Red Sox Skipper Alex Cora Calls Out ESPN, ‘Sunday Night Baseball’
1. Red Sox manager Alex Cora has won over a lot of baseball fans around the country.
Over the weekend, with the Yankees and Red Sox slated for an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game for the second week in a row, Cora went public with a gripe held by many MLB fans.
Via The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey, Cora said, “I think it’s too much sometimes. Back-to-back Sunday night games, with all due respect to ESPN, come on. There’s other teams out there and people want to watch them.”
While calling out ESPN for scheduling the Yankees and Red Sox on back-to-back Sunday nights will make Cora a hero to the millions of fans who despise those two teams, there is just one problem.
Yankees–Red Sox games are always the highest-rated games on ESPN's Sunday night schedule.
2. My SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast listeners will be happy to know that Sal Licata, who joins me for the weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment is getting a new shift at WFAN. According to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, after hosting the overnight show the past three years, Sal will be moving into the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. slot.
3. Joey Votto returned to the Reds in style last night after a 10-month absence. Not only did he help the team win its ninth game in a row, not only did he help the Reds move into first place in the NL Central, not only did he homer, but he also took a curtain call while dressed as a Viking.
4. Tight End University, started by George Kittle, Greg Olsen and Travis Kelce, opens up today, and this video explaining just what TEU is about is pretty cool.
5. In case you missed it Monday because of the holiday, we told you about the most intense competition at the College World Series: Jell-O shots consumed by each fan base. Here is the latest update.
6. This week's SI Media With Jimmy Traina features a conversation with ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt.
The popular SportsCenter anchor, who is also ESPN’s main golf host, shared his thoughts on the PGA-LIV merger and tried to give us as much insight as possible on what it all means, despite the lack of information out there.
Van Pelt also revealed that he doesn’t plan to host SportsCenter for too much longer. When asked whether he’d be host in three years, he said, “Nah.”
• Other topics covered with SVP include:
• Pat McAfee’s joining ESPN
• The night he lost his voice on live TV
• The beauty of his “Bad Beats” segment
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.
You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on YouTube.
7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Happy 74th birthday to Lionel Richie. I saw him in concert at MSG a few years ago, and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. This video is from that show (not taken by me), and the crowd was LIT.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
