As I've complained mentioned here before, we get an odd sports channel here on our Orbit Satellite Television. It's called Orbit ESPN, and it's a hybrid of European ESPN, American ESPN and ESPN2, with a little Australian something thrown in.
Thus they have way too much programming to deal with. I can only assume that someone at Orbit writes every sporting event down on a slip of paper, puts the paper into a large barrel, and lets a monkey pick the schedule.
A monkey, that is, who enjoys "Under 19 Rugby". That stuff is always on.
True, American football is live - but keep in mind we're nine hours ahead of the East Coast during the winter. It's like someone here made a wish for football on the tv, but didn't specify that he or she wanted it tape delayed so the game didn't start at the crack of dawn. Then the Genie of the cablebox granted them their wish, but the games are live! Oh, the irony, they got their wish, but it wasn't really what they wanted!
Anyway, I really don't care about football to begin with. My favorite sport is just starting up right now, baseball.
Of course, a baseball team plays ten times as many games as football (but yes, I still have friends who think football players are better athletes, go figure). So there's no way we can catch a fraction of those games. I mean, that's the reason that the NESNs and YESes and TBSes exist, teams own their own stations just so some channel will play all 162 games.
Needless to say, in Dubai we only get one or two games a week out of the hundred or so that are played.
And, to further compound the issue, they're tape delayed by a good 16 hours. Generally Thursday night's game is played on Friday night.
Needless to say, my baseball watching here has been severely limited.
So the other day I was checking my Orbit ESPN online schedule, and I saw this:
23 April, Monday
4 am
Major League Baseball
Synopsis
New York Yankees Vs Boston Red Sox
The professional baseball league of the United States and Canada. Runs from April through to October.
Sports/General
LIVE
4 am?
LIVE?!
Whoa.
Whoa.
Daisuke Matsuzaka's first start ever against the New York Yankees.
In Fenway Park.
Live.
To recap:
Red Sox.
Yankees.
Fenway Park.
Live.
There's no way that I'm not going to watch this game. No power in the universe that can stop me.
However, if it's a crummy game and Dice-K gets wailed-upon by A-Rod, well, tomorrow'll be a mighty long and sad day for me.
But the new #18 (Dice-K) versus the former #18 (some guy named "Damon"?) Holy cow, that's worth the 4 am wake-up call alone ... |
