The Home Run Derby

Last night, like many of you, I watched the home-run derby on ESPN. I didn't watch the entire show because it was too drawn out and the combination of Chris Berman and Joe Morgan was making my ears bleed.

I found myself wondering if I had ESPN Desportes could I tune in listen in Spanish but get English closed captioning? That would have been so much better than Berman and Morgan. Watching the Dominican players like Tejada, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz (or as Senator "Smoochie" Kerry likes to call him "Manny Ortiz") - they just seem to have so much more fun than the rest of the players. I couldn't help but wonder if the Spanish language broadcast was more fun too (although it wouldn't have far to go to pass Berman and Morgan).

Was I the only one who was completely distracted by Lance Berkman's eyes? I mean he's got Cover Girl eyes. Seriously - doesn't it look like he's got a ton of eye-liner on?

My mind works in strange ways and I found myself wondering if you took Berkman's eyes, Manny Ramirez's hair and Tommy Lasorda's breasts and combined the three - would the result be a prettier looking woman than Whoopi Goldberg? I think that may actually be too close to call.

As I mentioned before - the competition was way too drawn out. What I would suggest is getting rid of most of the video segments and definitely the segments where the viewers are forced to watch Berman and Morgan interview anyone. That should speed things up.

Now I understand that ESPN has a certain block of time to fill so I would suggest adding another layer of competition to the derby to fill up that time.

I would choose three pitchers from each league and let them compete so that each league would have one champion home-run hitting pitcher. These pitchers would then be allowed to compete in the regular home-run derby but they would be given the advantage of double the number of outs. So if the number of outs for Barry Bonds was 10 - then Tim Wakefield would get 20.

This could also be a revenue opportunity for ESPN and MLB. You could have a major corporation sponsor the pitchers for each league. For example Kodak could sponsor the American League (Kodak pictures - get it?) and Lipton could sponsor the National League (pitchers of ice tea - get it?). If a pitcher won the competition - then a lucky fan would win a $1 million paid for by the corporate sponsor (Kodak or Lipton).

Anyway - those were my thoughts on the home-run derby.