Neil Best Joins Us Tonight at 10PM

Neil Best, Newsday's Media Watchdog Extraordinaire, joins us tonight to talk all things Sports Media. But, first, we'd like to award him a Victory Lap for breaking--and then sticking with--the Mike & The Mad Dog divorce story.

We'll also delve into Newsday now being owned by Cablevision, the NFL Network, the Olympics and a ton of other relevant topics.

Of course, now that our new co-host is named Mike, we can safely say that we're the only Mike & Chris still working as a team in New York Sports Radio--albeit in a completely commercial-free, no one making a dime from it capacity, that is.

Thanks to All of Our August Guests

Before we get too deep into September, I just want to publicly thank the following for joining us during the month of August:

Bob Nightengale, National Baseball Writer for USA Today
Kat O'Brien, Yankees Beat Reporter for Newsday
Will Carroll of The Baseball Prospectus
Brian Bassett of The Jets Blog
Matt Cerrone of Mets Blog

Jets Season Preview with Erik Boland Tonight

Tonight at 9PM on Long Island's 90.3FM, Newsday's Jets beat reporter Erik Boland will be speaking with new co-host Mike Ewald.

Erik was kind enough to join us for both a Jets Draft Preview and a Jets Draft Review in the Spring. Tonight, he joins us for a Jets Season Preview.

While we're not yet webcast, we'll get the audio up at http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg
as soon as humanly possible.

We'll Be Posting More, We Promise

While we haven't posted here lately, that will be changing soon. Throughout July, we've been joined live by the likes of Ken Davidoff, Mike Vaccaro, Alan Hahn, Anthony Rieber and Mark Healey.

Pretty soon, we'll create a site for just the interviews, too.

Thanks!

Baseball Talk + Knicks Talk = Tonight's Show

Because baseball's regular season is now halfway done, now would be a good time to bring on Newsday's national baseball writer Ken Davidoff--and to update this website, while I'm at it.

Ken will join us tonight at 9:30PM.

And, keeping it an all-Newsday affair tonight, Newsday's Knicks beat reporter Alan Hahn will be joining us at 10:30PM.

Speaking of Newsday and affairs, Linda Kozlowski played a Newsday reporter in Crocodile Dundee. Paul Hogan would later divorce his wife to marry Ms. Kozlowski. They are still married today.

Jets/Giants Draft Reviews Tonight

Well, last week, we did our Draft Preview show. So, that means that tonight is our Draft Review show.

At 9:15PM, we'll be joined live by Newsday's Jets beat reporter Erik Boland

At 10:00PM, we'll be joined live by Daily News Giants beat reporter Ralph Vacchiano

In between interviews, call us at 516-572-7440 to discuss Yankees, Mets, Rangers, etc.

The audio of the interviews will go to http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg

Jets and Giants Draft Previews

We were lucky enough to be joined by Erik Boland and Mike Garafolo the other night.

For 44+ commercial-free minutes of Jets talk with Newsday's Erik Boland and 27+ commercial-free minutes of Giants talk with Mike Garafolo of the Newark Star-Ledger, please go to:

http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg

The interviews are in MP3 format

Missed It By That Much

It's been a good week for me on the Newsday Blogs. First, I made the Sunday edition with my "Methinks that B12 is the new poppy seed bagel" You see, for the last 20 or so years, everybody I know has been warned that poppy seed bagels could make you fail a drug test. So, reflexively, people have been filling out "poppy seed bagels" on the drug test forms to cover all bases.

Then, Neil Best almost gave me Comment of the Week. After Neil wrote that he took an elevator with Gisele Bundchen the night of the Giants/Pats game, I opined that "As a reporter, you should have asked her if she was coming back from Gate D." Unfortunately, in siding with political correctness, Mr. Best could not give me the honor, as it would "give the impression I find the abuse women have taken from drunk Jets fans at that location to be funny, which I definitely do not." Instead, it went to Bob Glauber.

Here was my response:

Sportscaster Cliche Coming in 3,2,
Talk about snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory!
I did give you the Out with the "As a reporter" preface. You could have been asking her for her thoughts on the subject, as a New Yorker and as a woman. Heck, she used to date DiCaprio--you could have even asked her about Global Warming!
I'd also like to point her that one of her nicknames is "The Body" and she's been well paid to do in pictures what the Gate D'ers do for free/when most inappropriately coerced. So, with apologies to George Bernard Shaw, we're really just haggling over the price.
But, it's nice to see the Watch Dog take the High Road. Well-deserved Congratulations to Mr. Glauber. Perhaps, someday, we can get a live phoner out of him.

That last line about the phone interview is true. Unless it's a paid interview, Bob will not cut into family time to do a media interview, so it would have to be pre-taped. Because we're not paid, my wife won't let me down to the station for any pre-taping. So, we'll probably never get around to having him on.

Knicks Talk with Alan Hahn

When we first started having media people as guests three years ago, the very first writer to join us was Newsday's Alan Hahn. That was back when he was the beat reporter covering the Islanders. For the past two seasons, he's been on the Knicks beat. No matter what team he's covering (even 4 or 5 different ones during the NHL Lockout), he always makes for lively--and honest, verrrry honest--discussion. Just check out his Knicks Fix blog for samples of his no-pulled-punches style.

Last night, Alan was kind enough to join us again. Please go to http://hosted.filefront.com/patchyfogg or simply click here for the audio of the 39+ commercial-free minute interview.

Best Vacation Ever!

While Newsday's Neil Best is thus far sticking to his guns of maintaining Blog Silence while on his vacation, he will not be keeping Radio Silence as he'll be joining us live at 10PM tonight on Long Island's 90.3FM.

Bob Glauber insists (read: bets) that Mr. Best won't be able to stay away from blogging during his self-imposed hiatus by going so far as to launch a contest predicting when Neil will crack. Newsday colleagues (and past Sports Talk guests) Anthony Rieber, Ken Davidoff and Mark LaMonica have all chimed in with their musings on the subject. Speaking of LaMonica, he and I share a high school alma mater. He also maintains a Blog devoted to Co-Host Steve's favorite show. Co-Host Steve's last name is Novick--kinda like these guys, I guess. Of course, he's still listed on their roster, coming right after a guy named Turnbull.

One final note: It's just our luck that Neil's on a break from the Blog when our little 100% commercial-free, no one makes one thin dime from it, Sports Talk radio show could use the promotion. Incidentally, in looking up that hyperlinked Martin Short film, I found out that Mr. Short's son Oliver is attending my college alma mater.

Best on Show

Newsday's sports media columnist Neil Best joined us in the aftermath of the firing of Don Imus and we had quite a thorough discussion of le affaire Imus. Since this topic is so popular on the New York Radio Message Board, I think it's high time that we post it here.

Neil's colleague Ken Davidoff recently commented that Neil posts a new blog item "eight times in seven minutes while eating a corned beef sandwich." This is true. However, in our little interview, Neil's blog is still just a twinkle in his eye.

Neil's a proud Cornell grad who never ceases to drop in an obscure Big Red fact. So, I'll give you one: Hugh Anthony Cregg III dropped out of Cornell during his junior year. And, who is Mr. Cregg? Why, none other than Huey Lewis of The News fame.

Click here to listen to the interview.

P.S. Hopefully, this Blog entry will go a long way towards putting Neil on top (in terms of internet searches) of the Irish rugby player who shares his name.