1-covered college football games — played in the South, speaking to his backward fan base. It starts with Georgia-Clemson on Saturday. Then to Texas-Arkansas in Week 2 and Alabama-Florida in Week 3 — complete with a tour bus with an oddly decorated photograph to attract the months.
CFB fans: ideally we'd like some high production value, minimal hot takes pre-game covera-
Fox: you're getting a Clay Travis bus tour
Fans: wait wha-
Fox: also we gave him tattoos and made him yoked for no reason
You can just look away, as most with some sense of personal protection should. But if you enjoy the pain, check out the many disturbing facets to this farcical arrangement, which Fox explains in its press release: “Outkick is an omnichannel leader in sports, opinion, politics, and pop culture content across its radio, podcasts, online and social outlets, as well as being one of the foremost sources of sports wagering information in the United States. Further, Outkick has an incredible track record in the wagering category, serving as one of the most successful sources of referrals to FanDuel sportsbook.” In the hands of that Southern base, Clay becomes more clayful, to mould into their own NIL. Best get a vaccination shot if you plan to be within 100 yards of his coverage.
Imagine CFB gameday except without the preachy BLM woke glop we endured. Imagine celebrating our traditions with the joy and not being guilted every other segment. Yeah – I’m here for that.
Writes man above from the South with dozens of followers. Perhaps forgive them, for they not know how far they E-I-E-I-owe Fox to continue as their beacon of hateful hope while submerged too far into their own howdy doody.
Anyone who tries to give ESPN a pass in this whole Bishop Sycamore-IMG high school football game telecast debacle hasn’t been paying to all the info dug up in the AwfulAnnouncing.com ball-to-ball coverage, with even the dubious Deadspin.com as well. It’s right in their wheelhouses.
Awful Announcing will have another Bishop Sycamore article coming out soon. Please read our message board post in the meantime. This one is absolutely bonkers https://t.co/1FinZ61HqE
ESPN’s passing the buck on this one is even more hypocritically and morally obtuse than anything else it has tried to bait-and-switch this past month — it doesn’t even come close to the Jump-the-shark yarn that festered to the New York Times’ radar and led to the departure of Maria Taylor because of what Rachel What’s-Her-Name told someone on a recorded phone call mess. Those who chased their own tails trying to follow on that one must realize now they were sucked into “ESPN has a pervasive race problem” narrative with something that sounds like another bad episode of “Friends” must see now that the real exploitation of some high school kids who trust adults to help them make life-altering decisions is far more tragic, and ESPN is complicit in the crime to kids predominantly of minority races.
So … what if on whatever high school games that come on this year on ESPN (with the help of its accomplices in the contracted marketing company), fans in the stands buy up and start wearing these Bishop Sycamore T-shirts. It may not be that obvious to the casual viewer, but those who know, will know, and realize that Centurions Lives Matter.
And there’s a very good reason why Tigers game analyst and Baseball Hall of Fame jackass Jack Morris won the battle for Deadspin Idiot of the Month honors for August. “If I offended you …” Maybe you didn’t. But that apology sure did. Shoulda listened to how Stephen A. Smith did his.
Jack Morris mocks an Asian accent as Ohtani comes to the plate. Embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/LKLTKiDE7C
Bet we can wrap up the NBC Tokyo Olympics coverage in one tweet. OK, have at it:
The kind of Q that needs to be asked in today's media world … Does NBC "strike (balance) between the idealistic, internationalist spirit of the Olympics and the home-country boosterism needed to juice viewer interest"? https://t.co/lV68N76FjU
David J. Halbertstam, a sports broadcasting industry veteran (and no relation to the real David Halberstam, author extraordinaire), has achieved a variety of roles in the business, and luckily votes on the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award for lifetime achievement. He decided to post a list in mid-August on his website of what he believes to be “Southern California’s top all-time play-by-play voices.” His Top 16 is topped off by Scully, Chick Hearn and Dick Enberg. He decided to wedge in Ralph Lawler ahead of Bob Miller — perhaps not our choice, but then we did push Lawler to finally get recognition in the Basketball Hall of Fame before his retirement with the Clippers, but always knew Miller was Hockey Hall of Fame material and needed no campaign (same with Nick Nickson). It starts to run out of some steam with Jerry Doggett somehow included, ahead of Tom Kelly, and Bob Starr, and Pete Arbogast … The particulars are there for debate. The beauty of lists, it must be pointed out. We all read and learn. In 2013, we did a similar exercise — the “most influential” of all time. We wanted to keep it at 10, but went to 11 to include the Raiders’ Bill King. We didn’t rank our picks, but we look back now and are pleased our choices included the likes of Frick Award winner Jaime Jarrin, Dick Lane (famed for roller derby and boxing) as well as Fred Haney, a Pacific Coast League broadcaster who influenced the likes of Enberg growing up in the San Fernando Valley. We showed Halberstam our list, which he said he’d never seen before. As long as he was impressed, we’re good. We at least could agree on another thing: Charley Steiner would likely never be on any sort of “best of” lists, no matter his length of service in the L.A. market. We actually recruited Halberstam to help us with a critique of Steiner around the 2018 World Series — when we had enough of his “contagiously imprecise descriptions” and put forth the idea that his time on the air must have been affecting his ability to do simple things, like follow the flight of a ball. Maybe it’s time soon to compare notes with Halberstam on an all-time worst list. Got any ideas?
