My new favorite sports program: The EPL Review Show

For those of you wondering what that is, it's the English soccer equivalent of NFL Primetime, but 973 times better than any sports highlight show in America (at least in my opinion that is).

For an hour, with few commercial breaks, the show runs through all 10 weekend Premiership games in a style that I hope more American highlight shows begin to emulate at some point soon. The host of the show is never seen, and unlike every show on ESPN, FOX, etc, you're not forced to spend the whole time listening to some host who makes his/her shtick seem more important than the game itself.

Each game is condensed into about 3-5 minutes of action, which makes every soccer game feel like it was the most intense thing ever (even if nothing happened). The show does a perfect job of capturing all the drama of each game, while cutting out the boring stuff in between. The transitions between the action are smooth and seamless, and you only hear the actual game announcers calling the action (no catch phrases, egos or music get in the way of the drama).

I've never seen a highlight show before where I feel like I actually watched every game that day/week. It would be great if someone could come up with the equivalent for baseball, football, basketball of hockey. Baseball Tonight is probably the best sports highlight show out there, but there is still too much analysis and talking, and not enough of the games themselves. Rarely do you feel the excitement when watching highlights if a studio host is doing the highlights. It's always much better when they play the local radio or TV guys instead. I want to feel the crowd and the energy, not listen to cheesy background music and some host making wisecracks every 10 seconds.

And the beauty of it all is that since few people in the US care about European soccer, I can watch this show every Sunday night without knowing what happened. For American sports this would be impossible, since there are score tickers on 17 channels, I'm on the web constantly, people talk about sports everywhere (especially in NY) and taxi cabs in the city now have scoreboards on top of them.

If you get FOX Soccer Channel, give it a try. You may actually enjoy watching soccer for once.

My favorite thing to complain about the past month

Not that this is a new revelation or anything, but isn’t it ridiculous that a pitcher who blows a five-run ninth-inning lead doesn’t get a blown save, while a guy who comes in with the bases loaded, no outs and a 7-6 lead, and gives up only a sac fly, gets a blown save?

While I understand why pitchers can’t create their own save situations, shouldn’t they be able to create their own blown save situations? Failing to hold onto a five-run lead is a lot worse than allowing a game-tying sac fly with the bases loaded. Why should the pitcher who pitches well suffer, while the other guy avoids the blemish on his record (although his ERA suffers tremendously)?

Just another instance of how dumb stats like saves and holds can be.

Worst fantasy move of the month

Leaving Hideki Matsui on my bench last night for his return, then watching him go 4-for-4. I read in the paper yesterday morning that he would be back, yet forgot to pull Pat Burrell and his .050 average (the past 10 days) out of my lineup. Normally, moves like this don’t matter in September since I am 47 points out of first, but this year I actually have a chance to win my first legitimate league in nine seasons.

Most annoying part of the opening weekend of football

I’m in Dallas for the weekend and watching the Chiefs-Bengals game at my relatives’ house. Since they don’t have the NFL package, I have no way of switching to close games such as the Pats-Bills, Saints-Browns, Seahawks-Lions or Jets-Titans. When the KC-CIN game finally decides to end, CBS switches to the end of the Jets-Titans game, where a rejuvenated Kerry Collins (well sort of) is driving Tennessee down the field with a minute to go, trailing 23-16. But then, only a few minutes after the game comes on, James Brown appears to tell us that due to contractual obligations, CBS can no longer show the game.

This I understand. Since the Dallas game had started on FOX, another game can’t be shown opposite it on another channel it the local market. I don’t love this rule, but it’s been around longer than I have, so I’m used to it.

What makes the whole thing ridiculous is that CBS shows Brown for the next three minutes watching the game on a monitor to his right, and calling the plays for us. About five seconds after each play, CBS shows us a replay of the play Brown just called.

If networks are allowed to do this, why not just show us the end of the game? Most people are still not going to change the channel when it is 3rd and 6 from the eight yard line with 43 seconds to play, if someone is telling them what is going on in the game and they can see the replay a few seconds later.

Seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to abide by an old rule that should probably be altered anyway, since many people have DirecTV nowadays (outside of NYC that is) or are watching in sports bars, where they can see every game out of their local market.

Final thought

Had my 32nd birthday last week, not something to get very excited about.

When you turn anywhere from ages 1-12, every birthday is enjoyable. You get tons of great presents, have a party where everyone has to cater to you the entire time, and usually you can get away with doing just about anything -- without getting punished or yelled at.

As you get older, the presents begin to disappear, but at least you earn the ability to do some important things - work legally, drive, vote, drink, etc.

But once you pass 21, the excitement pretty much stops. Sure you can begin to rent cars without paying ridiculous fees at age 25, but for the most part the whole birthday thing begins to lose its luster.

Despite all of our great technology, most people will forget your birthday unless you remind them that it's coming. You usually wind up organizing your own party, dinner, drinks or whatever you decide to have. You don’t want people to buy you anything because most of the time you know that you’ll have to fake like you are excited when the present is usually just OK at best.

As I look at it, there's not much left to look forward to on your actual birthday once you pass 25:

35 years old: You can run for president
40 years old: Someone will attempt to throw you a surprise party, which you'll enjoy, but you’ll also know the entire time that your midlife crisis will begin the following morning
50 years old: Another potential surprise party, but you're so miserable that you're actually 50, you have trouble enjoying it.
55 years old: You start qualifying for senior discounts
57 years old: Even though you can barely throw a ball more than 24 miles per hour, you keep telling yourself that Satchel Paige pitched when he was your age, so you can’t be that old yet.
65 years old: You can retire and do nothing the rest of your life (assuming you planned right), although if Medicare and Social Security disappear by 2039, this may not be that easy.
100 years old: Willard Scott says your name during the Today Show, although you can't hear it or see it, so it doesn’t matter much anyway.

A few gripes for the week (or the month since I have beenawful this year updating my blog. I was much better when this blog was actually a weekly column and I was forced to write once a week. Also, is there a rule to how many words can go between parenthesis? This sentence is 90 percent in parenthesis at this point. Maybe the first six words should actually be in the parenthesis and the rest should be outside.)

1) The YES Network lists a player's linescore at the bottom of the screen during most at-bats (when they don't forget to put it up on the screen that is). When they list it, it's in the following order: AB-H-R-RBI. Any normal baseball fan who has ever looked at a boxscore knows that the correct order of a batter’s stats is AB-R-H-RBI, something that has been in place for more than a century. Yet, YES decided last year that they would try to be different and confuse every baseball fan out there every time a batter comes to the plate.

After watching 250 or so games the past season and a half, I still read each player’s linescore incorrectly every single time. Derek Jeter comes up and I think he is somehow 0-for-3 with three runs scored, instead of 3-for-3 with no runs. Even if this continues for 50 more years, it’s never going to look right unless every newspaper, website and TV station in the country decides to follow the YES Network’s example.

I’m sure it’s not an oversight on their part, but just another case of people changing stuff for the sake of changing stuff, so they can think they are being useful or creative in their jobs.

2) Yesterday’s groundbreaking at Yankee Stadium was truly upsetting. I never really believed that the Yankees would go through with this whole thing until seeing it on TV Wednesday. Like many Yankee fans, I don’t see the point of this. The most historic stadium in the world is being knocked down so that a new fan-friendly stadium can be built.

This means is that in three years, the new stadium will be full of more phony fans who care nothing about the game, tradition and history, and instead are there just to be there, so they can feel cool or eat from one of the trendy food stands that I’m sure will show up all over the place. It means more pompous guys in luxury boxes, getting to the game late, getting plastered and schmoozing the whole time with clients that they are trying to impress. I could write a 487-page book on this, but frankly it’s too upsetting (plus I’m not really up for writing any book that is more than four pages.)

