Smaller Sports Steal Spotlight on Slow Saturday

There are no NBA or NHL playoff games on the docket today, which means that there’s plenty of time to pay attention to the smaller sports. You are paying attention to the smaller sports, right?

The WNBA began its 14th season today, with a game between the defending champion Phoenix Mercury and Diana Taurasi and Candace Parker’s Los Angeles Sparks. This means it’s open season for male chauvinists to start belittling women’s basketball again! (Of interest: Marion Jones may well play in the WNBA this year, having made the Tulsa Shock’s final roster.)

Then there is college lacrosse, which finally gets a chance to be an on-the-field entity rather than the focus of a sociological donnybrook that followed a horrific crime. Duke, no stranger to the crossroads of unsavory and outrageous, opened the men’s NCAA Tournament by thumping Johns Hopkins.

And then, of course, there is horse racing, and the Preakness. There will probably be excitement at the shortest of the Triple Crown races, and it won’t all be because Calvin Borel is involved. Our Brad Telias is staking himself to Lookin At Lucky’s chances. Would you like a preview with a splash of The Wire? Oh, indeed.

I’m sure I missed some watermelon seed-spitting contest or a wife-carrying relay. But there’s too much going on (Nationals-Rockies! Feel the rush!) to focus on those sports.

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