From the moment this Yankee Stadium opened in 2009, it has become a headquarters for the preposterous.
On Day 1, “Bottom Line” Bud Selig, aware of complaints about preposterous ticket pricing — $650 per for low infield seating, $1,500-$3,000 per for moat-surrounded backstop seats — declared to Michael Kay on YES that he had “personally inspected” all the seat pricing and found it to be “affordable.”
Starting on Day 2, that preposterous claim became self-evident as the best seats in the house began to appear empty — and have mostly remained that way, today, 15 years later. Yet, Kay and the rest of the obedient propagandists among the legions of Yankee broadcasters, as well as most compliant independent in-ballpark media, have failed to note, let alone make an issue, of a greedy shame that can’t be missed.
Then there was the preposterous explanation from Yankees exec Lonn Trost, who said in a radio interview that charging less for those seats would be unfair to those who already bought them. So reducing their cost for all was not an option?
Trost also said that those seats often only appear empty but belong to patrons who choose to watch the games on large TVs located in the luxury dining room.
So those seats — the best in the house and just a few yards from those TVs — are purchased for tens of thousands of dollars by those who travel to The Bronx to watch games on TV?
Besides, having twice checked during games, once on a very warm, sweaty night, I know this to be untrue.
Now the preposterous arrives daily from Aaron Boone, who defends the indefensible — his wildly expensive team’s lazy, check-me-out base running, home plate posing, fundamentally bereft “skills” and his pregame-scripted ants-in-his-pants pitching changes that invite unneeded and unwanted intrigues.
Last week Boone left the city shocked and awed when he did what he should’ve done seven years ago when he began to manage the Pinstripe Pride Yankees. He benched a player, albeit for only a few innings, for not hustling.
Gleyber Torres be stood and watched one of those “I thought” home runs, thus landing at first when second base was just a short sprint away.
Such shameless moments throughout baseball are now more plentiful and repetitive than laying down a sacrifice bunt late in close games. Why? Er, ah, “The game has changed.” The half-answer that now explains everything — and nothing.
But the preposterous was just beginning. After the game, Boone:
“I just felt like I needed to [bench him] in that spot,” Boone said. “… He and I have spoken and hopefully this is a great learning moment for all of us.”
Torres has been a Yankee for seven years. He still has to learn why running to second is better than jogging to first then stopping?
Even Torres knew better, saying he’s been a big leaguer too long not to know better.
Yet Boone also said that “playing hard is overrated.”
Fascinating! He played 12 years in the majors, reaching the top and staying there because he played hard! He had 216 doubles. How? By jogging?
Twice one-dimensional preposterously overpaid Giancarlo Stanton was disabled because he was forced to awkwardly slide into second after jogging to first.
For crying out loud, Boone was the manager when Stanton posed an “I thought/hoped” home run off the left field wall in Fenway into a single — during a one-and-done 2021 wild-card loss! Was that not a “great learning moment?”
But watching baseball destroy baseball has been much like NBC wrecking these Olympics tethered to a mumbling Snoop Dogg freak show and Colorado handing its football program to Agent of God flim-flammer Deion Sanders. It becomes a matter of time before retaining what’s left beneath your dignity
In recent days, two TV promos have appeared.
One, narrated by Derek Jeter, shows only moving images of MLB players showing off. No baseball, only the antithesis of how Jeter played.
The other, seen on YES to promote “Juan Soto Bobblehead Night” did not include even a glimpse of Soto playing baseball, just posing, bat-flipping and other acts of self-aggrandizement.
On Sunday, two days after Torres’ brief benching, Soto emulated Torres, or was it vice versa? Soto hit a high fly to left that was a home run by an inch, as it bounced off the top of the wall. Soto was seen standing and watching. There was no benching, no scolding from the Yanks’ TV booth, as if we’d been watching with our eyes closed.
Boone was right: “Playing hard is overrated.”
Serena’s self-entitled act invades Paris Olympics
Not that ESPN’s tennis voices or ESPYs folks will cease telling us that we all adore her, but Serena Williams remains a rotten loser. In Paris for the Olympics, she was publicly outraged that she and her kids were “denied” entrance as the restaurant was booked.
She failed to add that she was offered a patio table, but her rude self-entitlement and disingenuous versions of the truth, as was said on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, “spans the globe.”
But what did she expect from such antisocial messaging? Universal sympathy or mockery?
Had I been the maitre d’ I’d have handed her the reservations list and asked her to choose some patrons to call and tell them, “I am Serena Williams! YOU are being denied entry tonight, so that I, Serena Williams, and my kids, can have your table!
“And if you don’t like it, as I told a lineswoman at the U.S. Open, I swear to God, I’ll take this f—ing ball and shove it down your f—ing throat!”
En francais, of course.
Ron Darling, Sunday on SNY, said what many of us have long thought: Catchers who “frame” pitches to “steal” strikes are too often TV-aided fantasy. Good umpires ignore it, or at least don’t delay their calls to lean forward to even consider it, while lesser umps are too busy focused on the pitch rather than the catcher’s glove after it’s caught.
NBC consistently abandoned completing Olympic stories to “USA! USA!” sells. For example, after the U.S. two-women beach volleyball team defeated Italy, did the teams swap handshakes? NBC left it to a guess as it cut to slow-mo replays of the celebrating U.S. women and shots of people waving American flags. As if that couldn’t wait five seconds.
Class dismissed, continued: The Jays’ Vlad Guerrero Jr. publicly sanctioned or suspended for arriving at second then giving the Yanks a vulgar “full arm” salute? Under Rob Manfred? As if he gives a hoot about baseball.
Someone at SNY — if such a someone exists — should let Steve Gelbs know that the next time he subs for Gary Cohen he should show up as Steve Gelbs and not a bad imitation of Will Rogers.
Reader Joe Napoleone advocates NYC as host of the next Olympics: “Instead of swimming in the polluted Seine, they can use the Gowanus Canal.”
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