Watchdog

Neil --- Do us a favor and out the Fox baseball director. Did this guy fail to get a closeup of ANYBODY at Coors Field? Twenty camera cuts between EVERY pitch. He does it year after year. I watched with four other people and it drove everyone insane. I've never thrown a brick at a televison set but this is as close as I've come.
And if I'm not mistaken, the schnook Mushnick always praises this clown. What's THAT about?

Agents have different brains then we normal folks. They can do things without any regard for common decency and morality. It also explains why they're fabulously wealthy and most of us aren't.

Using this flimsy premise, I will now vent something about a current player agent that I have been bottling up for over a quarter of a century. I went to college with a prominent player agent (he shall remain nameless) and one incident from those many years ago still annoys me and my fraternity brothers. This individual's current financial success only serves to irritate us more.

My fraternity basketball team was playing the reigning champions of the frat league this one season. We were a bunch of hacks who ran a Princeton offence playing against a bunch of guys who quit the varsity team and decided it would be more fun to drink beer and shoot pool than go through the rigors of the basketball season.

On this one night, we get to the court and find out that the refs for the game are frat brothers of the team we're going to play. One of the impartial refs was the future player agent. Despite this situation, the basketball gods were with us that night and we had our version of the 1989 Georgetown Princeton game. Everything we did worked to perfection and the other guys couldn't buy a shot. Naturally with 5 minutes left in the game, we collapsed, blew a 20 point lead and led by trailed by 1 with under a minute. During timeouts, the refs were going to the huddle with the other team and diagraming plays - the future player agent and ref the primary culprit.

With under 10 seconds to play, one of our guys was clotheslined and dropped to the floor. A sizable crowd (that included the women's volleyball team who had just concluded a practice on an adjacent court) had now gathered to watch this game and the impartial refs were forced to blow the whistle and send our guy to the line for a one and one. Still disoriented from being mugged, our guy (now a prominent real estate attorney on the west coast) flung a rocket to the hoop that somehow went in to tie the game. Amazed at his own good fortune, he recovered enough to rattle the second shot through to put us up. Time out was called and the player agent announced there were "one and three quarter seconds left in the game."

In a scene that was similar to the 1972 USSR - US Olympic game in Munich, the other team was given three attempts to make the winning shot. Each time they failed, the future player agent concocted some lame excuse as to why they had to reset the play. Charges of "fix" from impartial spectators did nothing to disuade this individual from continuing the charade and letting his fellow brothers from having another attempt at preserving their undefeated season.

Ultimately, we triumphed, celebrated, invited the women's volleyball team to our house to help us celebrate (they said they'd come, but they never did), and enjoyed for many of us, the greatest moment of our athletic careers (my varsity football team won 4 games in the 4 years I played).

There, take that you devious player agent. We managed to triumph over you and your nefarious plans and still speak badly of your 25 years later. I hope you feel our karma when you're out on your yacht.

Thank you for this forum Neil. I now have to interest 8th graders in The Last of the Mohicans. Have a great Monday.

I was listening to the game on 1050 AM, and they cut into the ESPN game feed around 10:30 PM to break the A-Rod story (complete with "News Flash" sound clip). Someone manning the studio brought Jon Heyman on the air from Coors Field to make the announcement that A-Rod was opting out of his contract. I guess it took another 30 minutes for the story to make it to FOX. Great job by 1050 for breaking the story locally.

Mediadog:
You're right, of course. But complaining about Bill Webb's endless fan closeups during the W.S. is such an old story I forgot to complain about it this year. Maybe I will in my Tuesday column.

The close-ups of players don't bother me. I enjoyed seeing the look in, for example, Ryan Spilborghs' eyes as he geared up to face Jonathan Papelbon last night.

The close-ups and/or split-screens of coaches and managers during the in-game interview are another matter. I posted about this below, but I'll restate it here: why show us the coach wearing a headset when there is live action happening? A graphic that reads, "Voice of: [Name]" is sufficient. Get on this, Neil!

Jon Heyman is the best in the business.

Mediadog, you are right with the closeups. It makes the telecast unwatchable. At one point in the Cleveland/Boston series in one of the close games in Boston, they had a closeup of every position player the Sox had in the field and barely got the live pitch in. On a side note, Muschnick does not praise that guy at all. He rips him as much as anyone. He recently commented that if you were at a baseball game, are you watching the game or the people in the stands? That's the point of view anyone who covers a baseball game should have.

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