MEDIA NOTES

I have a few things on my mind that are media-related, but let me just get this out of the way - the Mets don't get any congratulations for sweeping Washington and taking first place back. That's what they should have done. They need at least 3 out of 4 this weekend in Pittsburgh...but a sweep would be best-case scenario.

MIKE & THE MAD DOG

I'm pretty down about the end of Mike & The Mad Dog on WFAN in New York. I'm also disappointed that I just missed catching the beginning of today's show on YES - I was putting my daughter down for a nap and just caught a phone call between Mike Francesa and Chris Russo ending. Hopefully that gets played again.

Mike & The Mad Dog is what I pretty much grew up listening to as far as sports radio goes (actually, any radio - I didn't get into FM radio until much later in life). I always enjoyed the show, and like I do often with my sports teams, I defended Mike Francesa and Chris Russo when people put them down, even though I knew the person might have been right about what they were saying. Older now, I see their faults, but I still think they provided quality radio. (And having to listen to sports radio in Boston now, I realize how far and away better WFAN does things than other markets in the country - or, at least, better than Boston.) I'm 30, the show's been on for 19 years. I've spent a sizable chunk of my life listening to Mike & The Mad Dog...I'll miss it.

I'm sure Mike Francesa's show will continue to be fine on WFAN, and I'm sure Chris Russo will do fine wherever he goes (rumors are Sirius). And I'm sure they'll both be good shows to listen to - but it won't be the same.

UPDATE: Awful Announcing has the YES video of Chris Russo's phone call to Mike Francesa at the top of the show Friday. I listened to a couple of hours of the show, it was good stuff. A lot of the callers directed their affections, though, at Francesa - I thought it should have been more of an appreciation for Russo. Whatever.

The other thing, while I'm on the topic of media, is that www.awfulannouncing.com does a great job critiquing the media. I have a link to it on the right-hand side of the page - check it out every so often if you're interested.

OLYMPICS
I don't really have much to say about the Olympics coverage in general, though it seems that NBC is doing a fine job.

What I want to comment on is how much I enjoy watching Cris Collinsworth these days. I have come totally full circle on him. I used to strongly dislike anything he did - mostly from his work on 'Inside the NFL' on HBO. Maybe he said something bad about the Jets once that I held against him - I don't know. Maybe he came off as arrogant...I think it's a bit of both.

But ever since he started doing NFL Network games, he's started to grow on me. Maybe it's because he was the good alternative to Bryant Gumbel, who was just awful (and now gone), but he was flat out great, not just good compared to his partner. And now, whenever I watch the Olympics (I'm not watching a ton, but I catch the studio stuff every now and then), I'm happy when I see Collinsworth on - he's doing a great job there too.

ALL OVER THE PLACE

I have lots of things on my mind this morning - I'll throw them all at you here:

Let's start with the Tampa Bay Rays. As I've been saying for a while, they're not going anywhere. The Yankees have had a couple of pretty poor weeks, so they're looking like a long shot to overtake the Rays, and the Red Sox are now without Tim Wakefield, who will miss a couple of starts - it just seems like the stars aren't aligning for them this year. I'm not sure they will even hold onto their wild card lead...but that's another story for another day.

It makes sense with the Rays - they've had this young team that has been on the cusp for a few years - if they only had some pitching, people would say. Well, now their pitching is performing. But here's what I don't understand about Tampa Bay - I get that they have Scott Kazmir, James Shields, and Matt Garza, good pitchers all. But what has gotten into Edwin Jackson? This guy has been awful his entire career - first, as a reliever, with 23 appearances and a 5.45 ERA. Then last year in his first as a starter, 5-15 with a 5.76 ERA. This year he is now 9-7 with a 4.07 ERA. Has it just taken this many starts for him to be comfortable as a starter? Or is he having one of those flash-in-the-pan seasons? I mean, Kazmir had the good stretch earlier this season where he was dominant for 6 or 7 starts in a row, but Jackson has been way more consistent recently. I totally buy into the Rays this year...I just don't know what to think about Edwin Jackson.

Now the Mets - this is their week to make hay. They start this afternoon with a makeup day game against the Pirates at Shea, before hitting the road for the rest of the week - going to Washington then Pittsburgh (a wraparound series ending Monday). That has to be 6 wins. Has to be.

Pittsburgh has given the Mets trouble in recent years, which is why I'm not automatically throwing a 8-0 out there...and also, the bullpen is bound to blow a game this week.

So 6-2, 7-1 - that would allow the Mets to take over first place - especially while at the same time the Phillies are on a west coast swing and the Marlins will have their hands full with St. Louis and Chicago.

So Friday night I was kind of interested in the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics. The Wife had it on, I sat for five minutes, and it bored me. I couldn't even tell you which part I was watching because it just didn't register in my head. I kept thinking, "I'd rather watch baseball." So I put on baseball, and didn't tune back in to the Olympics until the swimming Saturday night.

