Historians love to play what-if. As in, what if the Confederacy had jet fighters? Or Germany had won World War II?
Here’s one: What if Babe Ruth had batted against Sandy Koufax?
ESPN Classic (Comcast digital cable channel 403) plays the game from 4 to 7 p.m. next Wednesday with a three-hour “All-Time Greatest World Series,” viewer-driven matchups with teams ranging from the 1905 New York Giants to the 1998 New York Yankees.
Viewers began winnowing the 32-team field on Wednesday with results revealed next Wednesday. Who will be number one?
Karl Ravech, Tommy Lasorda and Joe Morgan oversee this exercise in the silly. Baseball fans love to argue stats and “greatest,” but who’s around to speak up for the ’05 Giants?
Voters can sign on to ESPN
.com to take part in real-time voting.
Going for a ride
There’s no marquee American rider (remember Lance Armstrong?), but OLN gamely is plowing ahead with 300 hours of Tour de France coverage.
No matter that many satellite and cable viewers don’t get the outlet previously known as Outdoor Life Network. Coverage starts at 6:30 a.m. daily.
Visser makes the Hall
It took her 34 years, but sportscaster Lesley Visser is going to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
She’s the first woman to receive the Pete Rozelle Radio-
Television Award. She also was the first woman to work “Monday Night Football” and the first to do sideline reports at the Super Bowl.
Visser, who labors as a reporter for “The NFL Today” on CBS, is being installed for “longtime exceptional contributions to radio and television in professional football.” Ceremonies are Aug. 5 in Canton, Ohio.
Visser, married to sports announcer Dick Stockton, started her career in sports as a writer at the Boston Globe.
Around the dial
The FIFA World Cup, a monthlong festival of yellow cards and on-field theatrics, comes down to the final game (11:30 a.m. Sunday, KMGH-Channel 7). Soccer’s equivalent of Miss Congeniality is the third-place game, airing at 12:30 p.m. Saturday on ESPN … NBC and the Arena Football League have gone separate ways. The indoor league’s TV numbers declined annually for four years, to a 0.9 rating last season. AFL looking for another outlet, probably somewhere on cable … Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen uses native survival skills to escape certain death in “Arctic Passage – Ice Survivors” (8 tonight, KBDI-Channel 12) … “Quotable: “Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire’s eye or on the ball.” Jim Murray
Dick Kreck’s column appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He may be reached at 303-820-1456 or dkreck@denverpost.com.
