TV Timeout

I have officially had it with ESPN. Here's why: As I always do on Sunday evenings, I check out the 7 o'clock edition of Baseball Tonight on ESPN to see all the highlights of a Sunday of baseball. Today's show had a theme. Bar and bat mitzvahs have themes, proms have themes, Sweet 16s have themes; not Baseball Tonight. The theme was cards, as in playing cards. Considering all the great pitchers pitching today, they talked about which aces were pitching and then which team had an ace up their sleeve heading into the last 6 weeks of the season and then to top it off, the top 3 Cardinals home runs of all time. To make matters even worse, Steve Berthiaume of SNY, the Mets network (Yankee fans will understand the implied disrespect), fame was host. Why in God's name does Baseball Tonight need a theme? Anybody who watches the show just wants to see nothing but baseball highlights. The whole point of the program was to cut out all the bullshit of SportsCenter and get right to what SC is actually supposed to show: highlights.

The whole episode is emblematic of the problem with ESPN. ESPN, for some reason or another, panders to the casual sports fan with their "Who's Now" (newsflash: every athlete still playing is now, they aren't "later" or "in a while") bracket and their Chris Connelly and Bob Holtzman human interest stories about retarded kids with one eye, one leg and AIDS who shoot a 120 at the local golf course. Worst of all is the ESPY Awards. Its a chance for Stuart "Looking At The Camera And The Coffee Machine" Scott, Dana "Too Tall" Jacobson, Trey "For Real Man, What's Your Real Name?" Wingo to feel important as they interview Nelly and Peyton Manning one after the other and feel like ESPN actually matters for something.

ESPN is to sports what MTV is to music. You can watch either for hours and hours and see neither sports nor music. Poker is not a sport. The Real World is not music. ESPN is an acronym for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. I would be very entertained if SportsCenter would simply show a baseball, football or (God forbid) hockey higlight in its entirety and then show complete stats, not just two lines next to the score. ESPN used to do this, but it no longer can because actual games are less important than knowing about a drug addict who runs marathons high on meth (how inspiring!).

SportsCenter, and now unfortunately Baseball Tonight have lost touch with their original purposes: to show all the days sports highlights. There is no reason for themes or popularity votes or in depth stories about steroids and dog fighting. As an avid sports fan, I just want to see highlights. If I were a casual sports fan, I would just think ESPN was lame. I know this whole thing is hypocritical as I am watching ESPN as I write this, but hypocritical does not mean incorrect. ESPN needs to take a timeout. Just go off the air for like a month or so and then realize how far away they are from being a true sports network. There are baseball, basketball and or hockey games played virtually every night, yet ESPN shows only a few (in hockey's case none) a week. It is sad and pathetic that ESPN has more time slots devoted to poker than to real sports. Sports fans only need sports and casual fans can only get into sports by actually watching them. Take a timeout ESPN, get pumped and show some full highlights.