The best of Neil Best
Rosenberg has 'no delusions'
Sid Rosenberg is a sports radio host in South Florida, but when a certain free agent said July 8 that he would sign with the Heat, Rosenberg was on vacation . . . and filling in at WFAN in New York.
Oh, and he also went on CNN and said the concentration of talent in Miami is bad for the NBA.
"It was a little awkward,'' Rosenberg said Friday, recalling "nasty'' e-mails, Facebook messages and phone calls to his station in Florida.
By this past week, Rosenberg was back on the 3-7 p.m. shift at WQAM - originating from New York after another week of midday shifts at WFAN - and embracing his role as a radio "villain'' there.
"I'm wearing the black hat,'' he said. "I gladly accept the role. In fact, I'm starting to relish it.''
Rosenberg, who will be on WFAN again the week of Aug. 16, never has made a secret of his long-term desire to return to New York full-time. But he insisted he is happy in Florida.
"Look, I'm under contract with WQAM, and it's a great station; I can't say that enough,'' he said. "I love it there. There's no offer here, no delusions of grandeur here.''
Rosenberg was a candidate to join Mike Francesa after Chris Russo left, but CBS Radio is believed to have blocked that move because of Rosenberg's troubled past.
During his fill-in weeks, Rosenberg had strong chemistry with Kimberly Jones, but with the morning, midday and afternoon shows all recording strong ratings, there is nowhere to put them for now.
Mark Chernoff, WFAN's operations manager, said he thought Rosenberg did a "great'' job but added, "I can't tell you there's anything more to it than using him for a fill-in at this point.''
Knicks sell out of season tickets
The Knicks have sold about 4,000 new season tickets since midwinter, a figure that, combined with a 90-percent renewal rate, has resulted in their first sellout of season tickets since 2001-02.
The team would not say how many season subscribers that represents, but the figure is believed to be about 14,000. It keeps the rest of its inventory for individual game sales, group sales, partial plans and other purposes.
More TV time for Giants this year
Anita Marks - former women's pro football quarterback, former Playboy model, former Baltimore sports talk host - has been turning up regularly on WFAN of late, but that is only the start of her growing New York media portfolio.
Come football season, she will work the Giants' radio postgame shows, replacing Russ Salzberg, who instead will host 13 Giants postgame shows planned for Channel 9.
By moving the shows from Channel 5 to its sister station, the Giants will avoid the conflicts with Fox doubleheader games that regularly pre-empted their postgames.
So, belatedly, Big Blue will join the other eight major New York-area pro teams in having a consistent postgame presence on television.
Yankees still No. 1 in baseball popularity; Mets sixth
More evidence of George Steinbrenner's legacy: A Harris poll of 2,227 adults last month found that the Yankees are the favorite baseball team of more Americans than any other for the eighth year in a row.
Second: the Red Sox. The rest of the top six were the Braves, Phillies, Cubs and Mets, who were up from 11th last year to sixth.
Overall, 36 percent of Americans said they follow MLB, down from 41 last year. The regional divide in the sport's following is dramatic: 48 percent of Easterners said they follow the sport compared with only 29 percent of Southerners.
GQ digs Mets broadcast team
Not surprisingly, the Dodgers' one-man broadcast booth was named the best in baseball by GQ magazine. SNY's Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez won the non-Vin Scully division, ranking second overall.
YES didn't make the list of the five best. But it also didn't make the list of the five worst, which was topped by the White Sox's Hawk Harrelson and Steve Stone.
YES exec likes in-game reports
YES' philosophy long has been much less aggressive than SNY's when it comes to in-game reports, but this season, it has dipped its toe into those waters with updates from Kimberly Jones.
John Filippelli, YES' president of programming, said the idea was to reprise news from the pregame show for the much larger game audience and also to promote Jones and the postgame show.
Did the incident in Minnesota in May in which a man in a Yankees jersey took a bite out of Jones' pork chop on camera concern Filippelli?
"I've talked to our producers about making sure there's a security person,'' he said. "I was concerned for Kim.
"The moment itself was rather humorous. The guy was harmless. But you don't know that the person is harmless and that's sort of scary. But those are the sorts of things you work on to make sure they don't happen again.''
