Daily Sports: Wimbledon, The AL East & The All-Stars Mark The Weekend

The weekend in daily sports follows a similar pattern in each day—start in England, move to New York in early afternoon, end in Anaheim at night, and mix in a good baseball movie. And jumping into the midst of this basic pattern will be the stars coming out in major league baseball.

Tennis starts early on Saturday morning when the women’s final between Marione Bartoli and Sabine Lisicki commences at 9 AM ET on ESPN. By early afternoon you can switch into key AL East action, with the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees from the Bronx (1 PM ET, MLB).

Then at 6:30 PM ET, Fox starts its customary Saturday night baseball coverage a half-hour early, and it’s for the purpose of announcing the All-Star Game starters. The reserves and pitchers still have to be chosen, and each league will have one player chosen by popular online vote, but the big votes open to the public are now closed.

On the field, Fox will split its game coverage. The western part of the country will mostly get the Dodgers-Giants, and that’s who gets the #1 broadcast team of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. The eastern side of the country mostly gets the Braves-Phillies—a game just as good and you don’t even have to listen to McCarver.

MLB Network will then step back in for a late Saturday night telecast from the West Coast, where the Red Sox visit the Angels at 10 PM ET. Viewers may also get Colorado-Arizona in a key game in the NL West.

The movie choice on Saturday night is the Kevin Costner/Tim Robbins classic “Bull Durham”, where Costner plays the grizzled veteran catcher who’s made the most of his limited physical gifts, with Robbins the flaky young pitcher with fantastic stuff, but no idea how to harness it. Bull Durham starts at 8 PM ET on MLB Network.

On Sunday, we’re back across the pond for the men’s final at Wimbledon, with Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic starting up at 9 AM ET on ESPN. Just like Sunday, the schedule then shifts to Yankee Stadium in the early afternoon with TBS’ coverage of the Baltimore-New York finale at 1:35 PM ET.

Just like Sunday, there’s a Red Sox-Angels came in prime-time, as ESPN has its usual 8 PM ET Sunday night game from Anaheim. TheSportsNotebook’s MLB coverage earlier this week touched on the prospects of the Angels for making a big second-half push. And just like Sunday there’s a movie worth watching on MLB Network—Pride of the Yankees, the story of Lou Gehrig, begins at 9 PM ET.

TheSportsNotebook will have updated MLB coverage coming up later today, with articles focusing on the AL East and NL West. One of the daily sports options I didn’t list here was Saturday night’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race from Daytona. That’s Saturday night at 7:30 PM ET on TNT, and TheSportsNotebook previewed it yesterday. And the most recent installment of baseball coverage looked at the Cincinnati Reds, in the wake of Homer Bailey’s no-hitter on Monday.