The Rays and Red Sox gave us a hell of a first inning in Game 6 of the ALCS on Saturday night, as James Shields executed a beautiful (we can only presume) pickoff of Coco Crisp, B.J. Upton hit his seventh home run of the postseason, and Jed Lowrie and Dustin Pedroia turned two for the Sox to retire the side.
None of us actually watched this live, of course.
Because of a circuit breaker blowout in Atlanta, TBS was unable to air the game until approximately 8:25 on Saturday evening. But instead of the network breaking down altogether and surprising millions with a blank screen, the Superstation aired ... "The Steve Harvey Show." Talk about a letdown -- viewers expected Josh Beckett but they got Cedric the Entertainer. In honor of Steve, here are 10 more televised disasters.
10. Monday Night Football on ESPN. Not only is ESPN a poor choice for a program with MNF's history of showing great primetime football, but it is has also been sullied by celebrities promoting their latest movies and Tony Kornheiser generally being an idiot in a box.
9. Animated FOX Football Robots. You know what we're talking about: the Transformer-esque beings who greet watchers of FOX Football on Sunday after every commercial break. These things pretty much just prance around and try to look tough or hardcore or something as commercial sponsors flash across the screen, though for the life of us we have no idea why FOX is using android-types to help in its coverage of the NFL.
8. Carl Lewis Sings the National Anthem. During a January 1993 game between the Nets and the Bulls, the former Olympian absolutely butchered "The Star Spangled Banner." We can cut him some slack because of his nine gold medals, but you can check it out on YouTube and see for yourself.
7. SportsCenter's "Who's Now" Segment. A few years ago the Worldwide Leader in Sports decided to have a bracket-style competition between the globe's "most now" athletes as voted on by viewers. We still aren't sure why ESPN felt compelled to waste our time with this one, nor do we know what exactly makes any athlete more "now" than any other given athlete (or what being "now" actually means). Another silly gimmick from SportsCenter that replaces actual sports coverage with fluff.
6. "Scooter." For three years, FOX used a Schoolhouse Rock-style mascot to explain the physics of baseball to the viewing public -- a talking baseball, voiced by Tom Kenny of "SpongeBob" fame, named "Scooter." Luckily for those of us who respect our sanity, Scooter has been missing in action for a little while.
5. Mr. Theismann, meet LT. The career of Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann ended with a bang -- or, shall we say, a crack -- on Nov. 18, 1985. Theismann suffered a gruesome compound leg fracture in an ugly gang-tackling by Giants linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson, much to the disgust of a large Monday Night Football audience.
4. The "wardrobe malfunction." You all know the story by now. Super Bowl XXXVIII. One hundred and forty-four million viewers worldwide. Janet Jackson. Justin Timberlake. Okay, let's move on.
3. Dane Cook. There's only one October. Really. Just one! Well, you know ... one per year. There are 12 months in the year, and one of them is October, and in that month they play baseball games ... Well, they play baseball games in a lot of months, but the ones in October are a bit more important, you see. So I'm just gonna stand here and yell about it and generally be really overdramatic and annoying. Is anyone listening anymore? Does anyone care? What's that? No one did to begin with?
Oh. Okay.
2. The "Heidi Game." Little-known fact (to our generation, at least): NBC once preempted the end of an NFL game in 1968 in order to begin airing a made-for-TV movie on time. With the Jets leading the Raiders 32-29 and only 1:05 left in the fourth quarter, NBC pulled the plug, assuming the Jets had the game won, to air "Heidi," a "film" based on the well-known children's story. The Raiders then scored twice and won 43-32. Whoops.
1. Joe Morgan. Exact quotation from the first-ballot Hall of Famer (allegedly referring to the Rays-Red Sox ALCS, but truisms (or shall we call them false-isms?) like this could apply to basically any game of baseball or any other sport): "They cannot beat them by outscoring them." Thank you, Joe. Please continue to be the lead baseball analyst for the Worldwide Leader in Sports. Thank you. We love you.
