First things first. SU watched a fair amount of this year’s Wimbledon matches and naturally was very pleased to see long-time fave, Novak Djokovic, win his 21st Grand Slam tournament. The finals yesterday was high quality from both players and SU says that either player would have beaten his opponent yesterday no matter who they played. So few unforced errors and a lot of winners. Djokovic has a crazy record in Grand Slam tournaments where he has made the finals in almost 50% of the events that he has played over the course of his career. He has made himself into a great player on grass even though he doesn’t play serve and volley, and doesn’t have one of the fastest serves in tennis.
Of course, now he won’t likely play again in any tournament until possibly November due to his misguided anti-vax stance. It’s unlikely that the US will let him in to play in the US Open in August, and the reality is that his ranking will drop so low that he won’t play in the ATP Finals end of year event in Italy in November. I believe there is one tournament in Paris that he can play in just before that. He will be barred from Australia for the Australian Open in January as well. End of story. Covid isn’t going away and he won’t budge on his position. Very good. See you next April for the clay court season in Europe. All self-inflicted.
SU watched a fair amount of the first 3 Yankee – Red Sox games this weekend. Now understand that I am a long-time baseball fan. The Yankees are having a record-breaking season and have won a ton of come-from-behind, walk off games this year. But… these games are unwatchable. 4 hours of stepping out of the box, pitchers holding the ball with a runner on first to stall the running game, swings and misses, etc. And when a game is on Amazon or Apple TV and you can’t easily flip around to other channels? Torture. I gave myself a break last night and only watched the first few innings as I knew they would give up the lead and I just could not take the pace of play anymore. It is just too slow moving without enough action to fill in the long periods of nothingness.
Comment on home plate umpiring. We are all ready for electronic umpiring. It’s almost like the umpires are too and are making the case to use the technology by missing call after call. Do they know that Aaron Judge is 6 -7? The technology is available. Speed up the game. And let’s get the pitch clock in there too. Tennis has a serve clock and we no longer have to see Nadal and Djokovic towel off before every single point.
For SU, this is a historic season for the Yankees but some games are just not watchable or enjoyable. Part of it is the .242 average player batting average and the absence of balls put in play. It’s like watching Joey Gallo at the plate over and over going to a full count and then waiting to see if he walks or strikes out (or hits into the shift with 7 players bunched on the right side of the field).
If SU is struggling to stay interested, MLB has a major problem.
The Yankees are starting to be exposed a bit as they regress to the mean as David Cone likes to say. Taillon and Cortes are coming back down to earth and the bullpen is showing they also are human. It’s the reason teams rarely win over 110 games and you can’t sustain this pace of play over 162 games. SU is not impressed with the Red Sox but they will get players back healthy and will find a way into the post-season. Mets and Braves this week as the battle for 1st place is on in the NL East.
Anyone else finding these games unwatchable or is it just SU?
Sports Update Intergalactic 
I don’t mind how long the game goes when it comes to The Yanks vs. Sox or against Houston…but for the rest of the lot let’s move things along. The Umpires high and inside calls against Stanton twice had Stanton throw his bat in disgust. They were so incorrectly called that like tennis, basketball and football the manager’s should be allowed to have a reply on balls and strikes. This will do two things. 1. Give their players a chance to hit the ball when it’s thrown in the strike zone BUT more importantly with all the added time spent in reviewing the call it will really tell MLB to move to an electronic manner in calling balls and strikes so the games don’t drag on.
PS Do you think the 3rd base Umpire could have moved his OLD ASS out of the way. That was an easy double that Trevino would have had and a run scored.
As powerful as Kyrigos’ serve was I was more impressed on how Djokovic returned them. If he was successful in doing that it was Djokovic it seemed to dictate more of the ground stroke play in the 4th set.. Kyrigos was all about his monster serve which kept him in the match. Unless I forgot how great Federer it was seems like these guys are all hitting harder than Roger had done during his heyday.
I agree about the pace of baseball games. I know it’s been tried but I’m in favor of 7-inning games (more potential strategy and suspense earlier on), and I’m with you on the pitch clock.
And don’t get me started on seat prices… not a TV issue but too many younger (and older) fans don’t have the experience of going to as many
games as I did back in the day.