More housecleaning

" I confess. This past Sunday night I betrayed Howie Rose, something I knew was risky and wrong, when I chose to both watch and listen to ESPN's coverage of Mets-Giants.

Why I thought that ESPN, instead of smothering another game with verbal and video excess, would let this one breathe, I can't explain. But it was, of course, a mistake.

To lighten the load of both the Yankees' loss today and the fact of my post being zapped by PC ( that geek I want to slap), I give you this, coutesy of SundDevil Joe:

A

microcosm from Sunday's telecast as to why ESPN's Sunday night baseball remains insufferable:

Shortstop Kevin Frandsen charged a bouncer, made a sweet grab on the half hop, then threw out Gary Sheffield. "Nice pickup," admired play-by-player Jon Miller. The play otherwise spoke for itself. But Joe Morgan was just getting started:

"Very nice play. Well, you have to time this perfectly because you're going to get that in-between hop, and the way you field the ball is that you catch it on the short hop or on the big hop. But this is the in-between hop. You can't get there in time to get the short hop, so he gets it on the in-between hop; you don't get it at its highest point. And a nice pick, there."

Good grief.

So now I'm trying to remember my brilliance. I remember thinking it odd Morgan didn't fit in either "my two consecutive MVP awards" or "The Big Red Machine" or "We never should have traded Tony Perez" into that paragraph.

(A time-out here. I mean, every time a line drive gets past a diving first baseman, it's not warrant to plunge into a ten-minute monologue about how Tony Perez was the anchor of the 70s Reds, and blah blah how the Dodgers blah blah and then after we got Seaver blah blah blah. I mean, some on, dude.)

Thing is, and this the tragedy, Morgan was a fantastic player. I'm about to turn 44, and in my lifetime, if one twins offense to defense with second basemen, three players are even in Morgan's area code: Ryne Sandberg, Jeff Kent, and Craig Biggio. Morgan and Sanberg are in the Hall of Fame, Biggio is headed there in 2013, and Kent should follow--never mind everyone hated him, teammates, press, fans.

Jeff Kent, red ass first-class, is a Hall-of-Famer. Sorry, Mitch Albom.