Last night, SU had its choice between the Yankees – Rays game, Miami vs. Milwaukee in the 2nd round of the NBA playoffs, and Djokovic’s first round match at the US Open.  Good times.  It was almost shocking to have choices for live sports viewing.

SU watched a fair share of the tennis last week for the Southern and Western Open held at the NTC in NY.  OK, no crowd noise so that’s weird.  But the electronic line calling is great and it comes with a voice to call the ball out – they rotate between a man and a woman’s voice.  The funniest thing was the players using their challenges if they disagreed with a line call when the ruling would be based on the same technology used to make the original call.  Uh, duh.  Not winning those.  No reason to ever use lines people again with this technology – even if it’s only 99% accurate or whatever it is.  I mean is a lines person going to make the right call on a 140 mph serve down to a millimeter?

So, last night, because the players aren’t allowed to have the ball kids handle their towels, they have to go over the corner to towel off.  They are using a clock now for the servers in between points and it starts when the umpire calls the score.  At the Open, they are calling the score earlier than they did last week in that tournament, and with only 20 seconds, it’s hard to get to your corner to towel off and then hustle back to serve.  Odd that they are using different rules from last week to this week.  SU says baseball should take note: keep the hitters in the box, the pitchers on the mound and get the catchers to just call the pitches faster.  The players will adapt.

The Yankees broke out number 89 for the first time ever last night for their latest pitching call-up.  And how about the Rays?  They have had about 9 pitchers go on the IL and are still in 1st place.  They are the team to beat in the AL I think.  The Yankees will limp in to the playoffs.  Truth be told on the Yankees: even if they get healthy by October, their all or nothing hitters won’t play well in the post-season.  They must be in last place with RISP (of course, the YES Network never shows those stats or even on base percentage).  And Kay and company never talk about it.  This team is terrible in the clutch but you have to go to MLB.com to figure that out on your own.  The Yankee announcers are very uncritical.  SU assumes they are under orders to tone it down.

The NHL continues its perfect record with COVID tests.  MLB should do the playoffs in a bubble.  With no fans in the stands, what’s the difference?

SU agreed with Cashman not making any moves at the trade deadline.  This season is too uncertain – not worth mortgaging the future for this year.  Devi Garcia was electric in his debut on Sunday.  Put him in the rotation.  SU is convinced that Gerret Cole is tipping his pitches.  The Rays were not missing his fastball last night and he has given up a lot of home runs this year.  No one is talking about it but his stuff is too good to be belted around like this.