“The Krukker you see on ESPN’s ”Baseball Tonight” is the same guy you’ll get if you bump into him in line for a beer at the ballpark,” writes The Allentown Morning-Call’s Keith Groller, who takes the opportunity of a Certified Public Accountants luncheon to learn that Sir John Kruk is indeed, every bit as thoughtful and well informed off camera as he is on television.
I asked Kruk if he felt confined by the short sound-bites he has to deliver during ”Baseball Tonight.”
”No, it’s not hard for me to get in and out fast because I don’t have a lot of thoughts going through my head anyway,” he said. ”The hardest part for me is to remember the players’ names. Now with the influx of all of these Japanese and Korean players, wow, I really struggle with those.
”The hardest part is remembering the names and remembering what teams they’re on. I couldn’t tell you who plays for the Royals right now if my life depended on it. Thank God it’s not dependent on it.”
Kruk seems to have a good rapport with ”Baseball Tonight” host Karl Ravech, but says like with any family, there are some less-than-harmonious moments.
”You better have a good rapport because we’re on four days a week from March through October,” Kruk said. ”If we didn’t get along, it would be hard.
”I mean there have been times when I wanted to punch him in the face. And, I’m sure there are times when he’d like to do the same to me. We argue. One time we went three days without speaking to each other, except on the air.
”A lot of it has nothing to do with TV. He might have said something while we were golfing or something like that. It’s just like teammates on a baseball team. There were days I wanted to walk into the clubhouse and drop someone and I’m sure someone wanted to do it to me.”
It doesn’t take an accountant’s convention to add it up: with Esteban German at second and Crisp in center, that’s a whole lot of goofy up the middle in KC.
But as long as the Royals are dealing the pen, let’s see Soria end up in the (sizeable) hole Kenny Williams is trying to make by dealing Bobby Jenks.
Speaking of which, Mets fans: do they have Old Country Buffets in Queens? I think that’s going be a dealbreaker if not.
It is not surprising that the WWL and their minions doesn’t know anything about small market teams. Just let someone from the Giants or the Jets get the clap and we would hear about it every 10 minutes for a week. And could someone tell Chris Berman that his “Nicknames” are so dated that it is embarassing.