3) With the NFL regular season kicking off in three weeks, I’m still going to have to spend 11-12 Sundays stuck in a sports bar because few apartment buildings in New York City can get DIRECTV. I understand why DIRECTV does not allow cable companies to carry the NFL Sunday Ticket Package, but this should not be the case in NYC, where people cannot physically get DIRECTV (by the way, I hate having to type DIRECTV in caps every time. Hitting the caps lock button multiple times in one paragraph can be very tiring as you all know).

Shouldn’t DIRECTV and Time Warner strike a deal where customers who live in non-DIRECTV buildings can get Sunday Ticket through their cable box? I can get NBA League Pass(not that I want it) or MLB Extra Innings this way, why not the NFL?

DIRECTV would probably sell hundreds of thousands of extra Sunday Ticket subscriptions by doing this. All that they are doing now is leaving money on the table and forcing people like me to spend $50 at a sports bar, where I usually can’t even listen to the game b/c the audio for the Giants or Jets is on instead.

What’s the harm? They won’t lose one DIRECTV subscription this way, and instead could make and extra $50-100 million. I just don't get it, and would love an explanation, if anyone actually has a logical one.

What has happened to ESPN Classic Sports recently? The channel that used to surprise us with great, random games from the past, as well as retro shows such as 'This Week in Baseball' has completely fallen apart.

On just about any given day the past two months, a typical program lineup will look something like this:

2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
Bowling
Bowling
Arli$$
Arli$$
Cheap Seats
Bowling
Top 5 Reasons Why
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
2005 World Series of Poker
Bowling
Bowling

It almost reminds me of the early days of ESPN, when they had no rights and few deals in place, and showed things like dirt buggy racing half the day.

I know that poker is popular and all, but how much old poker can someone watch consecutively? And Arli$$? Did anyone ever really like this show? It's on all the time, and I have no idea why.

I'm sure there is some justification to the whole thing (they’ve lost rights, or rating somehow do better with these shows), but this channel is destined to become like MTV, where 95 percent of the programming becomes shows produced by the station itself, and not actual music videos, or in this case games.

I want to be able to turn on the channel at any time and see Doug Flutie scrambling around in 1984, or Magic running a fast break, or a Borg-McEnroe classic. Instead all I ever see is that some guy I don't care about has an ace of hearts and a four of spades.

After watching the World Cup for the past few weeks, I thinkI have a better understanding for why most Americans don't care at all about soccer. Forget the reasons we hear time and time again -- no scoring, slow paced, no breaks to get beer or go to the bathroom. The officiating is ruining this World Cup and has been so atrocious that one has to wonder if Vince McMahon is behind this whole thing.

I just watched the final 10 minutes of the Italy-Australia match, which up until the final seconds was completely captivating. The underdog Aussies kept pressuring the Italian goal and looked as if they would score the go-ahead goal to pull off a mammoth upset. But then the officials stepped in, as they have in too many games thus far. An Italian player trips over an Australian player (who is pretty much just lying on the ground) and a penalty shot is called, basically the equivalent of the referee just stopping the game and declaring Italy the winner.

The US got eliminated last week on a similar call (although it wasn't with 10 seconds left in the game), where a defender did nothing wrong, yet was called for a foul in the box, leading to a penalty kick. Can't the folks at FIFA adopt the same unwritten laws that exist in other sports, such as not calling iffy penalties in overtime of Stanley Cup playoff games? Don’t they know that calls like this ruin the game for everyone outside of the country that benefits from the call?

There have been so many yellow and red cards issued this tournament, that one would think players are literally punching one another on the field. Most of these calls are drawn through acting. Almost every time a player slides into another, the guy with the ball winds up crying on the ground, holding his leg. Then miraculously, the guy almost always is fine within a minute. The only thing in American sports that rivals this are wide receivers motioning for a flag on every incomplete pass. Luckily, most NFL officials aren't duped by this the way that FIFA refs are.

