Saturday, September 21, 2013
Sports highlights: MLB
With less than 2 weeks left in the season, many games have playoff implications: Indians, Rays, Rangers and even the Yankees are all fighting for the 2 AL wild cards. I'm afraid it's too late for the Yankees even though they are beating up the SF Giants. They lost way too many games in the past 2 weeks. The Indians playing the lowly Astros are certainly helping them but hurting the other wildcard hopefuls. Sometimes the analysts could be so right even before the season started. Some predicted the Astros would lose 100+ games. Then the Astros beat the Rangers on the opening day and I thought those people would be wrong. Not so! Speaking of the Rangers, their chances are not good. Looks like their series against the Royals would just be ruining each other. Another team in danger of losing 100 games is the White Sox. They had a brief winning streak last month so I stopped worrying but then they lost the magic completely. They got stuck with win#58 for a long time! Finally they got to win#60 but I'm not optimistic they could win 3 more before the season ends 'coz all of their opponents are fighting for postseason (except for 1 game vs the Blue Jays): the Tigers wanna get a higher seed for home-field. The Indians and even the Royals are wildcard hopefuls and cannot afford to drop even one game. Finally, we have the Reds vs the Pirates this weekend fighting for the wildcard and maybe NL Central. It's great to be a baseball fan now!
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Sports highlights: Jim Furyk's 59, Man U, La Vuelta, Beat LA, college football, Sprint Cup
I, as a sports junkie, am trying to enjoy as much sports on TV as I can on the week I "returned" to the world of cable TV. Here are some memorable moments:
Jim Furyk became the sixth men on PGA to shoot 59, which happened in the 2nd round of BMW Championship. This article says Furyk's 59 is among the best out of those six.
NBC bought the right to English Premier League and putting some of the games on NBC Sports Network (formerly Versus, formerly OLN) Comcast did the right thing and included this channel in the starter package. I'm usually the one who whine about not getting a certain channel but it's my buddy who subscribed to DISH not getting this channel! So, my first EPL game on big TV this season is Man U vs Crystal Palace. I missed the 1st 20 min and thought I might have missed some Man U goals already but I didn't, which was NOT good!. They only scored twice against a team that never stay for more than one season after promoted to the premier league. Still, I'm glad that both strikers RVP and Rooney scored, a PK and a free kick, respectively, which gotta boost their confidence.
Another present surprise included by Comcast is Fox Sports 1 (formerly Speed) I did not get Speed with Comcast's basic package before we terminated the service last time. The Fox-owned Speed used to broadcast F1 (now on NBCSN), Supercross, NASCAR Truck series, etc and I seriously considered getting cable just for Speed but I eventually didn't because of the high cost. I was also surprised that Fox Soccer channel has been folded (now become FXX which is non-sports) So basically Fox "converted" a motorsports specific channel to a general sports channel (like ESPN and NBCSN) which shows its remaining motorsports, soccer programs plus some more after losing F1 and EPL rights. FS1 will be showing Champions League games starting this week!
La Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain) is one of the 3 grand tours (the biggest road bicycle races of the year. The other 2 is of course Tour De France and Giro d'Italia) Watching bike racing to me is kinda like watching NASCAR: a lot of times most of the action happened at the end of the race, for example, the peloton catching the breakaway, or the sprinters shoot it out at the finish line. Still, I would turn it on whenever I remember (these European races end around 9am!) This year's Vuelta doesn't have some of the biggest name: Chris Fromme, Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck. Cadel Evans but I was glad that I watched. Stage 20 was a brutal climb (I saw a few 24%) Giro's winner Vincenzo Nibali was 3 second behind American Chris Horner at the start of the stage. Both were in the 2nd group after the breakaway near the end of the race and during those steep climbs. The British sports channel commentators mentioned rains might help Nibali and they sounded like they want that to happen. I guess there's a subtle bias against the American! For a moment Nibali attacked and it seemed like Horner had a hard time keeping up. Well, it turned out Horner was saving some in his tank and only used it later to pass Nibali and extended his lead to seal his overall victory. Congrat to the 41 year old becoming the oldest grand tour champ.
The hated Dodgers has been unstoppable for the last few months. No one could deny it's a much better team than our Giants this year and a likely championship contender. The games between these 2 teams probably don't mean much to the big picture but true fans still care. It was a nail-biter on Friday and the Giants hanged on to win. On the other hand, the Saturday night game was a huge blow out by the Giants. Then another close win on Sunday. Sweet!
Watched the Wisconsin vs Arizona State game via Slingbox on the same night. What a mind-boggling finish! The Badgers should have won the game by kicking a field goal but the QB simply put the ball on the ground which didn't stop the clock and we ran out of time! Unbelievable. Not enjoying any college game this weekend :(
I've followed the career of NASCAR Nationwide series driver Justin Allgaier since his Penske years when his team was sponsored by Verizon. He lost that ride because NASCAR's bigger sponsor Sprint forced Verizon out. Now that he's on a smaller team, he still performed consistently as the best-of-the-rest after the top-tier drivers. It's hard to tell if his talent is good enough for the Sprint Cup, the top series in NASCAR but he never got a chance to race there until this week. One of the owners of his Nationwide team has bought a Sprint Cup team and his Nationwide sponsor agree to sponsor that car for a few races so Allgaier will make his Sprint Cup debut this week.
