Magic Jewball

Yet another way tennis is like Judaism! When I was a kid, my mother worked in Jewish education and oversaw Hebrew Schools and synagogue education departments throughout the region. Once, a synagogue decided they would celebrate Purim on a Friday, even though it really fell on a Tuesday that year. The education director told my mother, “no one will come on a Tuesday!” Yeah, no matter what religion you are, you are cringing right now. I mean, Purim isn’t Yom Kippur or Christmas, but come on!

Tennis is sort of like that too. Like most sports, it’s better in it’s element. You have to see it while it’s happening or it doesn’t feel as tense and as full of possibility. Even if you record it and manage to avoid all updates, you know you could just flip to the end and find out what happened. And yet, it gets no respect. Can you imagine them doing this to a baseball game? That is, deciding it starts too early and no one will watch it, so recording it and playing it later in the day? I mean, I understand the Today show is important, NBC, so here’s a radical idea, don’t purchase the rights to the French Open playoffs! Some of us would like to watch it in real time, so why not let The Tennis Channel (with whom NBC and ESPN already share coverage) start and you with your much greater audience can let people who want to watch recipes and fluff interviews first and tennis second be happy with matches that already happened?

So now I have to shut off Twitter and not look at sports sites because I am watching this freaking thing on two hour delay. I would boycott the Today show to protest but I already don’t watch the Today show. Well now I’m not watching it even more. So there, NBC!