Watchdog

SNY just showed nine minutes of Willie Randolph speaking to reporters after Sunday's game.

That's good.

SNY showed those nine minutes beginning at 6:06 p.m., more than an hour and a half after the game ended on Ch. 11 - and after the Jets post-game show, an episode of "Street Games'' about handball and a show about beach volleyball.

That's really bad.

What are the chances Ch. 11 and/or SNY would have passed on an extended post-game show immediately after the game was over if the Mets had won the division title?

Even less than the chances of a team blowing a seven-game lead with 17 to play.

Great news, Islanders fans:

Howie Rose won't be missing any early-season games this year!

Enjoy!

Today marks the second anniversary of the debut of SportsWatch in the newspaper, which in turn spawned WatchDog in May of 2007.

Thanks for reading. None of this would be possible without you.

That first column featured Jeremy Shockey ripping Mike Francesa, and Mike ripping him back.

Each thereby earned a special place in SportsWatch history and our eternal gratitude.

That same day there was a story in the paper about the news conference in which SportsNet New York announced its name at its mid-town studios.

SNY's crew is covering an important Mets game today, but the game will appear on Ch. 11.

Enjoy, Mets fans. If you can.

There seems to be some sort of glitch on the main sports page this Sunday morning that is causing the blog and column areas to be blank.

Some digging turned up the Sunday newspaper column, though, and here it is.

It's a feature on a pioneer in women's sportswriting, Melissa Ludtke, 30 years after she made her mark on journalism history.

Suzyn Waldman is mentioned in the story. That's her in the picture.

Ludtke said she followed with interest last week's dust-up involving Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy screaming at Oklahoman columnist Jenni Carlson.

Unlike many observers, who saw a coach trying to bully a young female journalist, Ludtke's take was that the episode actually illustrated the progress women sports journalists have made since her time.

To her, it sounded like a coach ripping a woman sportswriter just as he would have a man.

Which is a good thing.

As a public service (and because of a wedding) WatchDog didn't watch a second of the Mets game Saturday, thus breaking the spell haunting the team.

You're welcome, Mets fans.

Sorry, though, can't skip Sunday's game.

It's my job.

Just remember, no man (or woman) is a failure who has friends.

And the Mets need all the fans they can get Sunday.

Here's a link to the Steve Somers clip that mentions yours truly that reader Dave tipped us off to.

It features Steve contemplating a swan dive off the 59th Street bridge after another Mets loss.

Normally, suicide jokes are distasteful in the name of something as mundane as an epic sports choke.

Same goes for references such as Evan Roberts saying the other day that it was time to "kill'' Billy Wagner for his performance. (He didn't mean it literally!)

Same goes for Lee Mazzilli suggesting the weekend series against the Marlins would be "war.''

But this is no time to worry about niceties. The 2007 Mets have earned the right to inspire political incorrectness.

War? Suicide? Murder? Sure, those are profoundly unhappy thoughts.

So is this: second place!

LeBron James can be a tad, um, dry in interviews, as he was during a conference call to promote his appearance on "Saturday Night Live'' this weekend.

But he previously has shown decent comedic acting chops and probably will pull it off.

It won't be easy to be as good as Peyton Manning was last season. WatchDog asked James Thursday what he thought of Peyton's outing.

James said he found Manning quite funny, especially the skit in which he was being comically mean to a group of children playing a mock pickup game with him.

SNL boss Lorne Michaels said in seeking athletes to host he usually "can tell when someone has a sense of humor or at least enough perspective about themselves to be able to laugh about themselves.''

Michaels said athletes tend to do well because they are used to facing large audiences uncertain about the outcome, they are generally fearless and they must have some sense of humor simply to endure the ups and downs of long seasons.

Time Warner of New York/New Jersey just made it official, adding TBS in HD as of Oct. 1, thus ensuring Yankees fans they will see their team in HD throughout the playoffs if they have the right equipment.

Time Warner can't guarantee that anyone will see the Mets in any kind of format next week.

So now Cablevision, TW and DirecTV are on board. Waiting for Verizon FiOS and Dish to crack.

Yeah, we know Comcast and many other cable companies are out there in America, but there are only so many WatchDog has time to watch.

Sorry.

I have no choice but to post this YouTube clip, even though many other blogs already have, apparently starting with "With Leather.''

Live TV is a dangerous, complicated thing.

That's why local news programs always are a huge hit on shows that feature TV bloopers.

Well, it's been an interesting week here.

We banned certain pronouns, turned on Heather Mitts to the WatchDog phenomenon (with much help from Bob Glauber), watched too many hours of Mets games and began to sprout roots in the basement chair.

Next week: Probably at least one visit to Yankee Stadium. Shea? Who knows?

Should be quite a weekend.

HBO says you also should take a break from baseball and football and women's soccer to watch Saturday night's fight between Jermain Taylor and Kelly Pavlik in A.C.

Jim Lampley called it "a fight that harkens back to the days of boxing's broadest popularity, for easily identifiable reasons - two American stars, both unbeaten, both from blue-collar cities, both with entertaining hit-and-get-hit styles, the winner to emerge as undisputed ruler of one of the sport's most glamorous divisions. Poetically, it is the challenger who enters riding a tide of surging popularity and support, and the champion who must fight off mounting criticism for recent disappointing performances.''

There you have it.

And good luck, Mets fans.

Here's one last John Philips-winning entry, in response to a post about Jose Feliciano singing the national anthem at Shea last week - and much more controversially at Tiger Stadium during the '68 World Series.

John, we love you and hope you keep posting comments forever, but it's time for other people to have a chance. You've retired the original WatchDog Comment Contest Trophy.

Here it is: "I've seen the kinescope of the broadcast. Jose was introduced and played in center field. When he was finished, Ernie Harwell and Curt Gowdy said nothing, NBC went to commercial, and the game started.

"My grandmother reacted much differently. Not a sports fan herself, she walked into the room where my grandfather was watching. He was almost deaf at this point in his life and he always turned his hearing aid off during the anthem, so he heard nothing. Grandma did hear it however. The result was a rare mid day long distance call to my mother. This was in the day when long distance was actually expensive and such a phone call from grandmother led my mother believe that something bad had happened to my grandfather.

"Instead, mom heard about the decline of western civilization as symbolized by Feliciano's national anthem. Usually Grandma used a three minute egg timer to limit her long distance expenditures, but on this day, my mother remembered her going two egg timers worth. A few months later, Jose appeared on the Glen Campbell Good Time Hour, one of Grandma's favorite shows.

"After seeing Jose Feliciano mentioned in the opening credits, Glen Campbell joined her growing list of entertainment non entities and the Good Time Hour was never watched again. The late 60's were hard on Grandma. How she ever managed to survive living through World Wars I and II, I'll never know."