Daily Sports: Matt Harvey & A Couple Old Rivalries On Wednesday

The New York Mets haven’t been in shouting distance of contention this year, but 24-year-old starting pitcher Matt Harvey has electrified baseball, with a 7-1 start and 2.00 ERA that has marked him as a frontrunner for the Cy Young Award.

Could Harvey follow up R.A. Dickey who won the award with the Mets last year? If you haven’t had a chance to see Harvey pitch, then tonight is your chance, as he goes up against the Arizona Diamondbacks from Citi Field. ESPN has the coverage starting at 7 PM ET.

Great rivalries of the 1980s are a theme in a couple of documentaries that will supplement the daily sports lineup. At a time when Wimbledon is being marked by the losses of star players and heading to a non-marquee final weekend, it’s a good time to look back on the days when Chris Evert Lloyd and Martina Navratilova owned the women’s game. That’s the focus of 30-for-30 on ESPN 2 at 9 PM ET.

And speaking of 1980s rivalries was there a bigger one than Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the NBA? They got it started in college, at the 1979 Final Four, and then picked it up anew in their first postseason meeting as pros in the 1984 NBA Finals. At 6 PM ET, a two-hour show on the rivalry that saved the league will air on NBA-TV.

Here at TheSportsNotebook, we’ll talk AL West baseball later on today. Previous MLB coverage this week has looked at the Minnesota Twins and the Miami Marlins. Yesterday’s look at the Marlins examined both who they might trade later this month, as well as their odds of beating their Over/Under win number from the preseason, which is 63.5.