Keith Olbermann - Almost Forgiven

About 20 years ago I was active in mountain bike racing. I was real excited when ESPN started showing up at the major races. The problem was that mountain biking was a bottom tier sport, so the ESPN coverage ran 6 months after the races took place and typically ran between 1-3 am on weeknights. So I programmed my VCR to record them. But if a live baseball game earlier in the evening ran long, that pushed the night's schedule back, and instead of mountain biking I'd have Baseball Tonight, during which Keith Olbermann had to show us one play from every damn ball game in the country. Big plays in baseball may be exciting in the context of the game. But out of context, they ALL look the same: a guy hits a ball and runners come into the home plate. Just what I want to see instead of mountain biking. So I learned I needed to pad the mountain bike recordings by an hour to make sure I got the whole show, which is a PITA when you're trying to make a VHS tape with a whole season of races.

Today I'm a fan of Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, but I haven't quite forgiven him for screwing up my mountain bike race tapes.