Sunday, February 12, 2006

This entry is on tape delay

Here's my problem with the Olympics. The tape delay. This whole notion of "folks, if you don't want to know the results of the speed skating competition until it airs six hours from now in prime time for your convenience, better leave the TV now." What the hell? That isn't how sports works. When a sporting event unfolds you check for the result. You don't pretend it didn't happen so that you can watch it comfortably at 9 pm like it's an episode of Will and Grace. When the Mets opened the 2ooo season in Tokyo, my friends and I got up at 5 am and watched the games - we didn't try to pretend that it was really going to take place at 7 pm that night. Now, this doesn't mean I'm saying that everything should be aired only live and screw you if you don't wake up at 3:30 in the morning for the luge finals taking place at 9:30 in Torino. The best events should be shown on tape delay in prime time for those who would like to watch them then. But everything should be aired live whenever it's going on, and the networks should stop apologizing and warning that they're about to "spoil" the results. Say outright, "Apollo Creed Anton Yoko Ohno won today. We're about to show you his victory. Oh, you were trying not to hear the result? Well, it happened 6 hours ago, you're an idiot. Enjoy the show - it's on tape!!!!"

Sammy Sosa is seriously considering retirement, according to ESPN Deportes. (One day a white guy will confide in ESPN Deportes and it'll throw the whole system off.) Some friend of Sosa's had this to say: "Sammy wants to get to 600 home runs, but he's not willing to humiliate himself to keep playing. He feels that the lack of interest in his services this winter constitutes a humiliation." Constitutes a humiliation? No, you see, Sammy Sosa's friend, the way it generally works is that the interest teams have in you is inversely proportional to how washed up you've become. In Sosa's case, it he is a shell of his former self and is rather washed up, therefore causing teams not to be interested in him. This is teams evincing sanity by not jumping for a player who offers 1/100 of what he could in his prime. This is what happens when you get older. Sosa's aging process snuck up on him when the magic juice ride ended, so I understand that he might be surprised to find that he's about as exciting to teams as Danny Bautista. But humiliation? Let's not go nuts here.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sammy sosa no speak english

10:30 AM  
Blogger adam20ss said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

11:34 AM  
Blogger adam20ss said...

Good. He should be humiliated. Nothing he ever did in his whole career was ever legit. He rode the magic juice ride as long as he could, and fooled himself into believing that it was "Kochi v'otzem yadi."

11:35 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home