Good questions grow lonely, too. They need companionship in the form of good answers. Thus, the latest dating site for singles: “Questions Without Answers.”
Q: With Aroldis Chapman in to pitch the ninth for the Yankees against the Rangers last week, why would the Yanks play an extreme shift behind a guy who throws 100 mph against lefty-hitting Rougned Odor? Did they expect him to pull the ball?
Were they surprised when Odor lined a 100 mph pitch the other way — as if he had a choice — through the man-made hole near where the shortstop normally plays?
A: Good question.
Q: Career closer Fernando Rodney last week joined the A’s, his 10th team since 2001. If he’s so unreliable as to be so expendable, why do managers remove relievers who pitched a clean eighth inning and replace them with Rodney?
A: Funny you should ask.
Q: From start to end, it was obvious to YES viewers Thursday afternoon that Yankee Stadium was about half-filled. So why, near the game’s end, was Michael Kay forced to report the Stadium as four-fifths full, an “announced attendance 41,033,” explaining the obvious as a case of many leaving the stadium early?
A: Because we’re supposed to believe what we’re told, not what we see.
Q: Why did Thursday’s 3-1 Rays win at the Yanks take 3:22 to complete?
A: Modern big league baseball. Both teams tried to keep the other team close — 10 pitchers, 17 hits, 20 strikeouts, the last stat answering the next question: Why were 36 runners left on base?
Q: Reader Brian Barnett has a good one. Last week against the Jets, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan was 1-for-1 for minus-2 yards and a QB passer rating of 79.2. The next night, Panthers QB Kyle Allen was 0-for-1, 0 yards for a rating of 39.6. How did negative 2 yards rank twice as high as zero yards?
A: Factor in launch angle, exit velocity and POS — probability of stupidity.
Q: Last week, Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey was suspended for a week from training camp — man, that’s harsh — after being in a fight with a teammate, threatening nearby reporters then, in a barely literate “social” media post, promising “war” with the media.
In an interview, he also trashed a bunch of NFL QBs for no apparent reason, the college man adding, “I don’t care what nobody say.”
Ramsey was drafted out of Florida State University. So does FSU, among many other institutions of higher learning, as well as the NCAA, ever feel shame for regularly delivering uneducated misanthropes to the NFL?
A: No.
Q: Why don’t Yankees radio and TV ticket sales promos ever give the names of the Yanks’ opponents?
A: It’s a salute to John Sterling.
Q: Why did ESPN, throughout Thursday’s Jets-Redskins, call the game “Monday Night Football”?
A: As per ESPN’s “Bottom Line” an ESPN “NFL insider” had not yet “confirmed” that it wasn’t Monday night.
Olbermann only one to let Subway game speak for itself
ESPN’s Monday night version of MLB — Mets-Yankees — was as dreadful as its late Sunday night version. But Keith Olbermann’s inclusion was the least of its problems.
Though Olbermann has conditioned many to gag at his presence as an elitist liberal in the habit of mistreating “the little people” in his midst, he was the only one among the three — Eduardo Perez and Tim Kurkjian, the others — to show some understanding that the game was being televised, thus it was OK, to hush up and let the pictures tell some of the story.
Olbermann was often good, funny, too. The less one says the better the chances.
But ESPN will never learn that we tuned in to watch the game, not to hear every pitch and swing explained, not to be bombarded with stats and what ESPN has on next, let alone next week. The mark of ESPN’s baseball telecasts remains their eagerness to disenfranchise baseball fans.
With Thursday afternoon’s Mets-Phillies exclusively sold to Facebook — MLB now accepts money to remove games from view — listening to the Mets’ radio team of Howie Rose and Josh Lewin wasn’t at all a burden.
Rose made it clear early — long before the game became a Mets “club record-breaking” 24-4 Phils’ slapstick surrender — that replays normally seen and reported from the booth would not be forthcoming as per MLB’s latest dive for dollars.
Lewin, like Rose, describes the game for us. He wants us to “see,” not guess. As Amed Rosario awaited a pitch in the third, Lewin said, “Rosario waggles a two-tone bat.” Nice.
And when Rosario singled, Lewin was quick to say Rosario had seen two pitches, the first he hit for a home run, and now this. And when Rosario, in his next at-bat, fouled off the first pitch, Lewin said he’ll now see his first second pitch.
Before Brandon Nimmo left with an injury, Lewin described him as playing with the joy “of a Golden Retriever puppy.”
The Game Has Changed, continued: Today is the one-week anniversary of Red Sox 4, Orioles 1, nine pitchers combining for 27 strikeouts — half of the 54 outs!
Reader Eugene Klechevsky has sent a 1973 print ad for a Sony portable TV with a screen as big “as the size of kid’s baseball glove” and stays charged for four hours, “Enough time for a ballgame and a Western.”
Today? That Western had better be no longer than 15 minutes.
Sponsors for events not seen
If we’re to be infuriated by NFL players who take a knee or raise their fists in protest of highly selective racial issues during the national anthem, how do those who protest the protesters reconcile the continuing abuse and exploitation of the anthem on Yankees radio?
As the anthem plays, the WFAN/Yankees radio network cuts to commercials. When the commercials end, Suzyn Waldman identifies the commercial sponsor of the anthem and who performed it — though we didn’t hear it.
You can’t shame the shameless.
Lines of the Week: Reader Mike Ganis, Houston, on the four interceptions Johnny Manziel threw in his first game with the Montreal Alouettes: “Using the conversion rate table, that equals three U.S. interceptions.”
But the landslide winner was Melissa Howard, candidate for Florida’s House of Representatives. After questions about the veracity of her educational claims, the college diploma she produced as proof proved to be a fake. Her apology included:
“It was not my intent to deceive or mislead anyone.”
She’s right. Her intent was to deceive and mislead everyone!
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