TV Daily Sports: Summer Starts Today

The life of the sports fan officially reaches summer today, as the NHL season joins the NBA in having concluded, and we have a couple months of major league baseball, with some action in tennis and golf mixed in, as what will basically dominate daily sports.

There is still a championship to be settled outside the world of the major sports, and that’s in the College World Series. UCLA took Game 1 of the best-of-three final against Mississippi State last night, and the Bruins can bring home the national title with a win tonight (8 PM ET, ESPN).

UCLA’s athletic program overall has won more national championships than any other school, but never in baseball. They play their home games in Jackie Robinson Stadium (Robinson played both football and baseball in Westwood) and it would be ironic if the coveted title came the year “42” hit the theatres.

MLB Network has coverage of American League contenders tonight. Viewers will get either Texas-NY Yanks from the Bronx, or Cleveland-Baltimore from Camden Yards, starting at 7 PM ET.

If the AL East team you really want to watch is Boston, then you have to go the NFL Network—not for a game, but for a half-hour feature on the days that Fenway Park doubled as a football home for the Patriots. Another little historical tidbit is that the Washington Redskins played their home games at the Fens, having been founded in Boston, but relocating very early in the franchise’s existence.

Here at TheSportsNotebook, we’ll start with NHL analysis coming up shortly, looking back at the wild finish to Game 6 and offering some reflections on the season as a whole, shortened year though it may have been. Then a little later on there will be MLB coverage, focusing in on the AL Central. Now that summer is in gear, it’s a division a day—or six days a week anyway. Yesterday we looked at the NL East, with a specific focus on the Philadelphia Phillies.