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Charley Steiner and I making sure they had not removed our pictures from the Bradley University Sports Hall of Fame. pic.twitter.com/GVwd6vqC29
The Dodgers’ set of media notes prior to their Aug. 27 game included the fact that Steiner, in his 17th year with the team, was announced as part of the “25th Mountain Valley Conference Hall of Fame class” as a 1971 graduate of Bradley University — a school that allowed him to buy the naming rights to its “Charley Steiner School of Sports Communication,” and notes that it is “the first named sports communication school in the nation.” He was also included in the National Radio Hall of Fame in November 2013. More power to him trying to follow the trajectory of his career from here until retirement as he tries to dream up another rehearsed ad-lib he can use on the air from his living room watching on TV if the Dodgers win back-to-back titles.
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Today's world: We duly note that @espn, during its @LLWSLive coverage today, runs promos at the bottom right of the screen for its new gambling-related "character-driven re-enactment" show @Espngreeny will host on @ESPNPlus. The net has seen better days (traditional spelling) pic.twitter.com/mSiXVpxSAe
One of the newest show on ESPN’s pay-to-view platform called ESPN+ (we don’t get it, on many levels, no matter how Disney wants to us to bundle and save as if we were buying unprogressive car and home insurance) involves Mike Greenberg hosting a dramatization of some of the wacky things that can happen in sports gambling. So cool to see the promo for it during the Little League World Series, the latest step in normalizing sports wagering. C’mon, it’s all innocent fun. Just like watching 12-year-old kids on TV crying after their team loses a game in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. This year, they don’t have to worry about all those foreign teams coming over to challenge them for the title. COVID says you’re welcome. Premiere channels to draw viewer money is like paying the extra $50 at Disneyland to park closer to the entrance, or giving up and finally kicking in the extra $5 a month for USA Today to read some exclusive rewrite of a press release. One can find value in it. But inch by inch, we’re watching our freedoms monetized. Because they can be, and will be, for someone else’s benefits. ESPN+ is a minus when it comes to another tier of disconcerting programming that plays into how sports channels are getting viewers comfortable with having more live events diverted onto their premium services. So just weeks after NBC laid on us an abundance of prime-time beach volleyball from Tokyo during the Summer Olympics, it recently bypassed showing any of the iconic AVP Manhattan Beach Open on its NBC network of NBCSN all-sports cable feeds (the later of which will soon fade away). Instead, it harness all the content onto Peacock streaming service — one level is free, then there are two more that run $4.99 and $9.99 a month. Notre Dame’s first college football home game of the season against Toledo on Sept. 11 (after the Irish opener at Florida State this Sunday afternoon on ABC) will be on Peacock Premium upgrade, but there is surely a lure to sign up for free just to get you situated, like the frog in the cool pot of water that doesn’t notice how the flame underneath is at a low setting so that it can get acclimated to a warmer and warmer surrounding, soon to perish under the boil. Because by that time, you’ll already be somewhat OK with an idea somewhere sooner than later that a Super Bowl can be justified worthy of a premium service stream just like a boxing event or a fantastically phony WWE spectacle.
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Listening to your show today is so heartbreaking. You've pointed out that it was COVID related. At age 45. I hope to high heaven he was at least vaccinated. And if not, please make this a cautionary tale. Again. His story at his GoFundMe page 🙏⚾️☮️: https://t.co/0vjPycTNZuhttps://t.co/gPd5aQC9KH
On August, 18, KLAA-AM (830) afternoon drive talk show host Roger Lodge lost his longtime producer, James Allen. He lost a bout with COVID. The greater loss is to Allen’s wife and four daughters. A service in Whittier is coming up Tuesday. A GoFundMe page has nearly raised $50,000 to help the family he leaves behind. Please, on as many levels as you can comprehend this, do what you can to prevent something this tragic from happening to those you love. It should be that difficult.
A HIGHER TOLERANCE
THANK YOU, JACKIE MAC!
