At roughly $40 million per, the NFL employs more than a mere commissioner. In Roger Goodell, the league also contracts a social engineer, the kind who cowardly chooses to ignore those problems he should fix – the increasing criminality of NFL players comes to mind – in favor of fixing what’s not broken.
To that end, this season Goodell’s plan is to include two pregame national anthems at marquee events — the traditional one, which I guess now is explained as the “white” anthem, and the new addition and largely unknown “black” national anthem.
To think that Goodell is dense enough to believe that such a separate-but-equal public relations scheme will promote good will as opposed to divisiveness.
What will happen this season? Should black fans stay seated during the “white” anthem? After all, Goodell has implied that the standard version is not for blacks.
Should white customers remain seated during the “black” anthem? Goodell has clearly indicated that it’s not being played for the NFL’s white fans.
And what to do with those misguided souls, black and white, who might still feel as if we should all be united under just one anthem? Should they seek race counseling? Will group sessions be segregated?
Will there be enough security at games willing to break up race-based brawls?
Why doesn’t Goodell have NFL stadiums further divide by race? Have race-specific entrances, water fountains, concession stands, parking lots, rest rooms? His anthem plan resurrects such long-gone racist history.
Only a pandering boob who exercises no foresight would even consider such a plan, let alone enact it. But Goodell has allowed attending or watching an NFL game to become a political exercise, an avenue to express and stress racial discord as opposed to watching a football game.
And as a white minority – I’m also a Jew – who was raised to recognize wrong from right and never black from white – I’m tired, make that sick and tired, of being tacitly condemned as a racist by sports commissioners who work in mortal fear of being called racist by the selectively blind, outraged, wishful and politically ambitious.
If Goodell truly believes that the NFL’s white fans are in need of a racial awakening and makeover, just say that, rather than install repugnant reminders, starting with separate national anthems.
Boone searches hard for ways to lose
Of course, I saw it. It was hard to miss. Yankees manager Aaron Boone again played bullpen roulette until he landed on a reliever to blow the game. He does so every chance he gets, thus, until further notice, he’ll do so again and again.
But he’s no different from most MLB managers who work off computer spreadsheets loaded with analytic fantasy scripts. The actual game? Ignore it. Don’t believe your lying eyes!
Thursday in Boston, the Yankees had the Red Sox beaten until Boone removed reliever Luis Cessa – for no good reason.
With the Yankees up, 3-1, in the eighth, Cessa entered and made all-gone, 1, 2, 3, on just five pitches. Perfect. And with the DH, no worries about pinch-hitting for the pitcher.
But Boone went to designated closer – don’t leave home without one! – Chad Green in the ninth. Soon the Yankees were 5-4 losers in 10.
But new-standard, mind-throttling senselessness remains the specialty of all the houses. In the fourth, one could see why Brett Gardner is batting .191. He had a 2-0 count against starter-without-portfolio Tanner Houck, righty pitcher versus lefty batter, thus Gardner loaded up to swing for Uranus and beyond.
The next pitch was so far inside it hit Gardner – but not before he swung at it!
In the words of Maynard G. Krebs (the G. stood for Walter): “What an age we live in!”
Last week, during Mets-Pirates on SNY, Keith Hernandez spoke of appearing on “Kiner’s Korner” and how Ralph Kiner would slip his guests a $100 bill.
I always thought it was $50, but one night at Shea, as a kid reporter in 1978, I was taught an early lesson in “follow the money.”
The Pirates’ Bert Blyleven had just beaten the Mets, 1-0, when he was headed back toward the field to do the postgame radio show back to Pittsburgh. His catcher, Ed Ott, stopped him to tell him they wanted him on Kiner’s show.
Blyleven shrugged and was about to continue back toward the field, when Ott added, “They pay 50 bucks.”
Blyleven did a fast 180 and headed for Kiner’s Korner.
It’s not just Boone: Tuesday, in the Dodgers’ 8-6 win over the Giants, three relievers who totaled one hit allowed in four innings were replaced.
Monday, Angels manager Joe Maddon, who tried to lose the 2016 World Series for the Cubs with absurd pitching changes, removed Shohei Ohtani, placing him in the outfield after he had pitched six scoreless innings. The Angels then lost to the Athletics, 4-1.
Mets radio man Wayne “Promo Code: Wayne” Randazzo is another who has sold his name, position and reputation to a sports gambling site. Seems he’d like everyone within the sound of his voice to have at least one bet on the game he’s calling.
Selective media shyness
There’s too much suspicion attached to this Naomi Osaka saga about her serious, heart-rending fear of media and the public’s glare to swallow it whole.
Why then does she pose for the cover of Sports Illustrated’s hubba-hubba swimsuit edition? Why did she shun interviews except those conducted by the Japanese TV entity to which she’s under contract?
And Friday, Osaka became the international showpiece of Japan’s Olympic Games’ opening ceremony.
Sorry to be so cynical, but when two plus two equals anything other than four …
Florida remains headquarters to highly compromised Florida football players – student-athletes – recruited by highly compromised Florida colleges.
Those fine folks at Miami have found yet another. Safety Avantae Williams, a 20-year-old redshirt freshman and four-star recruit, has been dismissed from the team after his arrest last week for three counts of aggravated assault against his 31-weeks pregnant girlfriend.
ESPN is going to produce 10 alternative “Monday Night Football” telecasts that will appear on ESPN2 and star Peyton and Eli Manning. How would you like to be the regular MNF team – Steve Levy, Brian Griese and Louis Riddick – and have your network be similarly supportive and committed to you?
YES’s all-times score box, that gives the name of the batter as well as the pitcher, remains 50 percent more instantaneously useful than SNY’s, which only names the pitcher. There’s nothing wrong with better-TV “stealing.”
Reader Doug McBroom can’t wait for the first Guardians-Angels game. “That’s the righty, Curtis Sliwa, warming in the bullpen.”
Time for Brooks Koepka to cease fueling his childish feud with Bryson DeChambeau with petulant taunts – though I suspect his Nike endorsers love him for it.
According to impeachable sources, Capital One and Subway will combine to launch an ad campaign with the catchphrase, “What’s in your sandwich?”
*story by The New York Post
