The Aftermath

Super Saturday, the “greatest viewing day” in sports history has ended and, let’s just say, the sports we all saw on May 2, 2015 KIND OF lived up to all the hype. I say, “kind of,” because there’s some explaining to do.

All four major pro sports, football, baseball, hockey and basketball were in action, two of them in the midst of playoffs, and that’s always a good thing. Added to that, you had the Kentucky Derby, World Match Play Golf, and last but not least, the long awaited “Fight Of The Century” between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. It was an awesome day of sports viewing. There’s a whole lot of good stuff to recap.

Let’s go to the score cards.

The Baseball

The baseball games were pretty much just like any other day of baseball. Some well pitched games. Some featured some good hitting. Veteran stars that hit. Some young prospects that hit. Nobody “rose to the occasion” and put on an extraordinary display of baseball prowess like I was hoping they would do. It was, plain and simply, a good, solid example of what baseball is. Let’s face it. There are 162 regular season games. When there are no other sports going on (summer), it’s a pretty good diversion. When other stuff is going on, especially featuring playoffs, then early in the season baseball games will always sit there in the background until its games start to mean a bit more.

The NFL Draft

This was only the third of three days in the NFL Draft. Most of the marquee names had been picked during the first two days. Their real glamor day is round one, where all the fans whoop and holler over every pick. Day three is pretty much where all of those people who run up and down the field on special teams seem to get picked. It’s where most of those guys standing on the sideline get picked. The back ups. For the diehard football fan, it’s great. On this day, it’s just the warm up to the bigger and better stuff.

Match Play Golf

The match play golf was fun to watch golf, in cold San Francisco-like weather, but one of the disappointing things was that many of the “names” of the sport kept getting knocked off by “lesser names.” That always seems to happen in match play, where the difference between number five in the world and number 55 in the world is often so close that “on any given day,” the lesser ranked player can often beat the higher ranked player. At the end of the day, World #1 ranked Rory McIlroy was battling #36 ranked Paul Casey in a great back and forth match that ended up tied when darkness halted the match after three gripping extra holes. (McIlroy won the match Sunday morning and has moved on to the “Final Four.”)

The Hockey Playoffs

I apologize for an error I made in yesterday’s column, where I stated that there would be two playoff games on “Super Saturday.” The Ducks – Flames game is actually today on Sunday the 3rd. That being said, the one game that was played on Saturday was really good. The New York Rangers, trailing in the series 1 to 0, battled the Washington Capitals to the end before finally winning the game 3 to 2 to break even in the series. They went up 3 to 1, saw the Caps close it to 3 to 2, then had to battle for every square inch the rest of the way as the Caps stormed the net and ALMOST scored a few times before the game finally ended. Playoff hockey is awesome. Period.

The Derby

The Kentucky Derby was a great race between quality horses that I really don’t know that much about, but, when they run this race, it ALWAYS seems to be exciting. There is very little in sports as gripping as the call of a Kentucky Derby as the horses thunder down the stretch. Will Firing Line hold off the two favorites, American Pharaoh and Dortmund down the final quarter mile of the straightaway? Fans jumping up and cheering within an inch of their lives, rooting for all they are worth that THEIR favorite horse will win. American Pharaoh won this Derby and will be the one they all talk about. Firing Line was second. Dortmund was third. It was great fun to watch (even if I don’t watch horse racing much). It was the freakin’ Kentucky Derby.

The Basketball Playoffs

On the night when all of the sporting world cast their eyes upon Las Vegas to see what they hoped would be an epic sporting event, it instead happened at Staples Center in Los Angeles, as the L.A. Clippers defeated the San Antonio Spurs 111 to 109 in game seven of a best of seven series to win the series four to three. That’s WHAT happened in the series. How it happened is the stuff of great, legendary performances that people will be talking about for years.

This game was what sports at its highest level is supposed to be. Two excellent, evenly matched teams, playing the 7th game of a series with everything they’ve got, and at any one of about 40 times, you felt like the game could have been won by EITHER team. The DEFENDING champs of the NBA, with their team pretty much intact from last year, was playing for their playoff lives against a young, talented, up and coming team that has never won a championship in a gripping game seven. Does sports get any better than this?

16 times the game was tied. 31 times the lead changed hands. San Antonio’s veterans, including Tim Duncan, a man who has won five championships in his 15 years in the league, against the Clippers, the former little step brothers to the more celebrated L.A. Lakers, in the building that has jumped into the forefront of recent professional sports venues in stature, Staples Center (since the year 2000, five Laker world titles, two L.A. King championships).

