THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Sunday, May 29, 2016
For a weekend where seemingly everyone has left town and gone camping, there sure are a lot of big sporting events going on over Memorial Day weekend.
TV schedule-makers must figure somebody is staying home to watch. Either that, or people are lugging their satellite dishes with them as they head for the lake, or booting up apps on their smart phones to keep up with the action.
If not, here’s what they’re missing (though maybe it’s not a bad tradeoff for a few days of solitude):
• The greatest regular-season team in the history of the NBA, trying to keep its season alive against the Seattle-Oklahoma City Sonics-Thunder.
It’s hard not to like the Warriors, who play an entertaining brand of basketball, shoot from all over the building — and make most of those shots.
However, is it necessary to celebrate every routine basket by pounding your chest and/or letting out a primal scream? And how does one get away with kneeing/kicking his defender in the privates not once, but twice? Try that in your next pickup game, and see what happens to you.
• Casey Stangel, the former Lake City High star pitcher, throwing out an Alabama runner at home from left field for the Washington Huskies in the NCAA softball Super Regionals. Then, to watch ’Bama pitch around her the next time up probably elicited a few nods from 5A Inland Empire League pitchers who faced her a few years ago.
• “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” doesn’t have the luster is used to, but the Indy 500 still is worth tuning in for — especially for us old farts who remember listening to the race on the radio with their dad, back before the race was shown live on TV. Dad would find the newspaper with the lineup in it, and take a pen to cross out the drivers as they exited the race.
Apparently there’s a NASCAR race later in the day, but that doesn’t carry the same luster. Besides, they already had their “big deal” of a race in February.
• The Mariners. Seriously. We’re nearly two months into the season, and the M’s haven’t been mathematically eliminated. OK, that’s a stretch, but there have been years of late when the garlic fries and the helmet nachos were a better reason to head to Safeco than the actual team that played there.
This year’s collection of “Who’s he?” newcomers that were brought in seem to be performing better than their predecessors, and the rest of the division seems to be beating each other up, when not playing mediocre baseball against the rest of the league.
The Angels have done a nice job dismantling their own championship-caliber team; the Astros seem to be retooling for 2017, because that’s when Sports Illustrated said they were going to win the World Series. The Rangers will go down swinging, at least. And then there’s the Oakland Triple-A’s.
OK, it might be a little early for Seattle’s new skipper to start setting his pitching rotation for the postseason, but so far, it’s all set up for the M’s to make the playoffs for the first time since 2001.
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.