While virtually every other pundit on Planet Earth concurred that Randy Johnson getting himself tossed in the 2nd inning of last Friday night’s Yankee defeat of the Blue Jays was an act of uncommon selfishness and stupidity, you’d have heard otherwise were you following New York coverage of the game. From the NY Post’s Phil Mushnick.
It’s one of those per verse ironies that we’re just supposed to live with. The people who spend the most time reminding the world that the Yanks are unsurpassed for big-time, big-town sophistication and success treat the team’s fans as small-time, small-town rubes ” and morons.
Friday night Randy Johnson was ejected in the second inning and John Sterling, Suzyn Waldman and, to a slightly lesser extent, Michael Kay, knew why well before they could possibly know why: Because umpire Fieldin Culbreth is incompetent, and according to Sterling and Waldman, “a disgrace.”
On TV and radio, they rhetorically demanded to know how an umpire could be so impudent as to throw such a great pitcher out of such a big game. Doesn’t Culbreth know who Randy Johnson is? Doesn’t he know that the Yanks are in a pennant/wild card race? Doesn’t he know that no one pays to see umps ump?
But none of the three had any idea, whatsoever, what Johnson might’ve said to Culbreth either moments before the ejection or at any time prior. None of them even suggested that the other side of the story might be in play, that Culbreth was likely aware of all the circumstances ” not that they should matter ” thus Johnson must’ve been particularly deserving.
Sterling and Waldman were just over-the-top brutal. Neither even hinted that Johnson, 42 years old, should own greater control of his emotions. And both would’ve had you think that Culbreth tossed Ozzie Nelson, and not a fella never known for being a sweetheart.
On a pure, wishful, shillful guess, they did their worst/best to defame Culbreth to an audience that surely included many who could guess better.