Kevin Kernan

One of the great pleasures of being at the ballpark, any ballpark, is listening to the pure sounds of the game, the crack of the bat, a fastball slamming into the catcher’s mitt, the organ playing from the concourse, the hum of the crowd. The Louisville Bats played a game against the Indianapolis Indians on Tuesday night where the only sounds were the real sounds of the game — and they called it Nothing Night.

Long before there was FAFO, there was this: What goes around, comes around. That is the precarious stage Major League Baseball finds itself in right now. It is only going to get worse. Just wait until there is a lockout and then expansion so the owners can pocket even more money. On the positive side, a few teams are starting to figure it out, at least partially. But most teams are still lost in a Perfect Storm Sea of Analytics.

There are lessons to be learned from the Knicks breaking their 53-year championship drought, winning the NBA Finals in five games over the analytics-driven Spurs, who had no clue how to protect double-digit leads because their offense is based on volume perimeter shooting, their three-point shot obsession.

Baseball and the Fourth of July go hand in hand, like a ball in a glove, especially now with the United States of America’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence fast approaching.

Managers need to manage again. Man-Up. That became clear with the latest man-child Rafael Devers temper tantrum. Giants manager Tony Vitello blew it big-time when Devers questioned his authority, refusing to come out of a game for a pinch-runner in the ninth inning with no outs and the Giants trailing the Marlins by one run.

I’m totally with four-time Yankees World Series champion Jorge Posada who told Abriendo Sports this week: “The baseball being played these days is straight up garbage.’’ When I covered the Yankees, Posada was always the first player I would go to for the unvarnished state of the team comment. Good for Jorge. Garbage it is. Call MLB for what it is: The Garbage Pail Kids.

It is one thing to play bad baseball; that can happen for any number of reasons. It is quite another to play Dumb Ball and longtime baseball men insist the game has never been dumber than it is now in 2026.

For the first time ever, half the outs in the All-Star Game were strikeouts. 27 up, 27 down, 27 times the ball was not put into play by All-Star hitters who were facing All-Star pitchers, 27 Ks in the American League’s 4-0 win over the National League Tuesday night in Philadelphia. National League “hitters’’ struck out 15 times, AL “hitters’’ struck out 12 times. The 27 strikeouts were the most ever in a 9-inning All-Star Game.

With the revelation this week of major league teams using AI on their dugout iPads to make in-game decisions – with Steve Cohen’s Mets being the chief culprit according to former Mets reliever Adam Ottavino – this is another example of technology over humans and it is pure AI-nsanity.

This week I got hooked on multi-stage bicycle racing and the effortless riding of Tadej Pogacar, who won his fifth straight Tour de France. Watching the race through the Alps on Eurosports was a pleasure (not too much analytics, great scenery, and the human spirit on display) and was a welcome break from MLB, which is running another Tour de Farce.