Sunday, April 08, 2001
Sports on TV-Radio
ESPN's Mayne masters dry humor
By John Fay
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Kenny Mayne likes getting out of the office. “But I'd rather not do five cities in five days,” Mayne said. He was in Cincinnati Thursday as the fourth stop on his season-opening, five-city baseball tour.
Mayne, one of ESPN's top talents, was out to get the goofy, off-beat stories.
“We're not doing batting percentage with runners in scoring position,” he said. “We've got other people who do that better. We're doing stories about what it's like to be at the ballpark on Opening Day.”
Since Mayne got to Cincinnati three days after Opening Day, he had to figure out something else.
“What we're doing is complete farce,” he said. “Dmitri Young is hitting .462, so we're doing his quest to hit .400.”
Young played along, as did Marty Brennanman and a couple of Pittsburgh Pirates. ESPN spliced it together with some old footage of George Brett and Tony Gwynn talking about hitting .400. The result was a piece that poked fun at the way networks like ESPN over-hype stories.
Not cutting-edge journalism, but it was funny. It was the kind of thing Mayne, whose sense of humor is as dry as they come, can pull off.
If I were running ESPN, Mayne would still be in the prime anchor spot on SportsCenter with Dan Patrick. Mayne's humor might be lost on some people, but he is the rare ESPN talking head who is funny without being overbearing.
The tour let him use that talent.
“I got in this because I wanted to write,” he said. “It didn't matter if it was newspapers, magazines or TV. On SportsCenter you're kind of limited to Team A beats Team B.”
Mayne started the trip in New York for a Yankees-Kansas City game.
“Everyone was exclaiming the Yankees,” he said. “We did it from the Kansas City perspective.”
Next was Minnesota at Detroit.
“Two more downtrodden teams,” Mayne said.
His story was that Minnesota needed to hit more runs and Detroit had to hit better with the bases loaded. Again, he got the players and coaches to play along.
He went to Chicago next for the Cubs-Expos.
“We did a day at Wrigley,” he said. “That's been done 100 times. We did the 101st.”
After Cincinnati, Mayne and company headed for Boston.
“Then we drive home,” he said. “I'll be glad to get back. My wife and two little babies are at home.”
KUDOS CORNER: WCKY-AM (1360) HOMER's Lance McAlister continues to show he's the hardest-working talk show host in town. Wednesday night, Donnie Sadler dived for a ball in left field, allowing the tying run to score. Reds manager Bob Boone said Sadler should not have dived.
McAlister had this stat Thursday: It was Sadler's fourth career game in left. McAlister does this kind of thing all the time.
NO FREE GAMES: Major League Baseball is charging $9.95 this year for a subscription to listen to games over the Internet. The service used to be free.
Radio stations, including Reds flagship WLW-AM (700), aren't happy with this.
“We'd much rather have it free,” said Darryl Parks, AM operation manager for Clear Channel here. “But it's not our decision.”
Parks said the Reds have a big following on the Internet. A lot of listenership comes from people in downtown office buildings, where AM reception is bad.
PARTING SHOT: It was pretty lame of CBS to keep shrinking the screen to run statistics during the NCAA men's basketball championship game when no other games were going on. It obviously was being run to fill sponsorship obligations.
E-mail: jfay@enquirer.com.
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ESPN's Mayne masters dry humor
