Weekend Watch, August 31-September 3

August 31, 2012-Ah Labor Day, the unofficial beginning of the fall season. It’s unofficially fall in the world of sports as well as of this weekend. Here are some of the TV highlights.

1.IndyCar, Streets of Baltimore, Sun., 2 p.m. EDT, NBC Sports-The league formerly known as the IRL comes to Baltimore for the first time, courtesy of a two-mile road course literally running through the streets of the Inner Harbor.

2.MLB, Fox/TBS/ESPN/MLB/various, Fri-Sun-This weekend’s pennant race highlights include the Chicago White Sox at Detroit, Baltimore at the New York Yankees, St. Louis at Washington, Boston at Oakland, Pittsburgh at Milwaukee, LAA at Seattle and Arizona at Los Angeles.

3.MLS, San Jose vs. Chivas USA, Saturday, 9 p.m. EDT, 6 p.m. PDT, NBC Sports-Portland and Colorado are also on the network formerly (un)known as VS. on Friday night but seeing as how they’re currently the Nos. 9 and 8 seeds in the Western Conference right now, we can safely skip that one. Chivas USA isn’t exactly doing so well either, currently stuck at seventh in the West but the conference’s current top-ranked team, No. 1 San Jose, should make things interesting.

4.English Premier League-Highlights include West Ham United vs. Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur vs. Norwich City and Manchester City vs. Queen’s Park Rangers on Sat. and Newcastle United vs. Aston Villa and Liverpool vs. Arsenal on Sunday.

Enjoy.

Weekend Watch, August 24-26

August 22, 2012

I’m sorry this post is a bit early but thanks to the start of the college school year, I’ll be rather busy this Thursday. So without further ado, here are some potential sports-watching highlights for the final full weekend of August.

Weekend Watch: August 17-August 19, 2012

August 16, 2012
We’ve got a great weekend coming up, sportswise. Pennant race action in baseball, preseason NFL football, MLS action and best of all, the Barclays Premier League starts this weekend. As usual, here are some of the highlights.

Felix and Robin

August 15, 2012

Felix Hernandez pitched a perfect game today, a 1-0 victory by the Seattle Mariners over the Tampa Bay Rays, the 23rd in baseball history and the 21st since the 1903 World Series signaled the emergence of what quickly became known as Major League Baseball. It’s the third perfect game and the sixth no-hitter this season. It’s the second no-hitter of 2012 for the Mariners after Kevin Millwood and five of the team’s relievers combined for a no-hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers in June. Only a few hours earlier, Arsenal Football Club agreed to sell its star striker, Robin Van Persie, to Manchester United for an undisclosed sum, though probably somewhere near the £20 million Arsenal was said to be asking for.

These two events are, of course, completely irrelevant to each other. Different sports, different continents, different systems of player movement (European-style loans and transfers don’t exist in North American sports, likewise for trades and waiver claims in European football). The Van Persie story was of interest to me because I follow Arsenal. As for Hernandez, while I’ve certainly thought he was one of the best pitchers in MLB for a while now, I don’t particularly follow the Mariners so I just tuned in to watch the last two innings of the perfecto on MLB.com.

Weekend Watch, August 10-August 12, 2012

August 10, 2012

The final weekend of the Olympics is here and with it comes a turning point in the sports TV schedule. Certainly the final few days of the 2012 Summer Games in London will provide a good amount of excitement this weekend. NBC and its affiliated networks will broadcast finals in men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s soccer, men’s and women’s wrestling, men’s boxing, men’s and women’s track and field and various other events. There’s also the Closing Ceremonies at weekend’s end, which hopefully will be shown in its entirety.

Weekend Watch, August 3-August 5, 2012

August 2, 2012

Even more than last week’s Weekend Watch, the upcoming sports watching weekend will be dominated by the Olympics. Swimming and gymnastics are winding down, track and field is about to get underway and sports like soccer, boxing, tennis, water polo, volleyball, beach volleyball and basketball are moving out of the group stages and into the elimination rounds. There’s still some other good sports watching to be found this weekend outside London and the other Olympic venues though. Here are a couple highlights.

The Olympic 29: Women’s football/soccer

July 25, 2012

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m fairly excited for the 2012 Olympics, to say the least. It’s a pretty spectacular mix of sports we all know and love and more obscure disciplines that just don’t show up on television too often the rest of the time. Shortly before I returned home from London, I went to the Waterstone’s near Trafalgar Square and bought a book I’d already gotten for a professor from the Waterstone’s near Piccadilly Circus.