Hey everybody, Matt checking in here. In case anyone was wondering I did survive my 21st birthday at the stadium, barely, but I made it and I’m pretty sure I’m a better man because of it. Let me just say I will never be stupid enough to purchase a Heineken for 10.50 ever again, nor will I ever be stupid enough to dance around the upper deck with it. I feel bad about sprinkling the nice couple below me, but after some intense calculations I realized I probably lost a good dollar’s worth of beer, and that’s just a sin.
Back on the baseball side of things, I just watched the Yankees lose 5-2 to the Royals. They looked flat playing a third straight afternoon game. Phil Hughes struggled. His performance today, along with Ian Kennedy’s on Friday proves that young pitchers will never get the benefit of the doubt from an umpire. Regardless of who was behind the plate, neither was able to locate consistently, but where a veteran like Mike Mussina will have borderline pitches called strikes, the young guys are never going to get that type of leniency in the strike zone.
The Yankees weren’t the only ones off their game today. The only person in Kansas City more exposed at his position than Wilson Betemit (who looks like he could out-eat Eddy Curry with ease) was David Cone. While I can’t say I have a clear recollection of his first tour of duty on YES, he just seemed in over his head today. I was initially happy to see that there would only be a two man booth today because Michael Kay was, well, who actually cares where the hell he was as long as we didn’t have to hear him. With Ken Singleton doing play-by-play Cone was left to provide color commentary. Well let’s just say Coney didn’t exactly get off to a hot start. In the game’s opening montage he referred to Bobby Abreu as a switch hitter. This is an inexcusable mistake. Making such a statement was not just a mere slip of the tongue; it was a sign of things to come. Later in the game Jason Giambi struck out looking. When YES zooms in it is quite apparent that Giambi is not happy with the call and can be seen saying something to the home plate umpire. Cone goes on to tell us that Jason knew it was a strike and was quietly heading back to the dugout, yet YES cameras were showing us the exact opposite.
During this broadcast it seemed that Ken Singleton would have had an easier time shoving a tennis ball up a tail pipe then getting quality feedback from Cone. Singleton, a good analyst and solid play-by-play man spent the game handling both duties, just hoping for Cone to chime in with something that made sense. On the whole YES has done a good job of bringing in broadcasters, but from time to time they’ve really blown it. While they basically inherited Singleton, Bobby Murcer, and the retired Jim Kaat from MSG, they’ve been hit and miss with their own hires. While John Flaherty, Joe Girardi, and Paul O’Neill have been exceptional, David Cone, Al Leiter, and David Justice have been atrocious in the booth. At least with Justice you were kept on your toes hoping he’d get served with divorce papers live on the air. Let’s just hope Bobby Murcer is able to come back healthy and spare us from the complete snooze fest that was today’s broadcast. July 18, 1999 David Cone was perfect. Today, he couldn’t even get through the first inning.
