ESPN Strains to Do Some Heavy Lifting

How frustrating!

With Nomomania and the hype reaching new heights, you might have sat down Wednesday evening to watch Hideo Nomo pitch for the Dodgers against the Braves from Atlanta on ESPN.

But instead you got the San Francisco Giants and Cincinnati Reds until rain delayed that game, and then you got the Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Royals.

What happened?

Well, someone at ESPN made a big mistake.

ESPN isn’t saying who goofed, but to the network’s credit, ESPN is admitting full responsibility.

“It was a case of someone misreading the blackout restrictions,” ESPN spokesman Rob Tobias said Thursday.

Once the mistake was recognized, the ESPN people in Bristol, Conn., had to lift the blackout from each cable system in Southern California, which took considerable time. Some systems got the telecast by the second inning, others not until the third, or later.

DirecTV subscribers never got the game at all on their 18-inch satellite dish systems.

“We were never notified by ESPN of the mistake,” DirecTV spokesman Tom Bracken said. “We have since had some conversations with ESPN about that.”

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Enough already of all the sideshows at Wimbledon. It’s time now to get down to some real tennis.

On tap today, delayed at noon, are the men’s semifinals, with the top four seeded players. And then on Saturday, delayed at 8 a.m., comes the women’s final with the top two seeded players, Steffi Graf and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario.

The sideshows were sort of fun while they lasted and probably helped boost NBC’s overnight ratings to a 43% increase over the first weekend at Wimbledon last year. And HBO’s ratings overall are up 38%.

But who needs sideshows now? Not NBC, and certainly not the viewers.

And hopefully NBC won’t clutter up any of its coverage now with day-old matches as it did Thursday, reshowing Wednesday’s Boris Becker-Cedric Pioline match while keeping viewers waiting for Graf and Jana Novotna.

If you miss today’s men’s semifinals on NBC, HBO will show them--three hours’ worth anyway--again at 5 p.m.

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Some of John McEnroe’s antics as a player were nearly as offensive as Jeff Tarango’s tirade against umpire Bruno Rebeuh last weekend.

So it was sort of incongruous when McEnroe, now an NBC commentator, came down pretty hard on Tarango.

“Totally unprofessional,” McEnroe said. “He’ll never forget the mistake of walking off the court in the third round of Wimbledon. He’s only going to hurt himself, and in the end result, what is he going to gain by it? He’s going to gain the notoriety that he was a quitter at Wimbledon.”

Tarango in turn read a statement that thanked McEnroe and others for supporting him.

“I’m a little puzzled myself,” McEnroe said. “All I can think of is I didn’t support a couple of the fines.”

Tarango was fined $15,500, topping the Wimbledon record of $10,000, which was previously held by--you guessed it--McEnroe.

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Add McEnroe: Regarding Tarango’s allegations that Rebeuh has manipulated matches because of friendships with certain players, McEnroe said:

“I support the idea of investigating. I don’t think they’re going to find anything, and I think Tarango’s going to find himself looking pretty stupid through all this.”

Judging McEnroe purely as a commentator, he’s tremendous. He knows when to speak and when not to, never talking through a point. He’s smart and knowledgeable, yet throws in a dash of humor and isn’t afraid to poke fun at himself.

He’s sort of a combination of Bill Walton and Johnny Miller, and his willingness to say anything that pops into his mind may be his most endearing quality.

TV-Radio Notes

Baseball on network television is in disarray these days and became even more so on Thursday with word that David Alworth, the Baseball Network’s chief executive, was either fired or had abruptly resigned. . . . One thing we know for sure is that Tuesday’s All-Star game will be on ABC, with coverage beginning at 5 p.m. This will be ABC’s first All-Star game since 1988. Al Michaels, Tim McCarver and Jim Palmer will announce the game. Reporting from the bullpen will be former Dodger Rick Dempsey, currently the manager of the Albuquerque Dukes. . . . For those who like celebrity golf events, NBC has a good one this weekend--the Isuzu Championship from Edgewood in Lake Tahoe on Saturday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.

Recommended viewing: The fourth Jim Thorpe Pro Sports Awards show will be televised on ABC Saturday night, delayed at 9 from the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. Winners accepting their awards via tape have been a downside for the show in the past, but producer Ken Wolfe said because the show is on a Saturday this year a better turnout is expected.

Besides winners in 10 categories, special awards will be presented to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bonnie Blair, Muggsy Bogues and Dan Marino. Also, goalie Jim Craig and team captain Mike Eruzione of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team will be presented with the Thorpe Legacy Award by ABC’s Michaels, and Katarina Witt and Grant Hill will get special awards. Abdul-Jabbar will receive the Thorpe Lifetime Achievement Award, which went to Muhammad Ali, Joe DiMaggio and Hank Aaron in previous years. Mark Curry of ABC’s “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper” is again the host of the show, which is going to be around for a while. Wolfe said ABC has just re-upped for three more years.

Showtime Entertainment Television (SET), the carrier of the Aug. 19 Mike Tyson-Peter McNeeley pay-per-view fight, has apparently worked out its differences with cable companies threatening not to carry the fight. Now, almost all will. The fight will also be available via C-band satellite dishes (the big ones) and digital satellites (the smaller ones). DirecTV passed on the fight, but USSB, a service offered on DirecTV systems, will show the fight on Channel 900. The price on most systems will be $39.95-$49.95 until Aug. 17 and, after that, as high as $59.95. . . . Channel 9 is carrying another Forum-promoted fight from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Saturday night at 8. The card features Jorge Paez and Louie Espinoza in separate bouts.