SNY 'Enhancements' for Mets telecasts arrive in Phil Mushnick's mail

(NY Post, Mushnick): "SNY's list of enhancements for 2009 arrived Monday. SNY's 125 Mets' telecasts will be loaded with new enhancements. Ready?

• SNY Magnify, "will not only hyper-zoom over the magnified area, but it will move with the player or object as the clip is played."

Hmmm. Seeing how the Mets haven't been much for running to first base the last few seasons, is seeing lethargy in hyper-zoom an enhancement or a warning?

• Now, when Carlos Delgado doesn't move to stop a ball hit two feet to his right, we'll get to see him do it in freeze-frame, hyper-zoom, magnified, slo-mo. Life is good.

Another new SNY enhancement will be Flow Motion, which, "will allow Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez to break down and dissect a pitcher or batter in great detail as this tool captures a pitcher's arm or a hitter's swing, which can then be overlaid on repeated plays to analyze differences or identify patterns as games progress."

• That's right, anything worth analyzing is worth over-analyzing. Flow Motion sounds as if it were invented by the one fellow who just can't get enough Joe Morgan. Besides,
• I don't want analysts to dissect anything; it's baseball, not an autopsy.

And then there's Pitch Differential, which can't possibly be as useless and as needless as it promises: Pitch Differential "will be used to illustrate a pitch sequence by zooming-in to where a catcher sets up, where the pitch actually ends up and where the ball makes contact with the bat."

• Oh, no. That one sounds like a Tim McCarver Machine, an opportunity to allow the analyst to explain how the first pitch to the .221 hitter set him up to be struck out, swinging, seven pitches later.

But wait! There's more!

• SNY's Speed and Distance Trackers will be "able to track the speeds and distances of players running the bases or in the outfield, as well as a thrown, hit or pitched ball [or any other moving object on the field]."

Hey, that's just like not being at the game! Where has this little gizmo been all our baseball lives? Soon, we'll be able to tell if Jose Reyes can run faster than Ramon Castro!

• And, of course, SNY's enhancements this season will include new graphics. Apparently the old ones were worn out from overuse.

One of these days, seeing how life expectancies have been extended through medical enhancements, a network will announce in March the development of the greatest baseball-on-TV enhancement of all-time:

• the removal of all enhancements.

That's right, a network will announce that in the coming season it will televise baseball thusly: a bunch of cameras, some video-tape machines, a couple of non-intrusive but helpful announcers, an alert director and a baseball-savvy producer.

• We should live so long."

Tweet Stumbleupon StumbleUpon