I love the rule that getting two yellow cards in group play leads to a suspension for the Round of 16. Great rule. It’s the equivalent of Shaq getting three fouls in two straight games, then having to sit out for an entire round of the NBA playoffs. Or Troy Polamalu getting called for pass interference in two straight games, then missing the Super Bowl. This happened to Ghana star Michael Essien, who now can’t play against Brazil tomorrow. Think of the story if Ghana were to beat Brazil. While it has almost no chance as it is, at least with Essien (who plays for English powerhouse Chelsea), it might be possible.

Baseball fans like to get angry at guys like Don Denkinger and Doug Eddings (the A.J. Pierzynski non-strike out call last year) for making the wrong calls in huge games. Yet, their calls were split-second judgment calls under enormous pressure. Soccer refs are able to think for a few seconds before pulling out a yellow or red card and basically ruining a country’s hopes for the next four years.

I was talking with a friend earlier today about how awful it was thatGames 1and 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals were on OLN. Not only have most people never heard of OLN, those who have probably have no idea if their cable system even carries it, or how to locate it.

True, it's not very hard to click on your guide to find out what channel OLN is on, but since most of this country is lazy and won't spend 10 seconds to figure it out (myself included), having two of your championship games on a cable network that resides on channel 122 (OLN on Time Warner Cable in NYC) is not a good thing.

I was trying to figure out if I've ever watched any other major sports championships on a higher numbered channel, or even one in the same range as channel 122. Here's a quick chart/guide:

Super Bowl: Channels 2, 4, 5 and 7 (as well as some other channel under 13 the year I lived in London)
World Series: 2, 4, 5 and 7
NBA Finals: 2, 4 and 7
Final Four: 2
NCAA Football: 2, 4 and 7
Masters: 2
Wimbledon: 4
Olympics: 4 and 7
Kentucky Derby: 4 and 7
Indy 500: 7
Daytona 500: 4, 5 and 7

Add up all the channel numbers on this page, and you still only get 115 (whatever that means). Unless I'm wrong (which is very possible), almost no major championships in this country have ever been on cable. Pretty sad, considering hockey should be a great sport to watch, but so few people actually care. Having the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals on channel 122 sure isn't going to help fix this problem.

I'm convinced the only way the NHL can ever recover and get back to where it was before the 1994-95 strike, is if they can once again make sure that EA Sports turns hockey video games back into the premier sports video game on the market, the way they were from 1992-1995. If you asked 1000 males, age 18-34, in 1994 who Cliff Ronning, Alexander Mogilny and Jeremy Roenick were, 96 percent would have known they were NHL hockey players. If you surveyed 1000 males today, and asked them who Alexander Ovechkin, Jonathan Cheechoo and Eric Staal were, I'm sure only about 8 percent would know the three combined to score 153 goals in 2005-06. As dumb as it may sound, the only time hockey ever seemed really important was when 'NHL 94' was being played in every dorm room around the country.

Don't get lazy, especially when it comes to keeping an eye on your fantasy team. I pulled off two bonehead moves on Thursday by simply not taking two minutes to check on my teams.

For more than a month, I've been waiting for Ian Kinsler to return from the DL. He's been clogging up a DL spot, but I'd been banking that the rookie would return to be an above average middle infielder for my 15-team, mixed league squad.

So yesterday when he was finally activated off of the DL, I decided it would be a great morning to spend all my time on my commute reading about Taylor Hicks' American Idol victory. The funny thing is, every article I read was basically a direct report about what happened on TV Wednesday night, stuff I already know.  I was hoping to get a few quotes, stats, behind the scenes info, something useful -- but the only thing that happened was that I forgot to read actual baseball news yesterday.

Fantasy Kinsler would up sitting on my DL, while the real Kinsler blasted two homers in his first game back.

My other dumb move was just a pure oversight. On Wednesday I had put Ryan Howard on my bench in favor of Dave Roberts (at utility), since I'm so far ahead in homers and RBIs, and dead last in steals. But when Thursday morning came around and I was too busy trying to figure out how to join the Soul Patrol fan club, I left Howard on my bench and Roberts in my lineup. Problem here was that Roberts and the Pads were off on Thursday while Howard's Phils were still playing in New York. Sure enough, the big guy socked his 15th homer of the season.

