Welcome back NFL

You know what?  Concussions and all, the NFL is still the best sport.

While it’s true that on any given Sunday one may have to endure penalty-marred games and the insipid booth reviews, for the most part these games are over and done with within three hours.  Unlike baseball which forces you to sit through the delicate-genius managers changing pitchers every other batter, football is succinct and to the point.

The NBA and NHL regular seasons are jokes, containing little, or no meaningful games.  While baseball’s regular season retains some integrity,  with the addition of wildcard teams, truly meaningful pennant races are rendered mute.  You would think, with all the extra teams potentially in post season contention, there would be more intrigue in September.   More often than not, however, the divisions are decided long before October.

This leaves football, with its tight, 16 game schedule.  I enjoy the rhythm of the autumn sports week where you can enjoy taking in the sports radio and newspaper hype, gradually working yourself into a frenzy.  You spend the week looking forward to Sunday or Monday night.  You’re like a caged animal waiting to be set free.

This is what life is about.

 

It begins

Well that off season went by pretty fast.  Another baseball season is upon us and the Mets are 1-0.  Extrapolated to a full season that comes to…[gets calculator]…162-0!  Who am I kidding,  I’ll be happy if Syndergaard and Cespedes can stay healthy for a full season.

This year, in a herculean effort to speed up the game, baseball had limited catchers trips to the mound to 6 per game.  If this is successful the time of game may decrease to that of what it was in the pre-replay review era.  In other words, not much.

In an era where teams carry 13-15 men pitching staffs and relief pitchers are expected to pitch no more than one inning, the idea of having ballgames last shorter than 3.5 hours is a pipe dream at best.

I would be happy, however, if baseball banned the playing of God Bless America in the 7th inning stretch.  If they must have this jingoistic nonsense at least move it to the 6th inning, leaving Take Me Out to the Ballgame to reclaim its rightful place in Americana.

Play ball!

 

 

 

Replay is killing sports

In the old days if a referee of umpire made a bad call you steamed about it for a few minutes and moved on.  These days we have to sit in front of our televisions and endure dozens of slow motion replays while neutered officials spend several minutes in front of a monitor deciding whether or not they made the correct ruling.

In last night’s Warriors/Cavaliers finals game 1 there was a play in which Cavs guard, Matthew Dellavedova, went for a steal and ended up accidentally hitting the Warriors, Andre Iguodala in the groin.  Tempers flared but the players didn’t brawl.  Instead the refs went to the video tape, and what had been an exciting, back and forth  contest turned into a snooze-fest as we waited five minutes for things to be sorted out.

And the upshot?  A foul was called on Dellavedova. Not even a flagrant foul.  I ask you, was it necessary to study the play as if it was Talmud to end up calling a non shooting foul?  I don’t know about you but I can live with the occasional bad call if it will spare us the drudgery of waiting for a replay review.

The players make errors all the time.  Refs and umps make errors too – it’s a part of sports.

Replay is especially maddening in baseball, which is a slow game without much action to begin with.  You’d think that the the last thing MLB would want is for the flow of the game to be any slower.  But…here we sit as the once proud umps are reduced to waiting for a ruling handed down from a New York bunker.

Shabby.

 

Why getting it right is so wrong

A few comments about how much baseball sucks today. That 1977 Phillies/Dodgers playoff game I watched the other night: How long do you suppose it took to play that game? Remember, this was a 6-5 game. The Phillies used 4 pitchers while the Dodgers used 6, which was a lot for those days.

It took 2 hours and 59 minutes.

Here’s another thing: In the 2nd inning there was a play at the plate. Burt Hooten hit a double and Steve Garvey tried to score from 2nd. Bob Boone, the Phillies catcher, blocked the plate because this was pre-pussy baseball before the neutering of the catchers and umpires.   Harry Wendelstedt, the home plate ump,  ruled that Garvey was safe. However…he was out. You could easily tell by the ONE REPLAY they showed that Garvey was not able to slide under the tag. Wendelstedt, got the call wrong. The announcers noted it and then moved on, never once mentioning it again.

And guess what? The world didn’t stop turning on its axis, and what ensued was one of the more memorable playoff comebacks. There was the technology, even in ‘1977, to institute booth reviews yet they didn’t. Why? Because they realized they had a great game and didn’t want to ruin it.

Think about this as you enjoy your 5 hour Yankees/Bluejays games.