YES Network still adores Johan Santana

They again show triumphant footage of Santana raising his cap to the crowd in his ballpark as he walks majestically back to the dugout, I'd say 5 or 6 seconds. This was just a promo of YES' upcoming report on Santana. They've done this before with him and I've written to them about it. It would be fine if they extended at least the same consideration to their own best pitcher and mainstay, but they don't. If they show Mariano Rivera at all, it's usually for less than 1 second, a kind of nothing MTV-like edit that you'd miss if you blinked. In YES' edited version of the conclusion of the 2003 ALCS of which Rivera was MVP and pitched 3 consecutive scoreless innings, they show 1 second of Rivera in the montage following the game, and went a step further: someone put a hat in front of the camera which blocked Rivera's face. Rivera, the hero of the game which took his team to the World Series, had been lifted onto the shoulders of his teammates, was crying and waving to the fans. The YES Network is adamant that you not know about your own best player, and showers adoration on selected non-Yankee players.

• P.S. The Minnesota baseball hype-sters try to gin up fans to fear Santana might sign with the Yankees in 2009. This assumes the guy would even want to play for the Yankees--not everyone does. He'll be older and more worn-out by then (all things being equal) and the Yankees have found it doesn't pay to wait around for big time free agents looking to cash in.

***Extra credit: I do thank the YES Network for giving Edwar Ramirez a nice clubhouse interview after the game today--a terrific kid, very articulate in English--learning a second language isn't easy, and seemed happy. He did a great job in the 8th and 9th inning.

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