Cinco de Mayo

I have no idea why Cinco de Mayo is considered to be some form of holiday. Like most of the other similar, so-called “holidays” that it is comparable to, which would include St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, National Beer Guzzler’s Day, the fifth day of May has really just turned into another of the many excuses people have to give themselves permission to go out to eat, drink, party and otherwise just go out to celebrate that longtime American tradition of “Happy Hour.”

On this, the fifth day of May in the year 2016, we choose to look at this day as an excuse to look at the state of the sports world in the middle of springtime of a typical sports season.

Baseball

About 30 games into the season and we can see a couple of teams that were expected to do well (the Cubs, Nationals and Mets) and one team that wasn’t expected to do much of anything (the Chicago White Sox) are playing really well and are all about ten games over .500. The entire rest of baseball is pretty much hovering around .500 ball. That means that pretty much everyone that matters is still well within striking distance of either their division or at least one of the wild card berths.

What it really means is that it is too early to make ANY conclusions, as pretty much any team out there could win six to eight games in a row and suddenly be leading their division. No one has won anything and no one is out of it, as baseball is in that “early in the season” stage where they are playing their games, but no one is getting particularly excited about much of anything… YET.

Golf

The pro golf tour is in the midst of its major season now. They have completed The Masters so far, the Players Championship is next week, and the Tour is in North Carolina this week playing the Wells Fargo championship at Quail Hollow. This time of year, the players are mostly gearing their games up for either the Players or one of the remaining majors, although there are a lot of them who probably feel that deep down, they likely don’t have a chance of winning one.

That is, unless one of those big stars who usually DO win majors (such as Jordan Spieth in The Masters) melts down and folds down the stretch and the person who WAS in second place (England’s Danny Willett) somehow is able to win themselves a trophy for a major because they were in the right place (second) at the right time (when first place player blundered their way into defeat).

Hockey

We’re in the second round of the hockey playoffs. For the first time in five years, the Stanley Cup champions will NOT be either the L.A. Kings or the Chicago Blackhawks. Both of those teams were knocked out of the playoffs by their (prior to this year at least) former longtime rivals the San Jose Sharks and the St. Louis Blues.

For this entire decade, the Sharks and the Blues have been really good teams, but they have both been unable to get past either the Kings or the Hawks. This year, the former bridesmaids broke through and knocked off their tormentors and both look pretty strong going into the second round (both lead their series 2 to 1 at this time), with each having a very good chance at winning their first cup.

In the East, the news out of there is that the team with the best record in hockey this year (the Washington Capitals) is on the verge of getting knocked out of the playoffs (they are down 3 to 1 to Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins). The best record hardly EVER wins the Stanley Cup these days. It just doesn’t pay to play all out during the regular season.

Basketball

The NBA is actually kind of boring with its predictability these days. The Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James appear to be unstoppable on their way to the Eastern half of the finals. There just isn’t anyone capable of beating a LeBron team in the East (his teams have made the finals the previous five years in a row).

Not so in the West though. The two “other” super teams are there (the Golden State Warriors and the San Antonio Spurs) and are both headed to a likely winner takes all Western Conference finals to get their shot at LeBron in the finals. Anything is supposed to be able to happen, but I don’t see anybody keeping the Warriors and the Spurs from moving on to the finals. If those two teams play, that would be one series where we DON’T know who is going to win. That would be the best series of these entire playoffs, including the finals. Those guys are good!

The Kentucky Derby

The Kentucky Derby arrives again on this first Saturday in May (the 7th). Last year, it somehow seemed possible that there just MIGHT be a Triple Crown winner, and low and behold, it happened. Now, we have a new year in horse racing and no one but degenerate horse players really cares about ANY horse racing events, EXCEPT for the Kentucky Derby. So the Derby will happen this Saturday and the sport will be exciting for about two minutes.

Pro Football

The NFL just had its college draft and it seems as if every story about some rookie prospect doing something or other seems to get better ratings than any of the above sports. What does that say about sports in America today?

If anybody is celebrating Cinco de Mayo, have your beers, but let someone else drive you home.