Here are some highlights from our farewell show for the G.O.A.T.H. 🐐
Bon voyage to the good ship Jackie MacMullan, exiting ESPN’s “Around the Horn” this week on her final show Tuesday filled with a variety of really sweet tributes. She was then pit against Bob Ryan in the final segment and, of course, declared the winner. Whatever you win on that thing. Now, at age 60, she says he’s retiring.
Wonderful homage to a tremendous journalist, trailblazer and someone I'm proud to call a friend and mentor. Congrats Jackie on charting your own unique path throughout your HOF career! https://t.co/glTFqjnj8E
In 2012, she was part of a story we did about the 40th anniversary of Title IX impact on women in sports journalism. MacMullen, a former Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated columnist, was fittingly the first woman to receive the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame media award
Otherwise, she still hasn’t Tweeted since June, 2011. That’s an achievement in itself. And this one still holds up.
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Without the lanes paved by the likes of MacMullan, we don’t doubt there would be any sort of legitimate discussion about how someone like Mina Kines could be using her appearances on the ESPN sports-blabbering circuit to reach a point in any conversation about how someday she could legit join the ESPN “Monday Night Football” team. Not sideline reporter. As analyst/color commentator/information provider. This possibility has been on many a radar for awhile, yet it wasn’t really broached in this L.A. Times profile last September. It finally was pushed more forward during a Twitter exchange with former ESPN TV mate Dan LeBatard in early August:
Yes. And I think they need to be smart and put you in the Monday Night Football booth because your analysis is better than anyone’s and no one cares more about football or is better on football than you are.
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) August 6, 2021
There’s good reason why Kimes was given a couple of reps during the NFL exhibition season to put on her sizzle reel. ESPN allowed her to join the Disney-owned KABC-Channel 7 broadcast team of pro’s pro Andrew Siciliano and the otherwise undecipherable Aqub Talib on a Rams’ home and road contest. That first one was also simulcast on the NFL Network. There’s work to be done in the live-game shaping, but at the very least, she was never caught with her pants down on the Rams’ telecasts, never sounding like a frilly, misplaced sideline reporter who kept turning on her mike at the 40 yard line to prove she had inside info. Kimes’ development in this area, on the heels of what Andrea Kremer was doing with Thursday Night Amazon Prime streaming in 2018, continues to prove that it’s a talent that needs its reps, and reinforces how someone like an Erin Andrews has absolutely no shot at this kind of consideration no matter what network employs her despite her own feelings of import.
If a MNF crew could once sub in non-NFL types like Dennis Miller or Tony Kornheiser at various points in the show’s de-evolution, the thinking is that there would be progress in many ways if more was bestowed on Kimes, if something could be slow grilling to be ready for the start of the 2022 season opening doubleheader. When perhaps Kimes could work with Beth Mowins and possibly put that idea out there that began in 2017.
Kimes over Rex Ryan, any day. Add to that, Kimes has this story and video produced on her discussion with Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert — more proof she’s got the goods.
Read @minakimes on Justin Herbert, an introvert who tells us how we misunderstand introverts — and by doing so, how we misunderstand quarterbacks.https://t.co/od6bWHQZwk
Usually if the media outlet tells me it's a "must-read," I resent it a bit. So let it come from a reader instead: @LATimesfarmer always takes it to the house, and does again here with @NateBoyer37 story. Must you read it? Yes. And learn from it.https://t.co/lK0udi7NWk
"This is going to be a tremendous war," one person familiar with Bauer's approach said. "He's a person who needs complete and total vindication. So he's gonna fight this to the death. Maybe his own death."https://t.co/gtCF6Kqj5d
Thx @mikefreemanNFL for simple research to show how abhorrently hypocritical @nfl (and others) are about gambling partnerships. It will not end well. Anyone who has seen a family member/colleague break their bank & career on this slip-n-slide knows.https://t.co/Rh24GIdrEQ
W/ my dad today. "Have you read this?" he asks as he pulls out "The Last Cowboys." He's a huge fan of Westerns & Louis L'Amour. "Well, yeah, I gave that to you for Father's Day a few years ago." "Boy, I was reading it again. What a helluva book." "Yup, I know." @JohnBranchNYThttps://t.co/zNBFOM1q6A
It may be easy to see why teams (and commissioners) have reversed field on gambling partners. But it doesn't mean it will end well. Or media is immune. Funny how @SINow tackle this topic while it trumpets its own shoddy @SIGambling site. Follow the slime..https://t.co/SHzMAm7hAT
Thank you for keeping the @DufRankman byline alive. Maybe explain higher up why this means something to some of us instead of way down in the tagline?https://t.co/ZdsyltfXvr
Why does this smell like another Scott Boras-planted story to float out there? And how does this piece not even mention the Angels already have a prime-time SS they should lock up with a long-term deal ASAP? https://t.co/ujtyAj5lNX
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 