Though we’re often told, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” I’m not interested in knowing any of them.
What catches my attention, especially at Stanley Cup playoffs time, is how there is more than one way to watch a hockey game, especially as provided for decades by Sam Rosen and Mike “Doc” Emrick, both — yikes! — 70.
Both are acquired tastes easily acquired, yet, like Cathy and Patty from “The Patty Duke Show,” they are “different as night and day.” Both are cherished for always doing what they do best and for the familiar good feelings they engender simply by turning to a game to find one of them there.
Stuck to do better, I only can draw upon food analogies to stress their differences, their popularity and inclusion in the NHL Hall of Fame. There is more than one way to skin, bake, then serve a potato.
Rosen is Gus’s Diner, down in Manalapan, N.J., on Route 33. You can’t go wrong choosing Gus’s. Welcoming, friendly, steady staff. Nothing fancy, nothing spectacular, no frills, just a good, full plate of whatever you ordered and at a good price. Breakfast at Gus’s, burgers and fries for lunch or dinner — more fries than needed and always served as ordered — is local ritual.
Gus’s doesn’t try to do too much. It just does what it does best, which is also the conspicuous secret to Rosen’s success. On MSG Network, Rosen doesn’t intrude on the game, he just gives you what you need when you need it — like the waiters and waitresses at Gus’s, who know exactly when you’re ready for a free refill.
There is little memorable about Rosen’s calls except that he brings a comfort level to Rangers MSG telecasts that would make his absence considerably uncomfortable, even strange and unnatural.
Rosen’s specialty is nothing special, just steady, reliable, welcoming, friendly, sincere. You never get a bad meal at Gus’s or Sam’s.
And, like Emrick, Rosen’s the same nice man — an incurable gentleman — on and off the air.
With NBC now in full control of the playoffs, Rosen’s done calling Rangers games on TV this season, but, with Kenny “I Cause Overtimes” Albert working NBC, Rosen will call Saturday’s Rangers-Senators Game 2 on ESPN-NY radio. Good.
Emrick, now calling Capitals-Penguins for NBC, is, to continue the dining out motif, more like the restaurant you would visit on a first date to impress her.
He is so effortlessly word-perfect, you scarcely can appreciate one description or parenthetical comment before he hits us with two more.
He is good at saying nothing, too. Saturday, with five seconds left in the Canadiens-Rangers series, the Rangers up two goals at the Garden, Emrick said, “It’s all over but the shouting. Let’s hear some.”
As NBC’s cameras swept the ice, benches and allowed the sound of the joyous crowd, not another word was spoken from the booth for a full minute. Fine dining.
News, info, history and neat stories easily and concisely flow from Emrick as if he were a sommelier making suggestions from a lavish wine list.
Employees pay price for ESPN wastefulness
It kills me to see so many people again laid off at ESPN when for years we’ve watched it waste millions of dollars on predictably rotten decisions.
Three-in-a-booth, sideline reporters who have no business being there, pregame shows so packed with people that each has time to speak one sentence, big-name hires — Brent Musburger, Ray Lewis, Bobby Knight, Lou Holtz, Magic Johnson (twice) — who added nothing but cost a lot, plus shipping and handling.
Not only is ESPN losing subscribers while spending a fortune on rights fees, but also it has spent an additional fortune trying — and often succeeding — to destroy every game it touches.
This season, ESPN’s Sunday night MLB telecasts have shown a pre-planned eagerness to shove the games aside in favor of in-game features and indiscriminately placed distractions.
Last Sunday, it sent seven people to serve as on-site voices in and just before the Nationals-Mets game on Wednesday, to save money, it jettisoned 100 employees.
With Washington up, 4-3, the sixth inning ended with a sensational 3-6 double play. The Mets appeared confused, as if first baseman Ryan Zimmerman had fielded the one-bounce blast in foul territory. But off ESPN went to commercials.
When it returned, ESPN immediately presented a mini-bio of Daniel Murphy, complete with a photo of him as a kid. Fine. But it couldn’t have waited? That spectacular, disputed, inning-ending, game-changing double play? ESPN was too busy not covering the game to cover the game.
ESPN has determined for us that the primary live act in baseball — the pitcher throwing toward the catcher — be decorated with a misleading, irrelevant, one-size-fits-all computerized strike-zone box. Whatever that costs ESPN, it is a waste of money.
see also
Colin Cowherd: This awful day is only the beginning for ESPN
Colin Cowherd claims he saw this ESPN doomsday coming years ago….
“What would ESPN’s producers do,” asks reader Eugene Klechevsky, “if I held a dragon cutout in front of their TVs while they’re trying to watch ‘Game of Thrones’?”
I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars ESPN has spent the past 20 years to research then present hundreds of thousands of statistics that are both laughably stupid and reveal ESPN to have no grasp of what it purports to know best — sports. But I could’ve saved ESPN that fortune, too.
And though ESPN now presents us with “exit velocity” stats — who knew that a line drive is hit harder than a high fly ball? — 100 ESPN employees this week were directed, with all due velocity, to the doors marked EXIT.
O’s-Bosox wins the fight for Monday night
ESPN has replaced Indians-Tigers with Orioles-Red Sox on Monday night. It will start at 7, as MLB didn’t sell ESPN the authority to make Monday night games start at 8.
ESPN’s sudden interest in Orioles-Red Sox is strictly visceral. The teams haven’t been getting along, and if there is a fight — better yet, a brawl — ESPN wants the exclusive national rights.
Kind of like that Bobby Knight Goes Nuts action reel ESPN for years was eager to show as evidence that he might be a misanthrope.
But not so misanthropic that ESPN wouldn’t hire him, which is when that reel disappeared. It miraculously resurfaced when Knight left ESPN.