I've had a number of requests to keep including baseball card features in this blog, so here's one for this week. The Top Five Ugliest/Worst Baseball Cards Sets (Pre-1992, when cards were still fun to collect, and I actually cared about new sets):

5. 1990 Topps: Combine the fact that a complete set is worth less than a six-pack of Schlitz with the putrid multi-color design, and this is one of the least enjoyable sets of all time. No position on the front of the card, the colors are inconsistent within each team and there are almost no good rookie cards (Sorry to Sammy Sosa and Ron Gant). This set is partially responsible for the eventual collapse of the baseball card market a few years later.

4. 1983 Donruss: The design is rather boring, but not terrible. The reason the ’83 Donruss set makes this list is because it is almost a direct copy of the 1982 Donruss set. Yellow bat running across the bottom, blue border, ugly Donruss logo in the top corner. Only significant difference is the ball on the ’82 cards became a glove on the ’83 set, and switched sides of the card. It’s almost as if the folks at Donruss forgot about their design deadline in 1983, and had 10 minutes to throw something together. Just embarrassing.

3. 1970 Topps:  Ugly grey borders, team names in red and white, and lousy photos for the most part. Almost any Topps set from 1968-1973 could have qualified, but this one wins by a nose. Just nothing appealing about this at all, and a terrible set to flip cards with.

2. 1983 Fleer: A distant cousin of the 1970 set. They grayish-brown borders remind me of a creepy doctor’s waiting room (not sure what that means, but it’s what came to mind). 

1. 1988 Score: Maybe the set most responsible for the downward spiral of baseball cards. The set included every color under the rainbow – in gaudy fashion. The cards came in these awful red, sort-of-see-through wrappers, and usually got damaged the moment you touched them since they were made on flimsy, cheap cardboard. Yet, for some reason, we were all excited when they were released, and the Roberto Alomar and Mark Grace traded cards were hot commodities at one point. It’s safe to say you can buy a complete set on ebay right now for less than the price of one pack of 2006 Topps cards (which is a problem for multiple reasons).

Every year there is one pitcher who manages to destroy myfantasy chances on his own.

In 2001, Shawn Chacon was the perpetrator, putting together back-to-back atrocious starts at midseason (including one game where he allowed 11 earned runs) to permanently drop me out of first.

Brandon Duckworth (when was the last time you thought of his name) ruined 2002 by winning only eight games and posting a 5.41 ERA a year after a 3.52 ERA. The next year, Jeff Weaver’s 5.99 ERA and 1.62 WHIP throttled any chances I had of winning a crown.

Then came Brett Myers’ one bad year, also known as the year I owned him. A 5.52 ERA and only 116 K’s was not what I was counting on in 2004.

And topping all of this off was Oliver Perez, who destroyed four of my teams last year by going from a 2.98 ERA/239 K pitcher in 2004 to one with a 5.85 ERA and only 97 K’s in ’05.

Well this year had been different up until Juan Cruz decided to join this lowly group this past week.

Cruz had started two games prior to May 12 and had allowed only one earned run and six hits in 10 innings of work, to go along with 10 K’s. So despite the fact he would be facing the tough Cardinals lineup last Friday, I slotted him in for the start. Five earned runs and 10 baserunners later (in only five innings), Cruz picked up his first loss of the year, while only slightly damaging my ERA and WHIP.

So when Cruz’s next start came around this Wednesday, I hesitated, before realizing he would be facing the .247-hitting Padres in Arizona. Even though I was dominating my 15-team office league with a 3.47 ERA and 1.19 WHIP, I decided there wasn’t much of a risk to put Cruz back out on the mound.

Might have been the worst call so far of the year. The skinny righty got pummeled, allowing nine earned runs in two thirds of an inning, something that it almost impossible to accomplish in a single outing.

