Sports this 'n' that

One more weekend of high school sports remains, as state titles will be decided June 9-10. For schools in New York's Section II, the road will only get tougher.

Only one team remains in women's lacrosse, and that would be Burnt Hills. There are just two teams left in baseball. Fort Ann in Class D, and Albany Academy in Class B. While Spectrum News had their cameras at Fort Ann's game on Saturday, they didn't have enough resources to also cover the Cadets, who seem to get the Rodney Dangerfield treatment no matter what. Coach Dave Rider's club travels to Binghamton on Friday to play Seton Catholic at the home of the Mets' AA franchise (they're not the Binghamton Mets anymore for some crazy marketing reason), with the title game set for Saturday.

Four teams remain from Section II in softball: Shaker (Class AA), Cohoes (B), Fort Ann (D), & Greenville (C). One thing bugs me, though. Why can't Section II host any state championship games? There have been early round state tournament games here, such as at Bruno Stadium last year, but why not the title games on a more regular basis? Just askin'.
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Speaking of the Mets, they could use a little pitching help, and it seems to be finally on its way, assuming Seth Lugo & Steven Matz are activated from the DL as planned this week. The Mets lost two of three to Pittsburgh over the weekend, getting blown out in the two losses. The bullpen, unsurprisingly, has been overworked already, just two months into the season. The restless fan base will never be satisfied, no matter if things turn around.

Meanwhile, one of the volunteers hired to dress as the team's mascot, Mr. Met, was cut late last week after the popular mascot appeared to "flip the bird" during a game vs. Milwaukee. The frustration is that bad.
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Belated condolences to ESPN gadfly Stephen A. Smith, whose mother passed away suddenly last week. While Smith left on bereavement leave, the mother of Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant stopped by the set of First Take to take issue with Smith's seeming feud with her son. That's a topic to be continued another day, but you knew sooner or later that Smith's Howard Cosell-wanna-be act was going to get him in trouble........
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While the above high school teams were in another part of the state on Saturday, the Albany area hosted the annual Freihofer's Run For Women and a Symetra golf tournament, sponsored by one of the local auto dealership chains. Whereas in the past both had gotten a fair amount of television coverage from one of the network affiliates, that wasn't the case this year. Can't see why, since the NBA & NHL finals are both airing in primetime.
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Add NHL. One article I read raised a fuss over the fact that NBC assigned two games in the series to cable cousin NBC Sports Network. All that says is that NBC doesn't have enough faith that the Stanley Cup final between Pittsburgh & Nashville will be enough of a draw to warrant all the games airing on NBC itself. Not to mention the sheer absurdity of the fact that Nashville is assigned to the Western Conference, but is in the Eastern time zone. Realignment, anyone?