MARLBORO, NY – Don’t focus on the past. “Think of what’s ahead of you,” is what motivational speakers would like to have us think in leading our lives. When it comes to sports, I’d really rather not think of what’s forthcoming because, quite frankly, it sucks for the most part. Maybe you feel differently but here’s a highlight of what’s approaching.
As a PUCK HEAD like myself, the Stanley Cup Playoffs starting on April 10th. 
But say you’re a New York Rangers or New Jersey Devils fan? Than you’re plain old screwed since neither qualified for the NHL’s second season. For me, so long as the Boston Bruins can get some key parts healthy in time for these playoffs I might be glued to my seat until June as they stand about the only chance of beating the Tampa Bay Lightning who have run away in the President’s Trophy race as the best regular season team. Angry Ward will be quick to tell you what it means to win the President’s Trophy, and it has nothing to do with DJT.
The rest is all crap if you ask me…
Kentucky Derby prep races will be run over the next month leading up to the first Saturday in May. The equine mystery that is Santa Anita and the escalating total of horse deaths will cast a shadow in evaluating past performances as the Santa Anita Derby is usually one of the major measuring sticks. I just can’t imagine owners and trainers of Triple Crown hopefuls putting their thoroughbreds in peril by entering the California track’s derby if they have one at all while this tragedy looms over the sport.
NCAA Tournament? So far it’s been as underwhelming, as Angry Ward pointed out earlier this week. It’s always fun rooting against Duke and that little Hitler lookalike Mike Krzyzewski as he coaches some of your more entitled student athletes but for the most part college basketball died the minute I had no expendable income to wager on these games. I’ll watch the Final Four but not too intently unless some Cinderella emerges which I just don’t forecast. Yawn.
The NBA Playoffs are a joke. Where else can it take two weeks to complete a seven game series than the scheduling geniuses of these playoffs? It’s done to accommodate television and just takes the drama and flow out of a given series. The Denver Nuggets who I once was a fan of are second fiddle to the Warriors in the Western Conference but I stopped watching basketball sometime during the Clinton Administration. I’ll pass, thank you. And for you Knicks fans, what will you be watching in lieu of NBA Playoffs for the umpteenth year in a row?
The NFL Draft was once a definite viewing option for me at one time as well. But what has the NFL done to make things less appealing? I can write a thesis on this subject. The powers that be have taken the draft out of NYC’s Radio City Music Hall and now rotate the event around different venues across NFL cities. That’s strike one. There was a time when the NFL held a twelve round draft in one day in somebody’s paneled basement and one telephone line. Now? 
Things take three days for seven rounds in what is the ultimate of all money grabs as the NFL ca$he$ in on what it clearly needs and that’s more moolah. Strike two. Lastly, everybody and their mother are now draft pundits with mock drafts numbering up to 9.0 and it has sucked the life out of the damn thing, Strike three, you’re out NFL.
Baseball. Hah! As a passive Mets fan. they’ll suck again. No doubt about it. Injuries will beset the Flushing Nine while the crosstown Yankees run away by default in the weak AL East. Wake me in September when the longest regular season winds down with the pennant races and the Mets have been dead and buried.
That’s it for now. Comment below and come back tomorrow for Replacement Matt, as Short Matt shuffles the lineup after Buddy Diaz called for Thursdays again.
