MLB.com video looking clearer than ever

HBO's extraordinary live town meeting on the state of sports media Tuesday night has been a source of much talk on sports talk radio and much buzz in the sports blogosphere.

That's "buzz" as in Buzz Bissinger, the author whose withering, profane attack on author/blogger Will Leitch was destined for YouTube infamy before the final curse word had escaped Buzz's lips.

Most of the discussion was more constructive than that, but of course it didn't solve anything.

Collectively, we're all less responsible than ever journalistically, and everyone is to blame.

Take yesterday. Please.

When is the sports yakosphere going to learn its lesson about making assumptions regarding injuries? Not yet.

This time, in the sorry tradition of J.R. Richard and Pedro Martinez, the doubts surrounded Phil Hughes, who spent all day hearing how he and the Yankees were faking an injury to give him a mental health break, only to have him turn up with a stress fracture in a rib.

If I were young Phil, I'd ask for a round of apologies. Chris Russo and Mike Francesa did offer them on the air late yesterday afternoon.

"It's a good lesson for all of us to learn," Francesa added.

The drumbeat of skepticism on WFAN started hours before they got on the air, though, and it wasn't only talk radio.

Print commentators, including in Newsday, fell into the trap as well.

The Yankees were not without blame in opening the door to media confusion, given their clumsy handling of the Hughes news Wednesday.

Before that night's game, Joe Girardi had perhaps his most testy media session since taking the reins of the media beast from Bigelow Joe.

That session in turn apparently led to some sort of air- clearing between Girardi and beat reporters who cover the team.

The manager and writers had a long, off-the-record meeting well after the end of Wednesday's game.

Girardi admittedly is learning to deal with the New York media on the job, but with the losses, injuries and frustration mounting, this situation bears watching now more than ever.

For background, Girardi might want to study that "Costas Now" show from Tuesday.

If you missed it, refer to HBO or the Internet for details of the intergenerational sports media holy war - one in which I am firmly stuck in the crossfire as a blogger/newspaperman.

(Today is the first anniversary of my Watchdog blog, by the way. Don't send a gift; your page views are enough.)

The big local story on the HBO show was Michael Strahan's first conversation with Russo in more than eight years.

It was tense.

Among other things, Strahan said, "I don't need you to do my job, but you need me to do your job."

That comment caused Francesa to go off on Strahan on the air yesterday, calling his assertion a "joke" and adding he has no respect for him.

In a taped segment for the Costas show, Francesa and Russo, still comfortably No. 1 in their target demographic after all these years, actually came off as voices of talk radio reason.

Believe it or not, Mr. Hughes, compared to many of their counterparts around the nation, they are.



Strange but true: Fritz comes through for fan

Harry Dickran of Babylon is 47, but when he was much younger and pro sports much less uptight, he sent a letter to Nets trainer Fritz Massmann asking for a favor.

Could he have the players sign it for him? He had read in a magazine that if you write to the trainer, he would get you autographs.

Sure enough, the letter came back with the names of every member of the eventual champion 1973-74 Nets, with the exception of Brian Taylor.

Yes, that includes Dr. J.

"I read the letter now and laugh at what I wrote him because it's so goofy," Dickran said.

Why mention this? Because Dickran's letter won a contest in which the Sports Museum of America, opening in lower Manhattan Wednesday, solicited fan mementoes for an exhibit.

Soon the rest of the world can see the classic names that have been stuffed in a drawer all these years: Wendell Ladner, Larry Kenon, Billy Paultz . . .



Just wondering: MLB.com video getting like TV

The other day I visited MLB Advanced Media's cool offices in Chelsea for a demonstration of the improved version of the MLB.TV Mosaic.

The MLB.com types and trade publication journalists might as well have been speaking Urdu much of the time for what I could understand.

Bottom line: Given the right equipment on your end, and your willingness to part with $119.95 for the premium package, watching on your computer gets more like watching on your TV by the year.

"It's not quite TV, but it's getting closer and closer," MLBAM boss Bob Bowman said.

The Mosaic allows fans to watch six games at once.

So is this another step toward a day in the reasonably near future when there is no distinction between TV and computers, known in the media business as "convergence"?

"I'm very skeptical there will be convergence," Bowman said.

That makes one of us.



Best's bets: Mamet's 'Redbelt' another MMA milestone

Is "Redbelt," the David Mamet film opening today, great or even good?

I'm not sure. I'll leave that to our official movie critics.

I did find it entertaining, despite a finale shipped directly from the Island of Sports Movie Cliches. And I'm going to assume the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu action is authentic, because I wouldn't know the difference.

The real news here in the sports section is that a writer/director of Mamet's stature has created a mixed martial arts-oriented film.

Mamet told me he considers it a jiu-jitsu film, but it includes many of the trappings of MMA, including personalities such as Randy Couture.

Bottom line: This is another step toward a place in mainstream culture for the sport.

(I sat next to Salman Rushdie at the premiere! I'm not sure what that means, but it must mean something.)

"I think it's definitely the combative sport for this generation," Couture said. "I think in previous generations, boxing was the thing."

Even an old boxer such as Ray Mancini, who has a role in the film, said he is a big fan.

"The thing about it I like the most is the best guys fight the best guys constantly," he said. "In boxing you have to wait years."

Said Mamet, who has been training in Jiu-Jitsu for several years: " is coming out of the woodwork, sure. It's great."

He said he picked up the sport at 55. "They call it the old man's sport, because the better you get at it, the less force you use. It's like trying to hit a golf ball. You use knowledge."

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