It was a game that both teams deserved to win. It was a game where that famous sports cliche came true. It will probably come down to whichever team that has the ball last will win. Even though both teams kept scoring back and forth down the stretch, it came down to that exact scenario. The Clippers’ Chris Paul hit that last shot with one second to go and won the game, and the series. This game will be talked about for years. This should have been the NBA Finals.

The Fight

The greatest “Fight of the Century” turned out to be the greatest HYPED fight of the century, and ended up in being a fabulous example of the pomp and spectacle of a great sporting event, but in terms of the actual quality of the fighting, it did NOT live up to its hype AS A GREAT FIGHT. Floyd Mayweather Jr. won the fight over Manny Pacquiao by a unanimous decision, but there were a lot of people who thought that Mayweather’s style of moving, jabbing, clinching, and mostly fighting purely defensively first and only occasionally on offense, really helped to turn this GREATEST EVER match into, dare I say the words, a disappointment, an event far less exciting than it could have been.

Mayweather Jr. stifled his opponent with his “pure boxing” skills and tactics, but he also stifled viewers’ expectations (for a great FIGHT) with those same tactics. Many of those viewers, not necessarily boxing fans, but fans of other sports drawn to the event by the unprecedented hype, were expecting to see two great fighters go after each other and actually FIGHT each other, but instead got to see “a boxing lesson” given to Pacquiao by Mayweather.

And in so doing, Mayweather won the fight and he and Pacquiao made a lot of money. But, they also pretty much delivered a near death blow to the sport of boxing. In its big chance to reach out and grab a huge sporting audience and reclaim them for its sport, boxing, by the very nature of its scoring rules, allowed a man to grab and hold and dance his way around the ring for twelve rounds, and WIN the fight (pretty convincingly scoring-wise, although there were many who watched that same fight and thought that Pacquiao should have won).

And therein lies the problem. Boxing’s scoring, which pretty much began hundreds and hundreds of years ago, still rewards the scientific “boxer” who uses evasive tactics and avoids getting hit and seems to NOT reward the guy who presses the action, and actually tries to knock the other guy out and WIN the fight against his opponent. Exactly the opposite of MMA, where the guy actually has to fight and (though he gets hit and exposes himself to harm) physically defeat the opponent. Fans know the difference. The majority of the fans at the arena, as well as in bars and pubs all over the world, DID NOT like the decision and booed. People think that the person who is biggest, baddest and toughest is who should win a fight, not the one who can “dance” the best. (Otherwise, why even bother with that kind of sport)

By all rights, the boxing judges followed their rules of scoring boxing and they (probably rightly) awarded the decision to Mayweather over Pacquiao. But, this match, this decision, turned a LOT of people against boxing. MANY of the people afterword said they would NEVER see another pay per view boxing match again. They felt they got screwed. They felt that, even though it went the full twelve rounds, IT WAS NOT WORTH IT. (the people in person might have thought it was worth it because of the spectacle, but the ones on PPV TV do NOT get to experience the spectacle, they only get to watch the fight)

Boxing used to be the only game in town, but now there is an alternative. Instead of winning over new fans, boxing has again sacrificed long term success for a short term payday. They have lost the undecided, younger fans of MMA, who were giving this sport one last chance, who don’t think for a second that “Pretty Boy Floyd” could stand a chance against a good MMA fighter that was his same size. When you get into a closed cage match, you can run, but you can’t hide.

Boxing may have “won the battle” financially, and had the biggest night of its career, but it probably has just lost the war. They definitely did NOT win the overall case in the court of public opinion.

Think about this. The San Antonio vs. L.A. Clipper game featured two teams engaged in a great contest with complete, all out intensity (like a great game 7 in hockey). They exchanged punch for punch against each other for nearly an entire game (unlike a boxing match where one fighter can grab and hold, instead of fighting and trading blows). They went down the stretch of a fourth quarter, with both teams showing incredible resolve (like the stretch drive of a Kentucky Derby, maybe?) They hit a last second shot to win a game 7 in the playoffs (the ultimate, walk off, great play in all of sports).

In a unanimous decision, on sporting world’s greatest day, Super Saturday, the victory in the court of public opinion, goes to basketball and the L.A. Clippers and the San Antonio Spurs, who showed the world what great sports is REALLY about.