The well-rounded sports enthusiast loves life right now.
While I don’t consider myself “well-rounded” in sports, mostly because I only like NASCAR for the drivers’ names, I fall asleep before the fourth inning of a baseball game,and tennis is only excitingwhen Serena Williams chastises a line judge. All of this is available on reruns of SportsCenter, so I don’t exactly feel inclined to tune in.
But for the most diehard of diehard sports junkies, October has to feel like Christmas in the Hamptons.
Baseball? Sports have you covered. October is the month even casual baseball fans enjoy, mostly because each and every game finally matters. Regular season baseball is a joke. A team that lost 70 games is heading to the National League Championship Series, but that’s just the nature of Major League Baseball.
But those 70 losses won’t fly in October. It’s the month where baseball parallels college football; where one loss means your team’s grave is already dug, and two losses means they are laying in it.
Speaking of college football, October has that covered too. Not only have we hit the midway point of the season, some devastating upsets and big time players are beginning to surface.
Alabama’s 19-game win streak came to a screeching halt, a player in the maize and blue looks like the latest Barry Sanders, and the AP Top 25 is once again showing it’s no guarantee.
One thing you can guarantee on is the NBA season is finally upon us, and it may be the most exciting year in recent memory. The regular season begins on Oct. 26, but the preseason hype is perhaps at its highest in history, especially in South Beach where three likely NBA All Star starters have assembled on the same team. But here out West it’s all about the Kobe show and his quest for a Jordan-like number of rings.
Who knows who will get a ring at the conclusion of this NFL season? It’s the earliest in the season in recent memory that there are no undefeated teams, and it seems as though the Lombardi Trophy has no one significant favorite contender. The last remaining undefeated team was the Kansas City Chiefs for crying out loud!
The last four Super Bowl winners have a combined record of 12-7. Preseason favorites such as Dallas and Indianapolis have yet to prove much of anything, leaving the entire league up for grabs. The NFL’s leading rusher isn’t Chris Johnson, it’s Arian Foster of the first-place Texans in the AFC South.
Even less-popular sports like golf and hockey love their time in the October spotlight.
The British stole back the Ryder Cup in a come-from-behind fashion earlier this month, and the puck has finally hit the ice in the NHL, stirring up excitement in the Valley for plenty of San Jose Sharks fans.
Sit back and enjoy all 31 days of October, because in this month alone we will have a new MLB champion, see a Wade-to-LeBron alley-oop and, if we’re lucky, a nice fistfight at center ice. Try saying that in June.