ESPN: Your Ship Has Sailed

This past weekend in DC was gorgeous - sunny, 75-degrees, and not a cloud in the sky. I spent both Saturday and Sunday morning and early afternoon doing some landscaping around the house. Each day I finished up, cleaned up, cracked a Miller Lite, and sat down to relax and pamper myself with some sports entertainment. That plan was ruined by ESPN and ABC.

I'm watching a track & field meet. It's the bell lap of the men's mile and about 5 guys are in contention. But instead of seeing the end of the race, I'm given Chris Berman (and really, is the balding mullet and white sports jacket fooling anyone anymore?) who's taking me LIVE! to Oakland where Barry Bonds is attempting to break Babe Ruth's home run record of 714 that was already broken by Hank Aaron 30+ years ago. Bonds is intentionally walked, but I am still forced to watch all four mind-numbing pitches. Berman apologizes and returns me to track & field where I hear Dwight Stone say, "Wow! What a finish!". Awhile later the men's 100m is about to get underway when again I'm interrupted by Berman who, before taking me LIVE! to Oakland, promises to interrupt any and all programming to see each and every "historic" Bonds at-bat. Mercifully, Bonds singles the first pitch to right field and I don't miss the 100...

This is just one of the many problems that are currently afflicting the once mighty king of sports television. If I'm not being bombarded by some athlete "chasing" some record (or, as in the case of Bonds, an athlete/cheater/felon chasing a record that is in actuality not really a record at all - unless the record is "Most Home Runs by a Fat, Dead, White Baseball Player"), I'm force fed New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox baseball games until I develop a speech impediment that prohibits me from properly pronouncing vowels and the letter 'R'. Last I checked there were 30 teams in Major League Baseball, not 2. At this point I'd rather remove my own wisdom teeth with a set of plyers than have to watch another "crucial" Yankees-Red Sox game in April.

ESPN is becoming the MTV of sports. MTV was a great concept - music videos 24/7. Then they got a game show. Then they did the Real World. Now MTV shows videos from 3am-4am EST. The other 23 hours are spent showing crap. ESPN is now making movies (I think the aptly title "3" indicates the number of people that actually watched this awful show) and has gone so far to given Stephen A. Smith - not to be confused with Stephen L. Smith - his own talkshow. To make matters worse, I think probably 12 hours of programming every day is committed to poke.

Whatever happened to the old ESPN line-up of fishing and hunting shows, followed by 4 hours of SportsCenter, followed by Strong Man competitions, followed by a baseball game, followed by SportsCenter, followed by prime time sports? Isn't that the formula that made ESPN the greatest television channel ever? No matter how much or how loudly Stephen A. Smith yells at me and no matter what the odds of the "river" being a 7 of Spades, I'm done watching this crap.