Sports Journal 6-1-2014

I’m listening to 1380 KHEY El Paso to the Rangers game on Sunday.  I got to hear my first double video review, as two different elements of the same play were challenged by both managers.  For one heart-stopping minute, I thought they were about to take an extra commercial break to deal with it.  Oh God, if challenges came with an automatic commercial breaks, baseball is over!  Nobody, not even me, will sit through a five-hour game. 

(Meanwhile, in the Dodgers/Pirates game on Saturday, there was an unsuccessful challenge by the Pirates early in the game.  Later, there was another disputed call, that probably needed to be overturned, which lead to a big inning, that couldn’t be challenged because they were wrong on their first one.  I thought the purpose of this challenge crap was to make sure they got the calls right?) 

KHEY has had their up’s and down’s doing Ranger games.  This season, they’ve stopped broadcasting the pre-game for some reason.  They’ve joined games late and in progress for no reason (including the first game of the season).  Today, they carried the game on time, but a half-hour later, went back to Foxsports talk. 

I listened for a while, hoping they’d change back.  After a while, I had to turn it off though.  Two idiot hosts, that I hadn’t heard before, were explaining the fineries of the Donald Sterling situation to a Black caller.  The caller had said that he didn’t agree with the old man, but that his grandfather had fought in WWII to protect Free Speech pretty much regardless of content.  The hosts had to explain that Sterling wasn’t going to prison for what he said, therefore we have Free Speech.  If he’s punished to speaking his mind, that’s just a consequence of not being politically correct.  “So if I say something wrong, I deserve to lose my house?” asked the caller.  This is an important topic, but not as important as the game didn’t get to listen to.  Thanks, KHEY.

Not to be outdone, KROD powered down about an hour and half before sundown.  This meant I only got to listen to about an inning of the El Paso Chihuahuas game, instead the usual 2/3 that I usually get in this situation.  Thanks, KROD.

KVIA still broadcasting black.  That’s okay.  I wasn’t going to watch the two crummy Indycar road races this weekend anyway.  Screw you, KVIA.

Well, I did get to see the NASCAR race at Dover.  Two red flags later, it was like an all day affair.  Dover, in spite of whatever similarities to Bristol, seldom produces great races.  The strongest car has a habit of driving off into the sunset, unchallenged, with most of the field going laps down in the process.  This was Fox’s and my last race of the season (unless KVIA comes back on).  At least I'll be missing the Pocono races, thank goodness.  All I can do now is wait for next year and hope next year is better with KTSM (NBC) picking up the races.  The highlight of the race was Michael Waltrip's gridwalk when he asked Dale for hug.  (Comedic pause) "Okay, sure."      

A couple of notes from Saturday.  While I was laid up in bed listening to some really terrible reception of the Rangers getting pounded by the Nationals, I couldn’t help but notice that Eric Nadel and Matt Hicks were chatting with each other during the game.  The Rangers radio call is a little strange in format.  It’s not a true two-man booth.  Essentially, Eric calls most of the game, with Matt chipping in a few comments and taking over for a couple of innings.  For this blowout, they were interacting with each other like a regular two-man operation.  Frankly, I don’t know why they don’t do it all the time.  Keep in mind, I love both of these guys, both if I’ve got one complaint, it’s their lack of interaction.  If you’ve got two people there, why not have a conversation?

Foxsports must have been gagging to death during the two blowout games they were broadcasting Saturday night.  I wonder how close we’re getting to NOT seeing anymore over-the-air regular season baseball?  I wonder how bad the World Series ratings are going to be, even if it’s the Yankees/Red Sox vs. the Dodgers, if there’s no national over-the-air baseball anymore?  Though the media world has changed a lot since the 80’s, I still think the two are connected (along with teams like the Braves and others getting daily national broadcasts of their games on cable). 

Finally, I think I’m going to have to put a moratorium on complaining about my continuing inability to watch and listen to sports broadcasts.  Though it’s frankly not my fault by and large, if this is getting tedious to write, I can only imagine what it’s like to read it.  That said, this may necessarily severely limit my future sports writing, until/unless I go ahead and get cable and an Internet connection at home.