Most openers are set for April 5, Major League Baseball said Tuesday, but it seems likely ESPN will shift the Yankees and Red Sox for the Sunday night game April 4. In the past 50 years, the Yankees also opened and closed against Boston in 1960, 1970, 1992 and 2005, according to STATS LLC. The only times they both started and finished in Boston were 1938 and 1950.
Both series will take place at Fenway Park.
Interleague match ups have been announced as well and the Yankees will be playing the Diamondbacks in mid-June in a rematch of the 2001 World Series along with the Dodgers for the first time since Joe Torre has been manager (provided they don't meet in the World Series this season).
Amidst what was universally considered an abysmal performance (on Twitter at least) by a typically poor broadcasting team, there was a moment in the first inning when Jon Miller and Joe Morgan were actually -- insightful. (That sound you hear is Ken Tremendous rolling over in his digital grave.) With CC Sabathia ahead in the count 0-2 against Dustin Pedroia, Miller asked Morgan about Sabathia's move to first base because Jacoby Ellsbury was one steal away from breaking the Red Sox single season record.
Morgan responded by explaining how Sabathia was varying his leg kick in an effort to keep Ellsbury off-balance. Sabathia followed by delivering a pitch with almost no wind up, which would have been almost impossible to steal on. On the ensuing delivery, Sabathia raised his knee as if he were starting a wind up, which was exactly what Ellsbury was waiting to run on. Unfortunately for Ellsbury, Sabathia was one step ahead of him and instead of throwing to the plate, he fired to Mark Teixeira at first, who threw to Derek Jeter just in time to beat Ellsbury to second.
What was great about this sequence was the timing. Miller brought up the point, Morgan was spot on with his analysis and two pitches later, something relevant to their conversation actually happened. They didn't belabor the point incessantly only for it never to happen like so often occurs.
I'm a pretty serious baseball fan but I'll admit that I don't often notice the interplay and mind games that occur between a prolific base stealer and the pitcher trying to keep him at bay. Perhaps it's because aside from Brett Gardner, the Yankees haven't had a truly frightening speed threat in the line up since Rickey Henderson. Tim Raines was in his mid-to-late 30's when he joined the Yanks, Alfonso Soriano wasn't on base enough and Steve Sax and Roberto Kelly had their moments, but none of those guys stole more than 45 in a season wearing pinstripes. And the most recent of that group, Soriano, has been gone for 6 years already.
That moment last night represented what broadcasts are supposed to do and what Miller, Morgan and Phillips fail to do with remarkable consistency: convey things to the people who are watching that they didn't already know or wouldn't typically notice. It's difficult to do in baseball, but it shouldn't be as difficult is the Sunday Night Baseball crew makes it seem.
For the players, it seems, being on Sunday Night Baseball is a fairly big deal. Only once a week during the regular season does the baseball world grind to halt and showcase two teams in a nationally televised game without any others running concurrently. The ESPN banners get put up on the packed camera wells down the first and third baselines and the personalities of the Worldwide Leader in Sports roam the clubhouses. The atmosphere is at the ballpark is undoubtedly elevated
Conversely, most fans at home dread Sunday Night Baseball. It might be because they have to wait until 8PM to watch their team play and it keeps them up later than they'd like. It's probably not because it overlaps with Law and Order SVU or Extreme Makeover: Home Edition or Million Dollar Password, although that might be part of it. It doesn't matter to Yankees fans that the team gets national exposure, because if anything, there's already too much of that. I think you know where I'm going with this.
Jon Miller and Al Michaels are both smooth and competent play by play guys who do their job and set the table the Joe Morgan and John Madden, respectively. For all the fun that people have at Madden's expense, I think most can agree that that his understanding of the game of football runs far deeper than the average fan's, even if in his effort to transmit it, all the clumsy chuckles and "booms" get in the way. That has never seemed to be the case with Joe Morgan. Plenty of man hours have been dedicated to explaining how and why Morgan is a terrible baseball analyst and an even worse broadcaster. He's overly nostalgic and unabashedly anti-intellectual and it comes across crystal clear in every broadcast, but I think the real difference between the two guys comes down to the differences between the sports.
Baseball is easy to digest because it unfolds slowly in front of you, one play at a time. The average viewer doesn't need to have an RBI double to left center broken down by the TV crew in order to understand what is happening. The best broadcasters provide context when it's necessary, but otherwise step aside and let the game unfold. Each play in football, on the other hand, occurs like an explosion, while the announcers work frantically in between snaps to piece together what happened.
Since baseball is played 6 or 7 days a week, fans are much more familiar with the team than the broadcast team who is stopping by to do just one game. The context is far more important to fans and the Sunday Night Baseball crew, as it is currently composed, it's terrible at providing any sort of valuable insight as to how this game fits into the season thus far. Instead Morgan tries too often to relate what's happening to his own playing experience and the newly added Steve Phillips offers insipid big picture "insights" that are either factually incorrect or painfully obvious to any regular follower of either of the teams involved.
Yes, the broadcast is meant for a national audience, but it's at the expense of the fans of the teams on the field. I'm not Michael Kay's biggest fan, but listening to a Yankee game with him behind the mic is infinitely more enjoyable than one with the ESPN crew.
Tonight, expect Miller and Morgan to laud the Mets for signing Livan Hernandez and point to his 5-2 record and 4.05 ERA as proof that he is in the middle of a resurrection. Never mind the fact that last year he started out 6-1 with a 3.90 in Minnesota before watching his ERA balloon two runs northward, his WHIP expand to 1.667 before getting DFA'd. His numbers might look decent right now but Livan is only one start away from being the rubber-armed base hit machine he's been for the last three years of his career.
Don't expect any grand insights into Chien Ming Wang's lack of success this year aside from his inability to "keep the sinker down" and recover from his foot injury last year. Wang has taken small steps towards being not historically terrible, coming off of back to back 5 inning, 6 hit, 3 run, four strikeout outings against fellow National League East members Washington and Atlanta. Perhaps the spacious confines of Citi Field will be home to Wang's first quality start of the season.
Derek Jeter returns to the line up tonight, but Johnny Damon is still down with the flu.
Miller and Morgan aren't so much "talking heads" as "disembodied voices", but you get the idea...
There are places that I won't forget, And I guess I'm never going back, Guess it's information that I lack, I've told lies without a hint or regret.
For the record, I don't approve of Joba's fist pumping (which he has cut back on significantly since he's become a starter), but I think he gets unfairly singled out for doing it. Guys like Papelbon, K-Rod and even fucking Eddie Guardado bust out histrionics way beyond what Joba does, and no one really seems to mind.
Did you see this, Aubrey Huff? Are you anxiously awaiting the slim possibility that you hit a homer off of Papelbon, so you can pump your fist and show him up like the vindictive ex-girlfriend your name would lead me to believe you are? What better way to prove that fist pumping is a bush league manuver than to do it yourself... However, I'm guessing the answer to the second question is "No".
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