YES NETWORK SHOWS ESPN IS THEIR DADDY

"Joe Torre's live press conference Tuesday was officially barred from broadcast coverage until its conclusion. But ESPN began running a crawl of its contents 15 minutes into it, with 30 minutes still to go."

• This account in the NY Post shows a big disconnect within the YES Network. They obediently refrained from broadcasting any of Torre's remarks while they were ongoing, allowing ESPN to steal the entire story in what's supposedly their own building.

• There's clearly no connection or chain of command between the Yankees and the YES Network as I long ago suspected. Here, the Yankees pr director Rick Cerrone has virtually no reaction to this event, even though he's the one who gave ESPN the ground rules about it.

• Worst of all, ESPN's managing editor, Vince Doria, has absolutely no fear of repercussion, dismisses anything Rick Cerrone says, and invokes the name of YES senior executive, John Filippelli, implying that Filippelli would think something different than Cerrone. (Doria, of course, came to ESPN after a long career at the...Boston Globe).

• By these events, YES shows it has no boundaries, certainly none that ESPN has any need to observe. Like any other institution, this culture affects everything else that goes in in the organization. In many cases, as a Yankee fan, I already know I'm not going to hear or see what I need to on YES. I'm not saying they should be a one-sided all-homered channel, but this is more evidence they have no feeling for the Yankee fan (and are certainly not Yankee fans themselves).

• Aside from all that, this is embarrassing. What is supposed to be a Yankee-oriented network is played for fools by ESPN (who themselves are just a bunch of unsupervised jokers). THERE IS NO ONE IN CHARGE AT THE YES NETWORK, AND THE YANKEE FAN IS PAYING THE TAB FOR THIS GROSS INDIFFERENCE.

""It wasn't intended to be live programming," Cerrone said. "It was meant to be Joe's end-of-season wrap, which is normally done in Joe's office."

Approximately 15 minutes after the press conference began, ESPN in its eyes honoring Cerrone's request - was showing tape of Torre confirming The Post story. YES waited about an hour before airing Torre on its WFAN simulcast of "Mike and the Mad Dog."

YES felt it didn't get beat on the story, but instead lived up to an agreement by not showing any of the press conference on tape until Torre had finished.

YES spokesman Eric Handler said ESPN had Torre's comments so much earlier "because we played by the rules and they didn't."

Vince Doria, ESPN's managing editor, said the network didn't violate any agreements.

"As far as I'm concerned, this is revisionist history by Cerrone, and I don't know where [YES programming/production president John] Filipelli comes out on it," Doria said. "They knew that our charge here is to get breaking news on the air as quickly as possible.

"This certainly was breaking news. There never was any agreement that we would hold on to the tape that was hot until the press conference was over.""

From article by Andrew Marchand, NY Post, 10/11/06

• While the Yankee fan twists slowly in the wind.

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