His last start alone caused by ERA to go up .23 points.  Recovering from this both statistically and mentally will be tough. 

After failing to make any major blunders the first month ofthe season, my usual bad luck is creeping back in.

Last Wednesday, I picked up Tony Armas for a spot start. The oft-injured hurler had been pitching exceptionally well, compiling a 2.76 ERA in April to go along with 20 K's in 29 IP and two wins. He was set to face the feeble Marlins offense, and would be pitching at home, so picking him up for the start seemed to make perfect sense.

My pitching strategy had been working brilliantly prior to this move. I waited until the seventh round to take any pitchers this year, and still wound up with John Lackey, Chris Capuano and Scott Kazmir, all of whom have pitched well. On top of those three, I kept picking up guys like Nate Robertson for a start or two, and despite not having an ace, I was leading my 15-team league in ERA and WHIP after a month.

But then came Armas’ start, which yielded five earned runs in just 2.1 IP. So as punishment, I sent him back to the waiver wires, especially with his next start coming against the first-place Reds in Cincinnati (a great hitter’s park). Armas retaliated by pitching superbly (Win, 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 4 K) against the red-hot Reds.

This makes no sense. He gets lit up at home against the worst team in baseball (8-22) and shuts down the top NL team six days later.

Now I know I have made many bonehead decisions in my life, but this one, at least on paper, made perfect sense.

Quick comment on the whole Delmon Young incident…

I’m not going to say anything on the actual situation, since plenty of people have done that on this site and elsewhere already.

My question with this whole thing is – why was a camera from 1986 being used to tape this game? Take a look at the clip. The video looks like lost footage from the filming of Bull Durham, or the grainy footage you would expect to see on an ESPN profile about some high school pitcher from the 1980s who threw 97 mph, but hurt his arm and never made it to the Majors. The quality is worse than the betamax tape of my sixth grade graduation from 20 years ago. Plus the clip is crooked and looks like someone was balancing the camera on a stack of programs. Were they intentionally going for a retro feel? If so, the cameraman did a superb job.

A bunch of people have e-mailed me wanting to know why I haven't written much about my fantasy woes, like I have the past five seasons. The truth is, I was cleaning up in fantasy the first few weeks. But as fate would have it, I finally have something to complain about.

Two weeks back I decided to drop Aaron Harang in one of my leagues. He had a 6.35 ERA and had been hit pretty hard in three of his four outings. Plus, the league I'm in only requires seven pitchers, and since their are only 10 teams (70 pitchers), mid-range guys like Harang do not have as much value as they would in a standard 12-team, 9-pitcher league (108 total pitchers)

Despite the fact that Harang was one of 2005's biggest surprises, I decided there were much better options than a non-superstar who pitches in Cincinnati.

So how does Harang repay me for cutting him loose? Three starts, 3-0, 25 IP, 14 H, 4 ER and 23 K's. Pretty much what I expected after releasing him,

And to top it off, I cost myself three home runs by benching Josh Barfield in favor of Chase Utley on Wednesday, and then sending Grady Sizemore and Hideki Matsui to the bench on Thursday, after they had been in my lineup the entire season.

My team, which had been in first since Day One, fell to fourth, and based on my track record, will never find its way back to the top.

My Kentucky Derby picks for Saturday: A.P. Warrior-Jazil-Steppenwolfer

Baseball Card Awards of the Week: 1979 Topps

Least-effective, but best-looking glasses: Mark Lee (he walked 69 and struck out only 63 in his brief career)

Worst photo of the entire set: Rob Picciolo

Best non-use of an undershirt for a guy who is going to win the Cy Young Award within a year: Steve Stone

Best cool-guy pose while wearing an airbrushed hat: Johnny Grubb

Oldest looking guy in the set: Phil Niekro (he wins every year from 1975-1988). It's scary to think that he was still in his 30s when this photo was taken. I can't believe I could look like this in eight years. Kind of freaky.