Now all I keep hearing is how wonderful/exhilarating/just plain cool the Opening Ceremonies were. How could this be? Wouldn't I have been able to tell if it was going to be exciting? Is it just that it got good towards the end (4 hours after I watched) when they lit the cauldron? And that the ending was so good that people forgot how torturous the rest of the show was (like women who give birth forget all the uncomfortable aspects and just remember the joyous parts)? Someone help me out here, please.

Finally, the Chad Pennington mystery is over - he's a member of the Miami Dolphins. This is kind of like the football gods screwing with me. I hate the Dolphins. Most of that is Dan Marino residue - I guess I really don't hate them anymore...I probably dislike the Patriots more these days - but I love seeing the Dolphins lose. The Patriots is more of a recent thing - for so long they were harmless, usually joining the Jets in awfulness year to year. But the Dolphins were rivals. And I hated them.
But now I'll be rooting for them 14 out of 16 games a year. I really hope Pennington wins with them, except when they play the Jets. And the cool thing about football is I can root for Pennington to do well against the Jets, you know, 14-20, 200 yards, and throw no touchdowns or interceptions. Maybe a bunch of dropped balls, so he's not even to blame when the Jets beat them, then he can do really well in the other games.

Miami is really the best-case scenario for Pennington - he'll play right away while teaching young quarterbacks at the same time.

In Jets camp, meanwhile, Laveranues Coles is apparently stewing about the loss of Pennington. Listen, I love that Coles is so attached to Pennington...but he's got to get over it and enjoy the fact that he will have a monster season running downfield for Favre bombs. And I think he will - he told the media last week that he just needed time to get over it.

Jerricho Cotchery took the opposite approach - I don't know if it was a veiled shot at Pennington or not (I'd like to lean towards 'not'), but he commented on how hard Favre threw. He said Vinny Testaverde threw hard, but Favre's ball was "definitely the hardest ball I've had thrown at me in a long time." Just realize, Jerricho, that the difference in the speed of Favre's throws compared with Pennington's is about the same as the difference in their accuracy at certain points in the game. I hope the receivers are ready for that.

WHY I WON'T ENJOY THIS YEAR'S OLYMPICS

For me, as I imagine it is for many of you, sports is an escape from reality. For the most part, turning on a game at night or on a weekend serves as a distraction from the mostly depressing news in the world around us.

Occasionally the real world intrudes upon the sports world, or vice versa. I recently heard a story about Ira Newble, who has been in the NBA for what seems like forever (I heard it on "Only A Game", which I wrote about last week - this is the type of story I love that show for). Newble wanted to do something about the situation in Darfur, so he went there, heard horrible stories, and used those stories to raise awareness around the NBA. I don't mind an instance like that, where people try to use their status to promote something good - or at least good intentions.

What I don't like is when the two worlds collide negatively, and I feel that's what's going to happen during this summer's Olympic Games. I like the Olympics. I'm not one of those people who hates the Olympics, but I'm also not someone who lives and dies with each event, bleeding red, white, and blue. I just like them, I like watching some of the events that I don't get to see very often...or, to put it more accurately, don't care about very often.

And recently, I have been into the Olympic site selection process. I really wanted New York City to get the 2012 Olympics - I just thought that would have been cool. One of the swimming venues would have been Astoria Park, where I took swimming lessons growing up, and I thought that would have been the coolest thing ever. Especially since I wouldn't be living there and dealing with the hassles that supposedly come with hosting the Olympics. London got 2012. But I digress. Beijing has this year's Olympics, and I didn't want that to happen.

There are two sides to this. One is that Beijing gets to put on a happy face and pretend like it's just about the games, and there are no human rights violations going on in the country (please know that anytime I refer to "China" or "Beijing" in this entry I'm referring to the government, and not the people). The other side is that the Olympic Games serve as an expose and public service announcement raising awareness about what really goes on in China - and why they really didn't deserve the reward of hosting an Olympic Games. The reality will probably fall somewhere in the middle.

And I'm left with a personal quandary, and since this is a sports blog, I'm keeping this sports-related rather than political. For China, nothing will make this more worthwhile than for them to win the medal count in the Olympics they hosted. So I could easily root for the U.S. (or any other country, for that matter) to smoke China in the medal count. But that would mean that these Chinese people who are snatched sometimes involuntarily from their families to be trained by the government and to live their lives for no other reason than to serve the country well in the Olympic games....these people would have failed at the only thing they are looked at as useful for. And who knows what repercussions they will face. And that makes me sad.

Either way, I don't think I'll be able to enjoy the Olympics this summer. For me, the Olympics in China won't allow me to escape from reality. It will only be a constant reminder of what is wrong in our world.