ESPN is here at the ballpark for one of those national cable broadcasts that any clearheaded person with a normal life and responsibilities finds nauseating. There are a lot of reasons this is the case, but for lack time (and desire) we'll stick with the superficial.
Firstly, a Sunday night game means the game won't start until after 8 p.m. My kids go to bed at 8 p.m. and my oldest boy (he's 4) says "baseball is boring." The reason is because there are never any big games on TV before his bed time. I suspect there are a lot of kids out there who don't say baseball is boring and have a respectable bed time as well. They get shut out, too.
Worse, because Sunday night games are produced by ESPN it means they are overwrought with all sorts of gizmos, graphics, teevee things and general fluff that hinder the natural ebb and flow of the game. When ESPN gets its hands on a game it's just like building a dam in the middle of a free-flowing river. Sure, the water moves a little bit, but there are no rapids. In fact there are times when some production geek jumps out onto the field to tell the umpires to halt the game because all of the commercials haven't run yet.
Look, I'm an adult with a brain who doesn't like to have his chain jerked. Just show me the game so I can get to bed at a respectable hour on a Sunday night because the kids are getting up at the crack and after that all bets are off.
Sleep, as we have written on this site on so many other occasions, is better than HGH.
Another reason why the ESPN game stinks is Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. Truth be told, Miller was brilliant with the Orioles before Peter Angelos destroyed that once proud franchise. These days it seems as if he gets paid by the word. Meanwhile, Joe Morgan was brilliant as a big-league second baseman with that kinetic chicken wing flap that personified all his at-bats.
They say true genius is marked by a little bit of crazy[1], so in that regard Morgan at the plate was quite a treat.
But listening to Morgan has an announcer is like listening to that old man who slowly drove his big-assed car with the tail fins through my neighborhood a few weeks ago while I was out running. Instead of passing by, the old guy sidled that beast next to me to chastise me for "running on the wrong side of the road."
"You should run on the other side so you face traffic," he yelled through the passenger-side window. "You're going to get killed running the way you are."
"Dude," yes, I called the old man (he was at least 80) driving a powder blue Cadillac with tail fins, "Dude." "It's a one-lane road. There is no other side."
So yeah, that's what Joe Morgan sounds like to me. He's a guy chewing me out because he can... until I turn the channel.
Which is what I usually do.
But not tonight - instead I'm sitting in the press box filthy with New York writers and local TV types who like to get out for a ballgame once in a while. Better yet, the TV hanging from the ceiling right over my seat perfectly augments the action on the field. That's because ESPN games are on a seven-second delay, so if I miss a pitch on the field all I have to do is look straight up to catch what happened.
Thank you, ESPN. And thank you to the folks at the Federal Communications Commission for protecting our eyes and ears from something.
***
Who would have guessed that I would have been ready to go for Boston instead of two weeks from now?
Nevertheless, the Boston Marathon is tomorrow and like the geek I am I will be glued to the Internet coverage on WCSN.com as well as the television broadcast on Versus.
Is there any way Robert Cheruiyot won't win his fourth straight Boston? I wonder if Brian Sell considered jumping in the race as a hearty warm up for his buildup before the Beijing Olympics in August.
Anyway, this year's Boston had the extra added flair of playing host to the women's Olympic Marathon Trials this morning. It was kind of a doubleheader of marathoning, if you will. But rather than run the regular Boston course from Hopkinton to the Back Bay, the women's trials looped around the Charles River into Cambridge and back a few times before finishing on Boylston Street.
And just as everyone suspected, Deena Kastor won easily by coming from well off the pace to lead a relatively weak field. Kastor is one of the best five or six marathoners in the world as well as one of the best one or two American marathoners ever, so the fact that she didn't take over the lead until 23½ miles into the race wasn't as dramatic as it could have been.
Actually, Kastor made it look kind of easy by rolling through at 5:43 pace.
But when she goes to Beijing for her second Olympic medal, Kastor knows a 2:29 won't cut it, nor will her main competition be the No. 42-seeded and unsponsored Magdalena Lewy Boulet or the No. 17-seeded Blake Russell, the 2006 national cross country champion.
In Beijing it's going to be hot, dirty and intense.
Meanwhile, Joan Samuelson, the 1984 Olympic Marathon champion and former U.S. record holder, finished with a respectable 2:48. That's really good considering that Samuelson has qualified to run in every single Olympic Marathon Trials and will turn 51 next month.
[1] Actually, I don't know if "they" say that at all. I just made it up.