SI View The Week in TV Sports
Highlights
SATURDAY 7/8
MetroStars at Wizards
ESPN 1:30 PM There's no place like home. Kansas City, atop MLS
with an 11-2-4 record, is unbeaten at Arrowhead Stadium this
season where it has played 730 minutes without yielding a goal.
Credit goalkeeper Tony Meola, a saving grace between the posts.
Meola, 31, who missed most of last season with a torn ACL in his
right knee, turned in his MLS-record 12th shutout of the season
last week, adding to his other league records, such as Most
Consecutive Minutes Played (8,084), Longest Shutout Streak (414
minutes) and Most Saves in a Game (15).
SUNDAY 7/9
Wimbledon Men's Final
NBC 9 AM Since 1993, the men's field at the All England Club has
had about as much of a chance against Pete Sampras as Sting did
in his recent chess match with Garry Kasparov ("Sending out an
SOS..."). Should Sampras, winner of all but one final here since
1993, advance to today's championship and win, he would break
the men's record for Grand Slam victories, with 13, which he
currently shares with Roy Emerson. It will be a daunting
challenge for Sampras this fortnight (one of those terms, like
mum, that we save exclusively for Wimbledon), because acute
tendinitis in his left foot and shin has made him the king of
pain.
WEDNESDAY 7/12
SportsCentury: Moe Berg
ESPN CLASSIC 8 PM The scouting report on former major league
catcher Moe Berg: "He could speak a dozen languages and couldn't
hit in any of them." That may have been the only thing this
lifetime .243 hitter couldn't do. It is ironic that Berg spent
his athletic career donning the tools of ignorance because he was
smart, sophisticated and courageous. During World War II the OSS
sent him to a lecture by top German physicist Werner Heisenberg
and instructed him to assassinate the Nazi sympathizer if he
seemed to have the knowledge required to build an atomic bomb.
That was yet another hit Berg didn't make.
FRIDAY 7/14
Comets at Sparks
LIFETIME 9 PM It took scientists 10 years to map the human
genome. For three years Houston (15-2) has been similarly
confounding the rest of the WNBA gene pool, but that may be about
to, um, mutate. Los Angeles (13-2) has the league's best center
in Lisa Leslie and a breakthrough discovery in 5'11" Mwadi
Mabika, a 23-year-old Congo native who never attended college but
is second on the squad in scoring, rebounding and assists.
Don't Miss
TUESDAY 7/11
Major League Baseball All-Star Game
NBC 8 PM Are the Atlanta Braves, host of this midsummer night's
classic, a baseball team or transportation czars? They tell
their own announcers, "Get off our charter flight!" Then they
tell their crack reliever, "Don't ride the 7 train!" Ted's Team
has no say on how the All-Stars will get to Turner Field, but we
have a few ideas: Slugger Mark McGwire of St. Louis will take a
nonstop flight; probable starting pitcher Randy Johnson of
Arizona (above) will use speed; crafty Blue Jays lefty David
Wells will ride something that shifts gears constantly; and Red
Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, the American League's top
hitter (.389) on a club decimated by injuries, will jump from a
train wreck.
ALL TIMES EASTERN. SCHEDULES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.
COLOR PHOTO: JOHN BIEVER
the zapper
ESPN or ESPaNol? For Major League Baseball's Home Run Derby
event from Turner Field (Monday, 8 p.m.) and each Sunday night
telecast for the remainder of this season, ESPN will offer
Spanish-language broadcasts free on another channel to be
determined by your local cable operator. There will be on-site
Spanish-language broadcasters, and all the graphics will be en
espanol. No word yet on whether, as a NAFTA trade-off, Dan
Patrick will now have to say, "On fire!"... Get exhaust-ed: The
Winston Showdown (ESPN2, Sunday, 9:30 p.m.) from Bristol, Tenn.,
is the NHRA's all-star event and the only one in which top-fuel
dragsters compete directly against funny cars.
