The slump that probably isn't

"Sportson1: The Last Word" is a nightly hour-long sports call-in program on NY1, a 24-hour news channel on one of New York City's largest cable networks. Airing at 11:30 p.m., it is in my view the hands-down best show of its type -- and the most unappreciated. It's lead anchor, Tom McDonald, has been covering sports in this town for three decades. He and alternates Kevin Garrity and Budd Mishkin aren't pitchmen for themselves or anyone else. They don't waste airtime -- and therefore the viewer's time -- promoting themselves, their friends and colleagues until you wish the whole lot them would forever vanish from existence. They don't try to be witty or pound you with their egos and adolescent humor. None of them ever thinks he is in some way part of the story.

They are old school sports reporters who simply offer intelligent, non-sensationalistic sports coverage and talk that respects both viewers and athletes.

Watching Sportson1 after Tuesday night's Yankees-Rays game at the Stadium, I got an inkling the lead stories in the Wednesday tabloids, not to mention the radio and television hocking -- that's Yiddish for a kind of pounding, repetitive harangue that flattens your ears into potato latkes -- would not be about the Yanks' 3-2 Yankee victory over the Rays. Or to put it more precisely, I knew that the game's overwhelmingly positive and interesting storylines would be in large part sidelined by what really should be a sidebar.

This is because the spoiled, entitled New York sports press got into a collective snit because Derek Jeter didn't talk to them, and answer yet another repetitive, predictably numbing round of questions about why he'd gone hitless for a second day -- yes, a whole two days, shudder -- while edging on Lou Gehrig's Yankees hit record.

As I said, I got a sense this would happen from Sportson1. Garrity, returning from the Stadium to join McDonald in the studio, mentioned that Jeter had not made a postgame appearance at his locker. Jeter typically being available to the media, it became a brief topic of conversation on the show. They wondered aloud if Jeter might be tired of fielding the same questions over and over again. They had a brief exchange about whether he might be pressing a bit at the plate or thrown off his game by all the attention. Garrity would inject that Jeter's parents, as well as old teammate and friend Tino Martinez were at the ballpark, and guess aloud that it was possible he'd had plans to meet them after the game.

And then they moved on. There were other things to discuss. Nick Swisher's two home runs (including the walk-off in the ninth), for example. The Yankees reaching 90 wins to go 40 games over .500 in what has been a breathtaking tear since the All-Star break. The tremendous pitching of starter Chad Gaudin and the Yankee relief corps, including an increasingly valuable Damaso Marte and resurgent Brian Bruney....

On Sportson1 they didn't make a big deal out of something that wasn't one for sports fans. That, I knew, would be for the next day's news rags and talkies.

Because when the press doesn't get what it wants, when the beast isn't fed, it grumbles and kicks. Because in their egocentricity and self-importance, the reporters whose job it is to bring their audience the story act as if they are the story. When they feel slighted, you'll not only hear about it, it will be all you hear about.

I'm not going to single out names here. Check out the dailies or turn on the idiot box of your choice and you'll find out for yourself.

Here's what I think there is to say about Jeter's two hitless days. He faced some good pitchers and also had some hard hit balls caught and maybe, being a person who shuns attention, is a bit off his game because of all the attention he's been getting lately. And maybe yesterday he felt like a night off from answering the same questions he'd answered the day before -- twice because of a doubleheader. Or maybe he had dinner reservations somewhere.

That's it. No big deal. Jeter will get his four hits. And a really nice story that is becoming annoying will be over. Unless maybe you're the assembled New York media, and you're still feeling like a prom king who's been stood up by the date you feel you're due, and want the whole wide world to know it ain't fair.