Sports on TV are tough to watch at times

I was surprised the Major League Baseball All-Star Game didn't end sometime Wednesday morning. The game, a 4-3 win by the American League, finished in a respectable 2 hours, 31 minutes which made it only slightly longer than the pregame fluff.

You know, I'm all for having the all-stars introduced one-by-one before the game and it's great the President of the United States can throw out the first pitch (by the way, President Obama definitely takes a back seat to his predecessor when it comes to tossing the ol' horsehide!), but the production by Fox Sports was too much to stomach at times.

The introduction of the broadcast was melodramatic, to say the least, with the poignant background music and voiceover proclaiming baseball's virtues. The telecast began at 8 p.m. but the game didn't start until nearly 9.

This might sound like a weird thing to say since I'm the sports editor, but I've gotten to the point where I can barely stand to watch sports on TV. For one thing, because I'm either out covering an event or working on the desk, I rarely have the opportunity to watch a game on the television and when I'm not working, I usually have other things to do besides watch sports on TV — unless it's a pretty big event. Atlantic Coast Conference basketball remains an exception, for the most part.

This is somewhat ironic because I used to watch sports on TV nearly all the time before I became a sports writer. I went from watching three editions of ESPN's Sportscenter daily to watching it once every 6 months. However, one thing I've gleaned by watching ESPN Classic is how much televised sports has changed over the years. When I was a kid in the 1970s, the broadcast began with a few minutes of the broadcasters talking then straight to the game and when it ended, maybe an interview and that was it.

Now you've got to endure so much hype that it numbs me to the event. And the latest thing, these onfield postgame interviews — especially after a championship contest — conducted over the stadium PA system, drives me batty. It's lame. It's goofy.

While I appreciate the up-to-the-second graphics offered by the modern product compared to the sparse graphical information one would get 30 years ago, sometimes it's too much. I actually enjoy listening to a game on the radio, no matter the sport, more these days than watching on TV. I just wish radio announcers would get in the habit of giving the score every 30-60 seconds since you never know when someone just tuned in.

Anyway, that's my midsummer rant. How about that Post 13 baseball team one win away from its first American Legion Area One Eastern Division title since 1990?