What a great weekend of sports viewing we had on Saturday and Sunday. Baseball, NBA Playoffs, the Stanley Cup Finals, NASCAR and the French Open. I don’t know about you, but I went through a couple of sets of batteries for my TV remote.
The afternoons belonged to baseball and FOX lead play-by-play voice Joe Buck who called the Red Sox’s win over the Yankees. He had some strong words for MLB Commissioner Bud Selig — saying he should be at Barry Bonds’ side when he breaks Hank Aaron’s home run record.
“If Commissioner Selig doesn’t attend the game where Barry Bonds breaks the record and MLB does not celebrate it, then he (Selig) is undermining his own drug policy. No matter what we think of Bonds he has never failed a drug test and has not been found guilty of any crime. No, the Commissioner must be there when Bonds breaks the record.”
NHL
The Stanley Cup Playoffs hit prime time on NBC and the Senators got back the series with a big 5-3 win over the Ducks. NBC guest analyst, Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, had the line of the night when he said: “I had no idea how hard the Ducks players could hit— it was like watching the Steelers play.”
By the way my e-mail box is full of hockey fans that don’t know why local radio talk show hosts don’t talk about the Stanley Cup. The answer is: They do not know much if anything about hockey and they refuse to learn about it. So if you want to hear great hockey conversation, listen to the Team 990 AM in Montreal online (www.team990.com). The Morning Show with Elliott Price, Denis Casavant and Shaun Starr will give you all the information you need weekdays from 6-10 a.m.
Game 4 of the playoffs is on NBC tonight and it will be rare chance to see Don Cherry the legendary voice of Hockey Night in Canada will be part of the networks coverage. Cherry is known for his outrageous and honest comments (think Howard Cosell) and his wild wardrobe.
NBA
TNT ended their NBA season with their super coverage of the Cavs’ big win over the Pistons that clinched Cleveland’s first berth in the NBA Finals, which begins Thursday on ABC.
Former Wizards coach Doug Collins was spot-on in the pregame when he said that “I really think that the guy who is just waiting to breakout is rookie Daniel Gibson.”
NASCAR
Finally FOX finished their coverage of NASCAR with a wild weekend out in Dover. Plenty of locals were on hand for the big weekend at the Monster Mile. Next week TNT takes over the coverage and look for George Michael and Darrell Waltrip to be paired together on DirecTV’s Hot Pass coverage very soon.
Finally, Anita Marks (of MASN and ESPN 1300 AM talk show fame) was featured on ESPN’s Outside the Lines show on Sunday on the topic of sports talk radio.
Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this! on www.examiner.com.
