Didn’t get to listen to the inaugural episode of Tony Bruno and Josh Innes until the final hour. Factoring out commercial-time, that means I heard 40 minutes or so. During that short time, I came away with five impressions – and one startling discovery.

First, the impressions:

1 – Innes maintained control and comported himself like a mature adult.

2 – There was a whole lotta kissing-up going on in both directions – Tony kissing-up to Innes and Innes kissing-up to Bruno. Very contrived.

3 – Callers kept telling them they were great together. To me, “great” is a misunderstood and over-used word – especially in the world of sports. In any case, great is quite a leap after less than five hours on the air together.

4 – Near the end, Pete Ciarrocchi entered the scene. Pete’s the owner – or an owner – of Chickie’s and Pete’s. Anyway, Ciarrocchi kept praising Tony and Innes to the high heavens. Since Tony and Innes are going to be broadcasting their show from Pete’s establishment on Fridays, that’s the epitome of bald-faced self-promotion. Shallow.

5 – Innes musta called the show “Innes and Bruno” a half-dozen times in the short time I was listening – so many times that I looked it up on the WIP website. Sure enough, that’s the name – Innes & Bruno. SLAP – take that Tony Bruno.

That move has Andy Bloom’s fingerprints all over it – Bloom is the station’s Operations Manager. Innes is Bloom’s “boy” and Bloom must pull out all the stops to make Innes look good and justify his decision to recruit Innes in the first place.

Still, the show didn’t turn me off. I’ll tune in again to see where it goes.

And now I’ll ease my way into the startling discovery I alluded to earlier.

To set it up, I must point out that WIP’s been running recorded announcements since some time last week – at least that’s when I first remember hearing them. It’s Tony Bruno’s voice and the gist of the announcement was that Tony’s coming back to WIP and that his new partner was going to be Josh Innes. But wait – there’s some sort of problem preventing them from getting started right way. The script made it sound like Innes was being punished – suspended, if you will. At least that’s the logical conclusion you were supposed to draw.

Okay. You with me?

So now it’s six o’clock. Innes and Bruno are done their first show.

Brian Haddad is coming on – but Innes is hanging around for a while and they’re talking. At one point, Innes told Sludge – as Brian Haddad sometimes calls himself – that he wasn’t really suspended. He was hanging out in Louisiana for a few days and drinking beer. In fact, Innes told Sludge that the suspension was something that Andy Bloom contrived to fuel interest in his new show.

What?

Andy Bloom perpetrated a hoax? He hoodwinked his loyal listeners?

Sounds like SuspensionGate to me.

We’re finally pretty much done with InflateGate and now here comes SuspensionGate.

One of two things must be true.

One, Innes was making up the part about Andy Bloom’s treachery.

Or, two, Innes was telling the truth and Andy Bloom did, in fact, deceive the WIP listeners.

If the latter were true – if Andy Bloom tried to pull the wool over all of our eyes – then one of my all-time favorites, Tony Bruno, was complicit in the charade. If it’s true, that means Tony recorded the announcement knowing full well about the ruse – OUTRAGE.

But then I came to learn that Tony was in Arizona for the Super Bowl when he recorded the message. According to Tony, he had no idea what was going on, he was just following orders from Andy Bloom. So, in my book, Tony’s off the hook. It was all Andy Bloom.

But no matter how you slice it, credibility took a hit at WIP. If you can’t trust the station’s Operations Manager, who can you trust?

(I’d planned to reveal my 10 favorite WIP hosts today, but this breaking news took precedence. My 10 favorites will appear tomorrow.)

Barry Bowe is the author of Born to Be Wild and 1964 – The Year the Phillies Blew the Pennant.