Commentary

Fall Is Classic With Wild Weekend Of Live Sports

Even though the Mets lost, the weekend in television sports was amazin’!

Saturday night on TBS, the Yankees won the American League pennant off a dramatic three-run homer by Juan Soto in the 10th inning, defeating the Guardians in Cleveland in five games.

Sunday night on Fox Sports 1, New Yorkers’ hopes for a subway World Series were dashed when the Dodgers eliminated the Mets in Los Angeles to take the National League Championship Series in six games.

However, that game was one-sided as the Dodgers trounced the Mets 10-5 at Dodgers Stadium. 

The lulls in the Mets-Dodgers game were lucky for New York Liberty fans because it enabled them to switch back and forth between the NLCS and the fifth and final game of the WNBA Finals Sunday night on ESPN.

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And what a game that was! The Liberty won in Brooklyn against the Minnesota Lynx in a game whose final 10 seconds had enough drama to provoke heart attacks. The Liberty wound up winning in overtime.

For New York NFL fans, particularly Jets fans whose passion and patience for their team astonishes the rest of us, the evening even had a third attraction -- “Sunday Night Football” on NBC with the Jets vs. the Steelers in Pittsburgh. 

The Jets lost, but the point is made: Sunday night alone represented a confluence of live, prime-time sports events -- including two championship games -- that was glorious to behold.

Not only were the games great entertainment as only live sports can be, but the technical quality of the games -- and all sports telecasts generally -- continues to take my breath away.

I have written this many times before: Live sports telecasts represent the state of the art in live television technology. And every year, TV tops itself.

Oh, and I almost forgot. The three Sunday night attractions and Saturday’s Yankees classic were just four games. 

The rest of this October weekend in sports was typical for fall -- basically, wall-to-wall college football games all day Saturday and far into Saturday night on multiple networks, and then Sunday’s onslaught of regional and national NFL games.

This week, the fun, drama and heartbreak continue.

Another epic NBA season opened on Tuesday night and this coming Friday is the first game of the World Series with the Yankees vs. the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Fox.

With all due respect to the Mets, this World Series is the matchup that was supposed to happen. 

The Yankees had the best won-loss record in the American League this year, and the Dodgers had the best record in both leagues.

On Friday, the two clubs will open their 12th World Series -- by far the most between any two teams in the history of Major League Baseball.

For the record, the Yankees won eight of those World Series, the Dodgers three of them. This year’s World Series is shaping up to be one for the ages. Play ball!

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