BASEBALL: Boston at White Sox
7:05 p.m., WGN-Ch. 9
What’s the over-under with the Red Sox in town to pound on the White Sox? Last weekend in Boston, Nomar Garciaparra and crew scored 43 points–er, runs–against the hemorrhaging White Sox pitching staff. But that was in four games; there are only three this weekend. It can’t get much worse until the last weekend in July, when the White Sox face Cleveland again.
YELLOW FLAG
ESPN went 3 for 3 Sunday in its auto racing coverage: All three races it telecast ran long, and fans were ill-served all day. This for a sport with fans galore. Ratings for Winston Cup, for example, are higher than anything except the NFL.
The NASCAR Busch Series race went past its scheduled 1:30 p.m. conclusion, so viewers missed the start of the CART Cleveland Grand Prix. That race, subject to lengthy rain delays, was shortened 10 laps so it could end before the scheduled 3:30 p.m. finish (nobody consulted the spectators). And it still ran long, so the network held the start of the Winston Cup SaveMart/Kragen 350 until the Cleveland race ended. Naturally, that race ran long, so at 7 p.m. the network began shuttling between baseball and NASCAR.
A suggestion: Stuff happens, like bad weather and crashes, so don’t cut things so close in scheduling.
JUST A PIECE
Everybody’s getting into the act. Mario Lemieux is buying into the Pittsburgh Penguins, John Elway wants a piece of an NFL team, Steve Stone is part of group trying to buy the Oakland A’s, competing with Reggie Jackson.
Now, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and her husband Bob Kersee are emulating former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs and buying into NASCAR.
The Olympic gold-medal track star is teaming up with Roehrig Motorsports Inc. to form Joyner-Kersee Racing and will compete next season.
BOOK CLUB
Forget about Luke Skywalker. Read about Bulls star Robert “Sky” Walker.
North Shore author/teacher Jay Amberg’s suspense novel “Blackbird Singing” is just the thing to get your mind off the NBA’s dismal season. The abridged version: Superstar player with high-profile anchorwoman wife have 9-year-old daughter who is kidnapped by high-tech computer madmen obsessed with committing a Lindbergh-like crime of the century.
And it gets better after that.
