Clueless TBS has made Yankees-Guardians ALCS unwatchable

Today we pause to give our eternal thanks to TBS for allowing us a few brief, presumably live moments of the last can’t-make-it-up inning of Thursday’s Yankees-Guardians playoff game. Until those final brief glimpses it was touch-and-go — whatever that means — as to whether TBS had any idea what was going on down on the field, as the national network had become immersed in scouring the stands to provide closeups of fans, many with their eyes closed, deep in spiritual devotion praying or at least meditating on behalf of the team in the religion of their choice. Pick a praying fan! Pick 10! TBS found scores to choose among! Yep, standard, 21st Century live, big-event sports television.Anything worth doing is well worth overdoing as a matter of thoughtless habit, like sitting on a bench carrying a “Wet Paint” sign just because. The games networks purchase for billions of dollars to exclusively televise? Nah! Show everyone else in the ballpark watching what we tuned in to watch.

Indiscriminately utilize all the TV cameras we schlepped along to fractionalize your attention! Best seat in the house? By pregame design it’s no longer in your house. But sports and TV now meet at the corner of Discomfort and Bloating. Thursday’s frantic finish featured three current or former closers, rather than the standard two, regardless of how the eighth-inning designated automaton pitched. The Yanks’ current closer Luke Weaver and former closer Clay Holmes allowed four hits, a home run each. Cleveland’s lights-out closer, Emmanuel Clase, brought in early as a matter of desperation, allowed three hits, two of them home runs.Thus another postseason single-game record: Three “closers,” all allowed at least one home run. Cleveland eventually sent in Pedro Avila, the official winner.

He allowed two walks in his one inning.He’d replaced Andrew Walters, who’d allowed no base runners and struck out Juan Soto looking, thus Walters had to go. But that’s ...