Huge Day in sports



Sportscasters love to wax argumentative about what constitutes the best sports day of the year. Locally, it's an October Sunday when the Patriots play at 1 pm and the Red Sox play (and win!) a playoff game in the evening. Elsewhere, it falls in mid-spring, when baseball takes a backseat to either (or both) the NHL or NBA playoffs, with perhaps a NASCAR race thrown in for good measure. For others, nothing tops a day during the NCAA basketball tournament, preferably with his/her team playing in the spotlight game.

Sunday provided an contender for the crown with the primary subject sports being outside what one deems the major American sports. The day started with Stage XX of the Tour de France broadcast concurrently with the Wimbledon final between grasscourt king Roger Federer and his emerging rival Rafael Nadal

At most, the cycling event served as merely prelude (even for the French) to the globally important Italy-France World Cup soccer final. Keep an ear open for Oasis half-frontman Noel Gallagher's announcement taking partial credit for Italy's win… if you can understand a word he says. Blogger Wisdom Weasel opines about the final here.

And then, some guys drove cars around in a circle for a long time and the one nobody likes finished in first place


Federer wins

SI's Jon Wertheim provides his post-Wimbledon thoughts. Of note, is his heralding of the much awaited re-emergence of a rivalry in men's tennis:

Is this men's rivalry great or what? Playing on the surface well suited to his game, Rafael Nadal gets to the Wimbledon final and loses to Federer in four sets. In Paris, of course, it was the exact reverse. Nadal comes in second but answers any questions about his grass-court aptitude and gives lie to the notion that he is simply a claycourter. With any luck we'll see them again, the second Sunday in September, on a more neutral surface.

In a related vein, uber-columnist Frank Deford laments the collapse of American tennis.

Of yeah, the Red Sox suffered a really excruciating loss to the White Sox. The Herald's Steve Buckley discusses Jon Papelbon's inability to close things out on the eve of his appearance in Tuesday's All Star Game.

For what it's worth, I got my fill of it all watching the 9:30-10 pm edition of ESPN News. Short and sweet (actually, bitter, but who's counting …).