All Bets Are Off … Unless You Work for the NBA

The New York Islanders fired their coach a few days ago, to which I say, “the Islanders still exist?”

The best part of this run that the Mets have been on has easily been Mike Pelfrey’s sustained hot-streak. I’m not going to go all Mike and the Mad Dog-caller on him (“Doggie… Doggie… He looks like a combination of Sandy Koufax and Cy Young with Greg Maddux’s control”), but he has been impressive recently. It’s exciting to see a young pitcher building an actual body of work and not just two consecutive good starts. The last time a Mets pitcher looked this good at this age was Jason Isringhausen. And we know how well that turned out for us…

If you would’ve told me at the beginning of the season that the Mets would be a half game out of first at the All-Star break, I wouldn’t have taken it unless our record was better. With the talent on the roster (and taking into account how bad the division has been), we should easily be seven games out in front. Since we stunk for the first third of the year, however, I’ll live with it.

I’ve spoken out against All-Star games in the past (see my babble from last year’s game as proof), but on the most basic level, I admire their charm and what they attempt to do. That being said, overtime shouldn’t be allowed at these things. The game last night went 15 innings?!? That’s like a soccer game ending without extra time. Or like a preseason NFL game going into quadruple overtime. (Side Note: Preseason NFL games are also pointless, although they’re worth watching just to see Aaron Rodgers actually take a snap for a change.) All I’m trying to say is that meaningless games shouldn’t be allowed to go on forever. They’re called “meaningless” for a reason (no matter what Der Kommissar Selig tells you) and should be treated as such. It would have been better if after they played 10 innings last night the managers just said “who’re we kidding … let’s go home.” The game ended so late that most of the players couldn’t even enjoy the New York City nightlife. Instead, they just went to A-Rod’s apartment, because that’s where all the action seems to be anyway. (I know, I know … cheap shot…)

Speaking of pointless games, a rather disturbing development has occurred: ESPN now shows highlights of NBA summer league games. The regular season is already 25 games too long, the playoffs last for six months and now we need reports on every pre-preseason game? One of the teams doesn’t even have a name or logo yet! What’s next? Live coverage of my Ultimate Frisbee league? Or a riveting four-part investigation about how Bonnie Bernstein selects her lip gloss each morning? (Actually, I’d probably watch that last one…)

ESPN has become far too interested in uninteresting things. And the fault, Dear Readers, lies in the buffoons who watch it obs…

Sorry. I got distracted by highlights of the World’s Strongest Man competition on ESPN2. This guy named Sven Lan Svendingson just lifted a school bus full of thumbtacks eleven times using only his left foot. Pretty amazing. Where was I? Oh, right … ESPN needs to eliminate the fluff from its programming schedule and that’s that.

Lastly, David Stern and his NBA are as lucky as Stephon Marbury’s tattoo artist currently is (“you wanna pay me to put that where?”). The only thing keeping Tim Donaghy’s betting bonanza from being the most talked about thing in sports is the fact that Brett Favre is campaigning to be president. (Another Side Note: Judging by the way he acted during his Fox News interview, you’d think Faver’s plight was actually socially relevant or something. The truth is that he’s just sort of a baby.) If other referees were involved in this gambling ring, Stern and the league have a serious problem. That’s the obvious point. What’s less obvious is how Donaghy got so far into debt with bookies to begin with. Didn’t he end up tweaking calls to mess with the spreads anyway? It seems to me that he could have been doing that all along, thereby avoiding trouble in the first place. Heck, you could probably hand this guy that Sports Almanac from Back to the Future Part II and he’d only be able to win 30 or 40 thousand bucks with it. Even Biff did better than that…