Sunday, July 13, 2008

Worst Sports Weekend of the Year?

It was the perfect weekend to vege out and watch some sports on television. After flying all night Thursday, the Carpenters were in full recovery mode this weekend without plans or an agenda. All I needed was something to watch...

Right now, I'm glancing at the Colorado Rockies/New York Mets game that is already 4-0 for New York. The Rockies are terrible and this game fails to hold my attention for more than a few pitches.

What else?

The Braves blew out the Padres this afternoon, which is great for me as a Braves' fan but lousy in terms of entertaining me.

My other choices today were beach volleyball, the John Deere Classic (any tournament named after tractors is unwatchable), a minor league all-star game and nothing else.

I'm so desperate for competition, I'm watching the Miss Universe pageant. It is like I can't get a cup of coffee, so I'm sipping on a flat Diet Coke.

With Lime.

No Wimbledon. No British Open. No All-Star Game. No EUFA Cup. No Olympics. No cars or horse racing that I care about (sorry, but the Tour de Farce is boring and the most morally bankrupt sport on the planet).

It might be the most boring sports weekend of the year.

Seriously, every weekend of the year seems to offer something for us sports nuts. It is a pretty good gig we've got. There are always championships or titles on the line (I guess the heavyweight boxing title was defended this weekend, but boxing is dead).

My vacation from sports was weird because I knew good stuff was happening even if I wasn't watching. Now I'm watching, but nothing good is happening.

Do you know what I did on my perfect sports watching afternoon? I cleaned out our garage. The garage! No air-conditioning, bugs everywhere and not a single overpaid athlete in sight.

Fortunately, things are looking up. The MLB All-Star festivities at Yankee Stadium start tomorrow night, the British Open starts Thursday and the Arena Bowl is this weekend as well.

Okay, I don't actually care about the AFL, but a championship is a championship. And part of the fun of the Arena League is spotting guys I remember from college football or even the NFL (Darius Watts, anyone?). And doesn't Jon Bon Jovi own the Philadelphia team? That fact alone is more interesting than anything on this weekend.

I guess we need an occasional weekend off to clean our garages. If every weekend was sports special, none of them would be sports special, right?

Off to read some Ayn Rand.

7 comments:

cappadocia said...

The Mets pushed their win streak to 9 games this weekend, to head into the All Star Break only a half game behind first place. They haven't even been over 500 all year, and now they have pitched shutouts in 4 of the past six games, a stretch they haven't had since '69. This is the most excited I have been about baseball all season.
Sorry you're so bored.

cappadocia said...

Btw, I doubt Meet Dave could be any worse than Norbit, surely.

Chris Carpenter said...

I guess the Willie firing was the right move, huh? The Mets are red hot right now. Baseball is funny in that a team can look awful for three months, then run off a bunch of wins in a row and BAM - they are back in contention. I guess it could happen to the Braves.

On the other hand, you can play well all year long like the Rays, lose seven in a row and suddenly be in 2nd place.

Unknown said...

The tour de france, a farce? Are you kidding me? And you are a baseball fan? In the 2008 race the tour had the nuts to disqualify the best team on the planet for past offenses. Every rider is blood tested every day and the results are matched against bio-markers from past tests. Baseball continuously buries its head in the sand, cowtows to threats from donald fehr and babies its stars to the benefit of ownership and to the detriment of its fans and its history.

cappadocia said...

Actually, Meet Dave might be so bad its funny.

Chris Carpenter said...

I'm not going to defend baseball's history with steroids, but there is a difference between a team with a juicer or two or three vs. a rider who get faster on his second day climbing the Alps. The Tour de France is really about one thing - conditioning. Baseball is about hundreds of things happening between 50-odd people.

Am I wrong or did they find more doping bikers yesterday? You can't even win the race now without taking something - plenty of guys are going to Cooperstown from the last 10 years without juice.

I'm working on article right now about all this...stay tuned.

Unknown said...

OK - I will hold my comments until your article but you will be tasked to keep it fair and balanced. Think about the stars and hall of famers in the last 10 years of baseball who have been all but caught, McGuire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens, Palmiero, Giambi. 83 players or something like that in the mitchell report, 15 players testifying before congress. To insinuate that it is simply a problem of a team with a juicer or three is akin to calling Tiger Woods a pretty good golfer.

I will hold off with anything else until I read your wisdon.