Continued from Part 2
5-28-18
I tried. I really tried. I turned on the TV in the morning to watch French Open Tennis. This might surprise you, but I was once a big
tennis fan. I have happy memories of
watching Wimbledon during the Fourth
of July and other various other matches.
My disinterest might be best summed up in one word: GRUNT! The guys doing it never bothered me, but the
girls are a different story. I flipped
past tennis yesterday and I wasn't sure if the women were playing tennis or
having a grunting contest. I guess you
can blame Monica Seles for starting
this. That guy who stabbed her at a
match just couldn't take the noise anymore.
(Is it still too soon to joke about that incident? My apologies.)
My viewing got off on a bad foot.
The tennis wasn't on when I flipped over to it. Perhaps I wrote down the wrong time? I went out and got lunch at McAlister's. Their Southwest
Turkey Melt didn't look anything like the picture on the Internet and was
pretty small for the premium price. Then
I ate it and totally changed my mind. It
was pretty good. I turned on the TV
again and found the tennis this time.
The men were playing and it was raining.
(Maybe that was why it wasn't on earlier.) Soon enough, officials stopped the
match. I couldn't get into it
anyway. I noticed the ballboys and girls
were wearing shirts promoting a website, the name of which was in English. Was this really the French Open? They’re real picky about that French language
thing in the France. Oh, and NBC was
running side-by-side coverage with commercials between points. This was way worse than NASCAR doing the same. Maybe
I'll try again next time tennis is on.
Something else came up on local TV this weekend, or perhaps didn’t. The Stadium
Network sat on a freeze frame of a commercial all three days of the weekend. At first I didn’t notice, because it was a
title card and commercials come up all the time on these digital stations. I can’t believe somebody at the station
didn’t notice and do something about it.
Shoot, I was looking forward to watching The Rally show later in the day.
Meanwhile, I think another new network is about to come up on another
station. Years later, I have to admit
that this digital conversion thing was a windfall in my TV viewing.
Not having much luck with television, luckily, a Rangers' game came on the radio and I got to listen to the whole
thing, while I attempted to finally finish reading the Baseball Preview
magazine that I'd bought before the season.
Hey, I'm a slow reader and I've had things to do for the last three
months. It was outdated before I even
bought it and so far, about 50% wrong in predicting the season. I also skipped around on reading it before,
so I've had trouble figuring out what I've read. I actually spent all of last week just
catching up on my reading and this magazine was about the last of it.
Eric Nadel was kind of excited to be in Seattle.
He felt that that ballpark gave him the best opportunity to catch a foul
ball in the booth. He wished he had a
glove. This might have come up because
some fans were making good plays in the stands.
A couple of years ago, I might have said that the Mariners should have signed up a few of those fans to play for
them. Right now, the M's are decent team
(smoke and mirrors, they'll fade quick).
The Rangers, meanwhile, are just a bad team. They scored one run, it was unearned and came
in on a passed ball. The Rangers almost
even got a free runner when an umpire missed the call on a diving catch. The Ranger player got thrown out anyway
trying to turn it into a double. The
Mariners only scored two, but that was plenty.
After the game, Eric seemed a bit depressed. The guys blamed Roughned Odor's defense for the loss. Eric at least had fun delivering another
limerick, this one about hockey. Matt Hicks asked beforehand if he'd
tried to rhyme with “Ovechkin.”
That game finished just as the Chihuahuas'
game came on. I'd totally missed the
Chihuahuas the last few days, and I was determined to hear them today. I should have picked another day. They were playing the Grizzlies in Fresno at a strange 4:00pm local time. The game got off to a bad start in the first
as Dusty Coleman fell down in the
outfield trying to make an over-the-shoulder catch. Two runs scored. The pups managed a couple of runs in the
second. One came in on an error on a
bunt, though they also had a runner picked off third on another play, perhaps a
blown suicide squeeze.
The Grizz scored five more runs in the bottom to make it 8-3 and ran the
Chihuahuas' starter out of the game. In
the third, the Grizzlies added a couple more runs and the Chihuahuas' reliever
had to come out for injury. By the
eighth, it was 11-2 and position
player, Diego Goris, was
pitching. That turned out to be
highlight as he worked his career fourth shutout inning.
I mentioned hockey earlier.
Tonight was Game 1 of one of the more improbable Stanley Cup matchups ever. Alex Ovechkin and his Washington Capitals were taking on the Vegas Golden Knights. The Knight
franchise isn't even a year-old. This
has been the greatest run ever for an expansion franchise without
question. I like hockey a lot, but I
don't get to see it on a regular basis.
My time going out to watch various Aggie
sports has really cut into being able to watch the few games I can get at home
on the weekends. Even when there's no
scheduling conflict, I've found myself unable to give the games the attention
they deserve (it's so fast-moving, you have to concentrate when you're watching
to get anything out of it), or the game's a blowout early on.
The game really started with an impressive production number as the
Knights came out. NBC did a good job
with their cameras showing the behind-the-scenes as the players came out. (And they did more side-by-side commercials
during stoppages. This is a really bad
sign for sports on TV.) The T-Mobile Arena was, of course,
filled. The plaza outside was also
filled and I think they were showing the game on a giant video board. I had a friend who lives in Vegas who was a
big hockey fan. I hope he was there watching. (He’s also a huge Raiders fan. He must be
over-the-moon that his favorite team is going to be coming to him. I hope his gambling career is paying well,
because he’s going to need the money to pay for all these season tickets.)
As for the game itself, I'm not qualified to do commentary on hockey, but
I can say this: What an incredibly intense game! The action was absolutely furious from
beginning to end. It was 2-2 after one
period. This is the finals. It's not like the goalies were a pair of rookie
scrubs! It was 3-3 after two. One team would score; the other match it.
The Caps went up 4-3 early in the third.
Vegas came right back a couple of minutes later to tie it again. At the 10-minute mark, the Knights went up
5-4. The game got chippy at that point
with a couple of penalties. With about
five minutes left, the Caps went all-out.
What I saw was the most mesmerizing display of hockey I'd ever seen. For about five minutes, it was continuous
play that you couldn't look away from and barely had time to blink. With under two minutes, the Capitals pulled
their goalie. The crowd was now standing
and screaming. An announcer said this
was the loudest he'd heard it in the playoffs.
There was finally one quick stoppage for icing to cool things
momentarily (see what I did there).
On one attack, for maybe a half-second, the Knight's net was wide open as
Marc-Andre Fleury was facing in the
other direction and the puck got behind him.
A Capitals player was right there, point-blank on the net and couldn't
get a handle on the puck with his stick.
It rolled away from him. In the
remaining seconds, the Knight's managed an empty-netter to seal it. 6-4,
the Golden Knights take Game 1.
There'd never been a Cup game with four lead changes before. Wow! What
a way to end Memorial Day Weekend!
I suppose I should make a small effort to summarize this. That was three races, one hockey match, a
look-in at tennis, and I’m not sure how many baseball games. It depends on how you want to count it. I actually feel kind of bad that I completely
missed a couple. There just aren’t
enough hours in the day. Also, I had
three meals out, which were all pretty good.
The highlight was the Aggies winning the WAC Championship on Sunday. On the flip side, the lowlight was the Aggies not winning it on
Saturday. But I didn’t cover those
games in these posts, so I’ll pick the hockey
as the highlight here. I am wondering
where the Indy 500 will be broadcast
next year, but that’ll have to wait. I’m
grateful that I at least got to enjoy one holiday this year.
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