Big Budget Baseball Busts Lowlight Monday TV Card

I don’t know how long ago these Monday Night Baseball matchups for ESPN had to be settled on, but when you look at tonight’s game between the Los Angeles Angels and New York Yankees, I hope it was picked a long time ago—like, oh, I don’t know, maybe March.

The 7 PM ET game from the Bronx is the only live action for daily sports tonight, and its two teams that are big-budget, big-market duds. As a partisan Red Sox fan, it pains me to say that this description applies most profoundly to the Angels. The Yankees at least have the excuse of injuries, although even that’s overstated, given that their pitching has been healthy all year.

Anyway, it leaves most of us looking for something else in the world of sports, and there are not a lot of great options. The NFL Network is running replays of preseason games from last week, and the 8 PM ET feature is the Chiefs-Saints.

You might recall that when these two teams met in the regular season last year, Kansas City actually won in New Orleans. It was the one high point of a disastrous here for the Chiefs and a clear sign that the Saints were not going to stay afloat amidst the BountyGate suspensions. I have no idea why that makes last week’s preseason game interesting on replay, but I just thought I’d share.

NBA-TV is continuing what’s been a late summer of quality programming, with its replay of classic games from the recent past. Tonight’s focus is Game 7 of the 1988 Western Conference Finals, when the Showtime Lakers held off the Dallas Mavericks.

Regular readers know the NBA commentary here at TheSportsNotebook made frequent comparisons of the 2013 Miami Heat to the 1988 Los Angeles Lakers—both proud champions, trying to repeat and being consistently pushed to the limit. The Lakers-Mavs replay goes at 8:30 PM ET, and at 10:30 PM ET it’s followed by a feature on James Worthy.

Here at TheSportsNotebook its baseball that’s on the brain today. We’ll have a look at the American League playoff race and our MLB coverage will include a feature that comes out of that race. If you haven’t had a chance, please check out the college football coverage and NFL analysis. Previews started for both last week, and we’ve run through the Big 12 and SEC in the colleges, and the AFC East and NFC West in the pros.