random weekend musings

I had an email over the weekend from the ESPN Poker team, which made me realize how difficult it is to completely expunge all ESPN material from my Internet presence, and also reminded me that any coverage of poker I followed online was through espn.com. I've never played poker outside of home low stakes games, but as a card player (I play bridge as my primary gaming activity), I appreciate poker, and have always wondered if I could make money playing the game. Of course, with the US shutdown of the largest online poker sites, that's not likely to happen any time soon.

In my search for other sources of sports information (which I hope to start detailing here this week), I went to mlb.com Saturday, and was pleasantly surprised to find the site provides a free live stream of one game per day. I was even more pleasantly surprised to learn the Saturday game featured the Mariners in action, with Felix Hernandez on the mound against the Phillies. I had not watched a baseball game since the 2010 World Series, which I paid to stream online. The result wasn't what I hoped, but the Mariners have already exceeded my expectations for the entire year, so it's hard to complain. It's also a measure of success for my experiment, since I cannot say if I would have found this game if I had just been keeping up with the score on espn.com.

Without ESPN International (and its subsidiary in Asia, Star Sports), I will miss all of Wimbledon these next two weeks. While the symbolism of the event is without peer, I can't help but think as a two week sporting event, it's a bit overrated. How many men's champions have there been since Andre Agassi won in 1992? Sampras won seven or so, Federer has won, what, 7 times, Nadal has not lost at Wimbledon since 2007, I think, leaving room for a stray Richard Krajicek, and the years between Sampras and Federer (Lleyton Hewitt, Goran Ivanisevic), the only time since Agassi that the tournament felt wide open. While there have been great matches, those in the first week, with the Isner - Mahut match last year the prime example, of course, really don't matter in the determination of a champion. And as for the women, when's the last time a non-Williams sister won the title? If a Williams sister wins this year, after neither has played in months because of injury, I'm not sure if that's an indictment of the tournament or of the women's field in general.