US women’s soccer team is incredibly hard to root for

What happened? Who started it and why? When will it end? Will it ever end? Or is it over when it’s over for you, when you no longer can stomach it?

Why have the most influential forces in sports — TV execs, advertisers, the media and the top administrative authorities — determined that our sports be denuded of sports? Why have the conceited, vulgar and selfish — assorted creeps antithetical to sports — been given the keys to the kingdom?

Even if it remains flabbergasting, it’s hardly a surprise that Fox and marketing geniuses seized upon the overwhelming disgust with Team Obnoxious, the 2019 U.S. Women’s World Cup Championship team — a literal turnoff among even the most willing and eager “USA! USA!” chanters — then repackaged it as the reason to again both watch and root for “our gals.”

Again, the excessive, me-first, all-about-me antics of vulgar Megan Rapinoe, wildly unpopular among her country’s right-minded populace, has been restored as someone everyone loves and admires.

How could Fox, the exclusive U.S. rights holder, have missed what America saw so plainly as nauseating — even if President Biden bestowed the country’s highest civilian medal on her for reasons unknown?

Was Biden’s selection committee particularly impressed with Rapinoe’s full-field, rub-it-in solo victory lap after scoring to make it 9-0 over Thailand in a 13-0 final? Or the way she used the F-word in addressing an NYC crowd that was loaded with kids?

In the U.S.’s 2019 win over England, Alex Morgan scored then ran to the sidelines so all could see her mock the opponents by miming English tea time. It was standard classlessness for a classless team that already twice this month has made it clear to an international audience during our national anthem their shame in representing the United States.

So what did Fox do with that Morgan tea-sipping video? It included it in a promo as to why we should watch this year’s U.S. matches. Can Fox’s shot callers be any more detached from viewers who can distinguish good from bad, bad from worse?

Another Fox promo shows the U.S. team as a collection of the scowling discordant. Hey, this is a team without class! Don’t miss them!

Reader Keith Marston: “The Gashouse Gorillas [of Bugs Bunny baseball infamy] are more likable than the USWNT.”

Or is Fox this time targeting an audience exclusively composed of disaffected yahoos? That, and the public losing their money to bad-odds gambling, seems to be the plan in all sports.

It still strikes me as impossible that Marshawn Lynch, a player so unapologetically vulgar in semi-decipherable speech and actions that he became celebrated and imitated by fools for grabbing his crotch after scoring — his hit-and-run conviction was never mentioned on TV — became an advertising go-to guy, including TV ads for, of all hands-on things, Subway sandwiches.

But we’re supposed to believe that Stephen A. Smith’s, Skip Bayless’s and Colin Cowherd’s opinions are valued, David Ortiz, John Smoltz and Alex Rodriguez enhance baseball telecasts, Serena Williams is the finest human to have ever played tennis, Tiger Woods is next to godliness, we enjoy watching self-entitled Spike Lee demand attention from his front-row perch at Knick games and believe that ESPN hired Pat McAfee for any better reason than that he’s crude, thus perfect to lure the Disney network’s target audience.

And so we’re supposed to be all in — again — with our blind support for America’s female soccer team, distinguishable for its pledges of allegiance to Nike, as if they know what stinks about America, the Land of the Unjust, but are ignorant as to who made their uniforms and warm-ups, where and for how much.

They’ve no problem representing Nike, reliant on oppressed Communist China’s factory serfs toiling for minimal existence in a country that “disappears” human rights advocates. The United States? Not so much.

Of course, no one is forcing us to watch. Such an option is a very American value well worth cherishing and practicing.

But it’s a shame that what we might normally watch — an international sporting event at which the U.S. team excels — would be too great a sensory compromise not to mention a second case of U.S. Women’s World Cup nausea.

I wonder if the U.S. team — I’m hesitant to write “our team” — is aware, or even cares, that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, for self-respecting Americans to waste their time on.

Manfred contract par for course

MLB team owners have extended Rob Manfred’s contract to further diminish baseball through 2029. Surely, they were particularly impressed with Manfred’s recent adroit neglect that turned a Dodgers’ game into a salute to male lunatics in nuns’ outfits in order to renew their Catholics-bashing and express their pride in being gay.

Yep, he may be gutless but you can’t beat extra-inning games determined by runners placed on second base by rule rather than baseball.

I wonder if Manfred took the time to notice the weekend’s Royals-Yanks series.

Because the Royals are a miserable team, the games were deemed to have little TV value. So Saturday’s began at 1:05, Sunday’s at 1:35. Both are highly logical starting times that are disappearing to serve MLB’s addiction to TV revenue.

And both “worthless” games drew over 40,000 because they were weekend afternoon games.

Thus MLB, under Manfred, like the NFL under Roger Goodell, now provides the best starting times to games considered to have minimal TV value but maximum value to ticket-buying customers — those who used to count most.

Ever hear of Tarik Skubal, Jose Cisneros, Tyler Holton and Jason Foley? All pitch for the Tigers. Sunday they combined to strike out 15. More than half the Giants’ outs came on strikeouts thrown by widely unknown pitchers.

In Sunday’s White Sox-Twins, 12 innings, 12 pitchers, Chicago’s Luis Robert Jr. and Minnesota’s Donovan Solano combined to go 0-for-10. Both struck out four times.

That’s baseball, Suzyn.

Unexpected candor from YES surprises

It sounded like a well-aimed swipe at Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone, but given that it was spoken on YES, it was heard as welcomed candor.

Early in Tuesday’s Mets-Yankees, David Cone spoke of starters “going deep into the game.”

To that, Michael Kay said, “Is that possible, to now get ‘deep into the game’ ”? Well, alrighty, then!

Now to have Kay & Co. cease hyperventilating over Giancarlo Stanton’s exit velocities, even if Stanton may have the greatest exit velo in the history of .200 batters who strike out too much and pose doubles into singles, even in playoff games.

Early in his Giants’ career, Saquon Barkley won big points here when, after scoring, he refused Odell Beckham, Jr.’s conspicuous invite to join him in an end zone dance of immodest celebration. Class act.

But Barkley’s class took a recent hit when he twice used the F-word on a podcast to express his frustration with contract negotiations. Then again, the F-word is the new synonym for sincerity.