More NBC Outrage, Media Softball, Cole Hamels Does Good, and Not Much More

Cole Hamels loves big checks, pic via HughE Dillon

A brief roundup for your reading pleasure:

– Can someone please explain to me why NBC made the curious decision to cut its Olympics coverage an hour short last night to run the full, commercial-free pilot of Go On, the horrible new sitcom starring Matthew Perry as a sports talk radio host whose wife died in a car accident?

Yeah, I get it– ratings, tell people about new shows, residual income from coverage of the 30th Olympiad on the networks NBC. How else would we know that Steve Harvey will be hosting his own talk show that won't be watched? That’s all well and good. But, with three days of games left, it’s a ballsy move to show people, like me, expecting see Diving or High Jump or slow-mo breakdowns of the muscle formations in Kerri Walsh’s nether regions what basically amounts to a Friends spinoff masquerading as an Aaron Sorkin-esque screwball comedy that will be cancelled before Ms. CB and I commence our neighborhood Christmas lights fantasy league (more on that later). It’s shameless, what NBC is doing. There are hours and hours of unaired-at-a-reasonable-time events that are well worth showing to a viewing audience that can’t watch the Olympics during the day. Instead, they give us a Matthew Perry comedy. WHY AM I YELLING THE ONLY ONE OUTRAGED AT THIS?!

– Before last night’s Phillies game, I played in the PAL Media Celebrity Softball game at CBP. In what was a brisk five innings, my team, Radio-Web, tied TV-Print, 1-1. As defending media hitting contest champion, the pressure coming into the game was a lot to handle. Like Gabby Douglas post All-Around win, there was nothing I could do to live up to the hype. The awe-inspiring display of 290-foot fly balls (…) I put on back in April had set the bar high. I walked onto the field (late, thanks to 476 and 95) to hear our lineup being read– I was batting cleanup, behind Ike Reese. That seemed a little backward, as Reese is a former NFLer and about 6’4, 240. Me? 6’0, 160. Wet. 

I went 1-for-2 on two ground balls that traveled a combined 90 feet (somewhere, Hunter Pence approves of my methods). I caught, too, much to the delight of Delco Times Phillies beat writer Ryan Lawrence, who, for a second, I think seriously considered plowing me over on a near play at the plate. He didn’t, thankfully… for him, because I was prepared to throw my pointy ‘bows. And Dan Baker announced my name with perfect inflections, so that's all that really matters.

Ben Sheets watched from the Braves' dugout. He kept asking who our power hitter was, so I pointed at Reese. After that, Sheets served a de facto coach, though I think he was more interested in flirting with the women playing in the game, which included Broadway star Andrea McArdle, who originated the role of Annie. Sheets was more impressed with her short yellow shorts than Reese’s swing.

Anyway, the whole thing was part of PAL Night at the Phillies. Nearly 200 PAL kids were able to attend the Phillies game that followed. Good stuff, as usual, from PAL.

– Yesterday, Cole and Heidi Hamels worked on a playground at Bayard Taylor Elementary in Hunting Park. A few months ago, their foundation donated $300,000 to the school for outdoor renovations. Our friend HughE Dillon has many pics, but here’s a video of Cole totally not letting a kid win in Checkers:

– Bookstores in Penn State are selling shirts that depict the NCAA as Communists. Because, as Ty Duff from The Big Lead sarcastically noted, the Nittany Lion football players and fans are the real victims here.

Finally, congrats to current event and Olympics quizzo winners at Drinker's, Abby Wambach Gives Great Headers: