WPCNR PRESS BOX By Fastpitch Johnny. June 14, 2004: The New York New Jersey Juggernaut owner, Paul S. Plemenos, 9 games into the National Pro Fastpitch season, his team having lost 4 games in a row, dismissed his Vice President of Softball Operations and Manager, Linda Derk Sunday, telling the YES Network during the telecast of the Nauts Sunday evening game with the Sacremento Sunbirds that it was over "philosophical differences." The Nauts then went out Sunday night and shutout the Sunbirds, 4-0 before 1,200 fans at Montclair State University Stadium.

ROCKETED! Kellie Wilkerson blasts a laser shot off Sunbirds' Amy Kyler in the third inning to give the Nauts the lead, 1-0. Kyler just got the glove up in time to avoid a facial. Photo Capture by WPCNR Sports from TheYES Network.

Paul Plemenos, Naut Owner, Managing in the dugout Sunday Night.

Photo Capture by WPCNR Sports from The YES Network.

Plemenos' dismissal of Derk, emulated another famous baseball owner in New York, in not being reluctant to make moves when things are not working. However, Plemenos did something "The Boss of the Bronx" has never done: he took over as interim manager in the Naut dugout last night according to YES Network telecasters for Sunday evening's game, who said that Derk's staff was running the game.  "The New Boss's" action brought alive the Nauts' bats. YES reported a "search" was being undertaken for Derk's successor.

JAMMED AND BLOOPED: The quintessential lead-off hitter for the Juggernaut, Carri Leto with Lauren Bauer on third and Venus Taylor on second (via a Baltimore Chop and a walk respectively), was jammed on the first pitch by Jody Cox, and fisted it into shallow right in the fourth. It dropped, scoring Bauer and Taylor for a 3-0 lead and the ballgame.  The rally was set up by Bauer's "Montclair Mash" off the sun-baked Montclair State Stadium infield that the Birds' thirdsacker could not handle. Photo Capture  by WPCNR Sports from The YES Network.

HIT 'EM WHERE THEY AIN'T: Leto's hit drops between trio of Sunbirds in shallow right. Photo Capture by WPCNR Sports from The YES Network Telecast.

BUNT CLINIC: Carri Leto demonstrates the perfect sacrifice bunt. She's squared, her stick is held still, eye on the point of contact, bunting the ball onthe head of the bat and deadening the ball. Leto's sacrifice moved Taylor to second in the third inning, who would later move to third on a passed ball and score on Kellie Wilekerson's rocket right off Kyler's glove. Photo Capture by WPCNR Sports off The YES Network.

WINNING PITCHER: SCOTT. Amanda Scott is interviewed by Jen Royle of YES after her 2-hit shutout, in which a great fielding play by Kellie Wilkerson bailed her out of a none-out, two-on situation in the first. Scott said her curve was working the corners well. Photo Capture by WPCNR Sports from The YES Network.

SPEARED AND DOUBLED: Kellie Wilkerson, Naut First Sacker has just speared a rope off a Sunbird bat and is shown diving back into first to double the runner off first for a twin killing to bail Amanda Scott (now 3-2), out of mucho trouble in the first inning. Photo Capture by WPCNR Sports from The YES Network.

The YES Network premier of New York New Jersey Juggernaut games, (there are three more scheduled, the next one being next Sunday at 5 P.M.), had some sponsors, including AVIS and Toyota, interspersed with Yankee plugs and public service announcements, but there were no announcements or commercials for Nauts Tickets -- a major blunder.

Come on. The purpose of telecasting is to move tickets. The Nauts needed to have some ticket sales information, and not only that but the telecasters did not mention the Nauts' box office number. That is a bad job for YES, not giving the Nauts a plug.

The YES Network telecast of a Nauts game, the first ever lacked several staples of a professional sports telecast.  This was the first telecast, and it was not even treated like a typical Yankee season game.

Where was the Pregame?

There was no pregame show. Instead we saw This Week in Baseball, the stupidist show in sports, as a lead-in. Do you think, maybe, just maybe, YES could have done fifteen minutes on the new league, the cities in the league and games coming up? Were they too lazy? No budget? Perhaps no talent is more likely. How about a show called This Week in Fastpitch?

Do you think YES might have done a show called Naut Night, in which the start of the season (the Nauts have played nine games) might have been highlighted, with some great first moments of the Naut season? Some info on who the Nauts are? No. We got nothing like that.

