Pitchers, Skaters, Bachelorettes, and Shannon Elizabeth!

Pitchers and catchers report today, the Olympics are in full swing, Celebrity Big Brother is on, and the Bachelor too. 

That’s a lot of excitement for me, as someone who stays inside and keeps entertained by television.

Baseball is still my favorite sport and as a Mets fan I am cautiously optimistic. As was the case last year, the success or failure of my particular favorite team is based on its pitching staff and if it stays healthy, as it didn’t last year.

The team which will be the most fun to watch, though, will be the Yankees. They signed Giancarlo Stanton, who hit 59 homeruns last year to line up with Aaron Judge who hit over 50. Then there is still Gary Sanchez, who broke a Yankee single-season record for homeruns by a catcher. Also throw in Greg Bird at firstbase who packs a lot of pop and will be a forgotten force when the season starts.

The Brewers, Cubs, Nationals, and Giants made the biggest strides in the off season in the NL with the Angels doing the same in the AL.

The Olympics have been a favorite experience of mine since I was a kid. I remember when I was about 10 watching some guy run past my house often. Since there was hardly any traffic where I lived he stood out. I tried to run with him a few times and he told me he was training for the Olympics. I watched the 72 Games from Munich that particular year and never saw him, but I was hooked on the whole thing. 

I was hooked on the Olympics so much throughout my life that I even created a sports festival for Delaware called the Diamond State Games which operated for 9 years before crashing in the Great Recession.

Still, NBC gambles that Figure Skating and now Curling are the 2 sports which everyone NEEDS to watch and there seems to be wall-to-wall coverage of those sports. Fortunately there are other channel options within the NBC network so we do get to see plenty of the other events. On Demand features highlights of pretty much all of the events so nothing really gets missed.

Two new favorite events of mine are snowboard racing and gang speed skating. Snowboard racing features 4 people at a time racing on a course down a side of a mountain. Certainly, to me, beats a timed event. The timed ski events, for example, always seemed to be a bit unfair since the course has to change on pretty much every run downhill.

Gang speedskating doesn’t include street gangs, of course, but rather a whole group of skaters on the main oval at the same time. I saw prequalifying competitions so I don’t know much more than that, but what I did see was great. 

The X-Games definitely helped spice up the Olympics with many of these newly contested events. Lots of additional ways to earn medals for those Winterly inclined athletes.

For the past 6 seasons of The Bachelor I have picked final four finishers after watching the first show of the season. I have successfully picked 23 of 24 finalists, 5 of 6 winners and the one person I picked to win but didn’t, came in second. This year, if you are following along, the winner will be Bekah K with Kendall, Lauren B and Tya the remaining final four. 

Celebrity Big Brother helped to bridge the gap between seasons of Survivor, which will start again on 2-28. Eleven “celebrities” entered the BB house for a truncated season. MMA fighter Chuck Liddell was the first to get evicted. I was sort of hoping he choked a couple of the other out on his way of the house, but was left a little disappointed there. I am rooting for Shannon Elizabeth to take the crown. She, like me, is a big fan of the show.

That’s it. Just wanted to get a post in before heading out to try to sell a house…one of the 6 jobs I have now trying to keep my dog happily fed and housed.

Done