Of course this is just a tiny story among all things happened in NASCAR this week. Recall last week's race in which Ryan Newman was about to win the race but Clint Bowyer's car spun and brought out a caution. Eventually Newman didn't win and Truex beat out Newman on a tie-breaker for a spot in the 12-driver field of the chase for Sprint Cup championship. Bowyer was allegedly spun out intentionally to help out Truex. Both were penalized by NASCAR and Truex's spot in the chase was replaced by Newman, which I think was the right thing to do. However, the story didn't end there. It turned out Joey Logano's team was found colluded with David Gilliland's so that the latter let the former passed to gain a spot (and a point) which helped him beat out Jeff Gordon for the final spot in the chase. To compensate for this, NASCAR added a 13th spot to the chase to include Gordon. Again, I think that's the right thing to do. Ironically, Logano won the pole of this week's race, the first of the 10 races for the championship, which was delayed by rain in the Chicago area.
Jim Furyk became the sixth men on PGA to shoot 59, which happened in the 2nd round of BMW Championship. This article says Furyk's 59 is among the best out of those six.
NBC bought the right to English Premier League and putting some of the games on NBC Sports Network (formerly Versus, formerly OLN) Comcast did the right thing and included this channel in the starter package. I'm usually the one who whine about not getting a certain channel but it's my buddy who subscribed to DISH not getting this channel! So, my first EPL game on big TV this season is Man U vs Crystal Palace. I missed the 1st 20 min and thought I might have missed some Man U goals already but I didn't, which was NOT good!. They only scored twice against a team that never stay for more than one season after promoted to the premier league. Still, I'm glad that both strikers RVP and Rooney scored, a PK and a free kick, respectively, which gotta boost their confidence.
Another present surprise included by Comcast is Fox Sports 1 (formerly Speed) I did not get Speed with Comcast's basic package before we terminated the service last time. The Fox-owned Speed used to broadcast F1 (now on NBCSN), Supercross, NASCAR Truck series, etc and I seriously considered getting cable just for Speed but I eventually didn't because of the high cost. I was also surprised that Fox Soccer channel has been folded (now become FXX which is non-sports) So basically Fox "converted" a motorsports specific channel to a general sports channel (like ESPN and NBCSN) which shows its remaining motorsports, soccer programs plus some more after losing F1 and EPL rights. FS1 will be showing Champions League games starting this week!
La Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain) is one of the 3 grand tours (the biggest road bicycle races of the year. The other 2 is of course Tour De France and Giro d'Italia) Watching bike racing to me is kinda like watching NASCAR: a lot of times most of the action happened at the end of the race, for example, the peloton catching the breakaway, or the sprinters shoot it out at the finish line. Still, I would turn it on whenever I remember (these European races end around 9am!) This year's Vuelta doesn't have some of the biggest name: Chris Fromme, Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck. Cadel Evans but I was glad that I watched. Stage 20 was a brutal climb (I saw a few 24%) Giro's winner Vincenzo Nibali was 3 second behind American Chris Horner at the start of the stage. Both were in the 2nd group after the breakaway near the end of the race and during those steep climbs. The British sports channel commentators mentioned rains might help Nibali and they sounded like they want that to happen. I guess there's a subtle bias against the American! For a moment Nibali attacked and it seemed like Horner had a hard time keeping up. Well, it turned out Horner was saving some in his tank and only used it later to pass Nibali and extended his lead to seal his overall victory. Congrat to the 41 year old becoming the oldest grand tour champ.
The hated Dodgers has been unstoppable for the last few months. No one could deny it's a much better team than our Giants this year and a likely championship contender. The games between these 2 teams probably don't mean much to the big picture but true fans still care. It was a nail-biter on Friday and the Giants hanged on to win. On the other hand, the Saturday night game was a huge blow out by the Giants. Then another close win on Sunday. Sweet!
Watched the Wisconsin vs Arizona State game via Slingbox on the same night. What a mind-boggling finish! The Badgers should have won the game by kicking a field goal but the QB simply put the ball on the ground which didn't stop the clock and we ran out of time! Unbelievable. Not enjoying any college game this weekend :(
I've followed the career of NASCAR Nationwide series driver Justin Allgaier since his Penske years when his team was sponsored by Verizon. He lost that ride because NASCAR's bigger sponsor Sprint forced Verizon out. Now that he's on a smaller team, he still performed consistently as the best-of-the-rest after the top-tier drivers. It's hard to tell if his talent is good enough for the Sprint Cup, the top series in NASCAR but he never got a chance to race there until this week. One of the owners of his Nationwide team has bought a Sprint Cup team and his Nationwide sponsor agree to sponsor that car for a few races so Allgaier will make his Sprint Cup debut this week.
Of course this is just a tiny story among all things happened in NASCAR this week. Recall last week's race in which Ryan Newman was about to win the race but Clint Bowyer's car spun and brought out a caution. Eventually Newman didn't win and Truex beat out Newman on a tie-breaker for a spot in the 12-driver field of the chase for Sprint Cup championship. Bowyer was allegedly spun out intentionally to help out Truex. Both were penalized by NASCAR and Truex's spot in the chase was replaced by Newman, which I think was the right thing to do. However, the story didn't end there. It turned out Joey Logano's team was found colluded with David Gilliland's so that the latter let the former passed to gain a spot (and a point) which helped him beat out Jeff Gordon for the final spot in the chase. To compensate for this, NASCAR added a 13th spot to the chase to include Gordon. Again, I think that's the right thing to do. Ironically, Logano won the pole of this week's race, the first of the 10 races for the championship, which was delayed by rain in the Chicago area.
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