Do you think YES might have included on such a show an interview or two with players on what the league means to women's athletics? Or an interview from Bud Selig, Commissioner of Baseball, on baseball's "Marketing Partner" relationship with National Pro Fastpitch? No. Nothing. No message from Major League baseball once again shows this league is not being treated seriously by MLB.

The Women of Fastpitch Deserve More Than Intern Coverage.

YES is to be saluted for carrying Nauts' games, and actually being the only broadcast or telecast or print media in New York other than I believe the Bergen Record, to carry Nauts' scores.

However, they should not intrust such an historic telecast to a sports telecasting intern with no reporting instinct to produce it. I am being facetious here. A sports producing intern would have done a better job because they would know what ideally to do, and would kill to do it.

For starters:

Come on, where's the pregame show from a network that will give us one hour of  pre and post game of Yankee games where every Yankee adjustment of their batting glove is analyzed. Every angle of a Yankee tobacco spit or a Yankee sunflower seed chomp is covered.

And, how about more of a postgame show, while we're at it?

The interview with Amanda Scott was at least done, but it only lasted what...maybe 30 seconds? Why not ask Amanda what the reception has been in cities on the Nauts' roadtrip?

When Paul Plemenos, Naut owner,  was interviewed "on the wire"  by Jen Royle about the Derk ouster, during the game, how about asking him how his team drew on the road, how they are being accepted in the Montclair and Bergen County area. Report, guys, report. Or, ask him what he did in the dugout. They had a hell of a story and they did not use it to its full potential.

Please, YES Network, think about how you do the next Naut Telecast.

In fairness to the producer, whoever this genius may be, Plemenos may have said he did not want to comment to the reporter on these matters before the interviews. However, you have to ask the question anyway.

The telecast itself of the game was passable, but where were the interviews of fans in the stands asking how they liked National Pro Fastpitch ball and why they came to the game? How they liked the experience? There was no staying with the game once in between innings, so fans watching could see girls and boys from the stands participating in the entertaining in-between-innings contests the Nauts stage.

Those are natural questions!!! Hello!!!??!! Where was the thinking on this telecast?

More Beanballs

The interviews with Naut players were superficial. Asking Carri Leto who her favorite player was (Derek Jeter) and imparting sexy overtones to it, was not what I would have asked Ms. Leto (who I have interviewed). I would ask her how she liked the road trip, how the team was coping with the Texas Thunder sweep, how she found playing everyday, why the team could not hit in Texas, when was the last time players of their calibre had lost 4 games in a row, and how were they coping with it?

And, what happened to Naut ace, Kaci Clark in Texas, where she was relieved in the first inning? What's up with that? YES should have told us all about this team and where it was and who was on it, and how they'd been playing. They did not do that.

Not exactly Mel Allen and Phillippa Rizzutto.

Bob Lorenz did a good job on play-by-play with Cheri Kempf, and appeared to be educating folks about fastpitch softball during the game. The Lorenz-Kemp team jury is out. But they do not decide what goes into a telecast, that is the producer's job and he or she had an exclusive and bungled it  for the reasons I have just outlined.

Lorenz and Kempf were hitting it off fairly well, but when he brings up Kempf's history as a Brakette, there has to be some explanation of who the Brakettes are, and that there are former Brakettes on the Nauts today. There has to be some recap of the Naut season so far and who looks to be the class of the league and how the league is catching on in other cities. Puh--leeeze!!

Camera Work on Money.

Camera work was pretty good, considering the dim lights at the Montclair State University Stadium, and I am sure it will be perfected at the next telecast. Video replay of key plays was excellent. I think there could have been more analysis of what Amy Kyler and Amanda Scott were throwing, what drops and risers were.

But the trouble with the historic first YES telecast was that it was not unlike the first telecast of major league baseball years ago when Brooklyn announcer Red Barber had one camera. But, at least Red would have known what to do with this telecast tonight.

A Big "E" Lights Up on the Schaeffer Scoreboard for The YES producer

Red Barber got fired from Yankee games because he called for a camera shot of an empty Yankee Stadium in 1965, when the Bombers, down on the luck, were playing before 411 people. Red never did another Yankee game, because Red was a reporter. God forbid sportscasters should be reporters.

YES had the story in New York that no one, I mean no one else is covering, and they just did not hit the homer for the girls that they could have. They did not "repawt" as The Old Redhead would have said.

But YES has 3 more chances to do a better job.