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Fewer syllables, please
“The game itself is no longer enough,” Bill Lyon in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“It is incapable of standing on its own any longer, at least in the view of the grand poohbahs of TV.
“And so one in another move that underscores the continuing trend of the homogenizing of sport, of sacrificing its purity for the sake of becoming “entertainment,” one of the three voices in the booth for the coming season of Monday Night Football will belong to a comedian.
“If it works, it will look like a stroke of genius, daring and far-sighted. The initial suspicion here, however, is that it will go over like a blocked punt.
“Dennis Miller specializes in the wry and the ironic, delivered in monologue rants that are long and wandering and intricately constructed and filled with references to the arcane and the esoteric and the obscure, all connected by bizarre metaphors and frequently unfathomable similies. They are also littered with profanities, sometimes, it seems, just for the sake of being profane.
“Sometimes he is brilliant and sometimes he amuses himself greatly and furnishes his own laugh track, and sometimes he leaves you lost at sea, asking: `What was that?”’
Police blotter
Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Examiner seems to have had enough of the extracurricular shenanigans involving athletes and athletics:
“Hi, I’m Sebastian Janikowski, and I watch Court TV … just in case.
“On the other hand, he could be British swim coach Cecil Russell, who was arrested for smuggling Ecstasy tablets into the United States.
“Al Michaels sits quietly in a darkened room, shaking but thankful that he didn’t end up with Rosie O’Donnell and Robert Novak.
“Berlin’s B.Z. newspaper noted Germany’s ejection from the Euro 2000 soccer tournament by referring to the team as `the soccer idiots of Europe.’ On the other hand, weren’t the hooligans tactically skilled and effective with those plastic chairs against the Belgian water cannon defense?”
Choose your poison
Mariners shortstop Alex Rodriguez, on whether money or winning is more important: “I think the money at this point is very important to me because I want to take care of my family and the people that I love. Winning is a close second. But I have to look out for my family first.”
Rodriguez, who can be a free agent at the end of the year, on criticism he received for those remarks: “That question was a no-win situation. You want to be as candid as possible. If you say winning is more important, they call you fake. If you say money, they call you greedy … Trust me, there’s nobody who wants a ring in a worse way than I do.”