One tennis rally: 643 shots, 29 minutes long

Think of the unbreakable records in sports. Cy Young's career victories mark. The Celtics - the hated Celtics - winning eight straight titles. UCLA's 88-game winning streak (and 10 titles in 12 seasons). Wilt averaging 50 a game. Wilt averaging (insert own joke here) after the games. Gretzky's record for points. 

There's an overlooked one, which I never even knew about until today. Longest point in professional tennis history. You're thinking maybe 60 shots. One hundred, tops.

The answer: 643. The point lasted 29 minutes. And this was a real match, not some David Blaine-esque stunt. Twenty-five years ago today, Vicky Nelson and Jean Hepner engaged in the...epic, ridiculous, disgraceful point. The New York Times revisited the match in a cool little story today. The match, which only went two sets, took six hours and 31 minutes to complete. The tiebreaker in the second set took an hour and 47 minutes. These numbers are more unfathomable than Cy Young's 511 victories.

A documentary needs to be made about this match.

Here's the Times story. 

Anyone for tennis, or a non-cliche tennis headline?

On Tuesday I ventured to Queens for the second day of the U.S. Open. A friend graciously provided the ticket, saving $54. It seems steep, but the day session lasts from 11 a.m. until past six, so it's a reasonable price, considering ticket costs for two-hour basketball games, three-hour football games, and two-hour Broadway shows.

What's not reasonable are the concession stand prices. They make Manhattan rent prices look like a bargain. I bought a burger, fries and small Pepsi for $16.50. To be fair to the Open's price-gougers, they were waffle fries. This is the view from the top of Arthur Ashe Stadium. I didn't have my camera so this isn't my picture. Plus, my view wasn't this good.

Arthur Ashe stadium holds 22,000 people. People often criticize it for being much too large for tennis, and it's hard to disagree when you're sitting near the top of the facility, where it seems the overhead planes are closer than the players down below. There is a great view of Citi Field, the Mets's new stadium, and even from high up and far away, it's almost possible to see the failure on that field.

I caught the end of the decisive third set between the top seed in the women's draw, Dinara Safina, against a wild-card entrant who was expected to offer little resistance before politely waving to the crowd and exiting the tournament. Instead that player, Australian Olivia Rogowska, won the first set and led 3-0 in the third. Even from my high-altitude seats, the physical differences between the players was striking. Taking one look at them, it was obvious who the higher seed was. Safina - who's the top seed only because Venus and Serena Williams choose to play about four times a year - is powerfully built, in the Williams sisters mode. Rogowska, meanwhile, looked like Tracy Austin, circa 1979.

Although the seats weren't the best for seeing the match, I had no trouble hearing it. Safina's grunts reverberated all the way up to the should-be-but-aren't-cheap seats. If Ashe Stadium was big enough to hold 82,000 people, everyone could have still heard Safina's war cries, which simultaneously conveyed sounds of agony and ecstasy. Safina took control later in the set, sending Rogowska packing, but not before the plucky underdog fulfilled her duties and politely waved to the crowd.

The coolest thing about attending the early sessions is wandering around the outer courts. Ashe is home to the tournament's big dogs, but the outer courts have compelling action, and superior seating. I sat in the front row for a match between two players I'd never heard of (a Frenchman and an American; the match brought out the patriot in me. Alas, the Yank lost, shaming his country). But being courtside provides a unique and highly entertaining perspective. Television doesn't do tennis justice. The camera angles ensure that it's impossible to see just how powerful the players serve and strike their ground strokes. Men and women both. When seated in the middle of the court, and being just a few feet off of the playing surface, the power is breathtaking.

In the same way watching professional golfers in action gives you a better idea of how accurate they are with every shot, and in the same way sitting courtside for an NBA game shows you why they're the best athletes in the world, and in the same way being on the sidelines of an NFL game provides an argument that the evolution of the human body is out of control, being courtside at a professional tennis match brings about a new appreciation of the sport.

The grunting, however, is that much more annoying.

I caught parts of four or five other singles matches - nearly all of them involving players I couldn't name even with a program - and the conclusion of a doubles match. But the anonymity of the players is ultimately meaningless. While watching Federer, Nadal or the Williams sisters is the ultimate, there are always other compelling alternatives. The up-close action often trumps big names.

But sneak in a snack lunch.

Wait, what is this? A classic event?

ESPN Classic lived up to its name today. Instead of broadcasting 12 hours of car auctions (I've met one person who watches those, and it's my father), bull-riding and bowl games from 2008, the seemingly ironically named channel showed old matches from the U.S. Open. It culminated tonight with perhaps the most famous tennis match of the 1990s: Jimmy Connors's five-set victory over Aaron Krickstein on Labor Day in 1991.

The match was a classic, in every sense. It had the perfect venue - a raucous New York City crowd egging Connors on. It had the perfect combatants: the over-the-hill, grouchy Connors against the polite, younger, mulleted Krickstein, a perfect foil in the Connors Show. It went five sets, including a tiebreaker in the final set. Connors even had a classic meltdown, calling the chair umpire "an abortion" at one point in the fifth set, an insult that was more confusing than vulgar. A most memorable match.

Which leads, again, to the question: what in the hell was this match doing on ESPN Classic? ESPN Classic has to be the most disappointing channel on television. Imagine if the Lifetime Movie Network only played Stallone and Norris movies. That'd even make more sense than ESPN Classic's current setup. It's always underwhelming and has never fulfilled its vast potential. It's the Ryan Leaf of TV, minus the arrests.

The network could fill every hour of every day with great games from the past. The summer could be filled with classic baseball games from regular seasons of yesterday, or memorable final golf rounds (how about the final round of the 1986 Masters). The winter could be filled with great Super Bowls or classic NBA games. They could play old NFL Films highlights with narrations from John Facenda. They could replay old Roy Firestone interviews where he makes people cry. They could replay the old Home Run Derbies ("Wow, look at Harmon Killebrew. He really got a hold of that one, didn't he Willie?" "He sure did."). They could play old Wimbledons, old French Opens. They could replay classic boxing matches, whether it's Frazier vs. Ali or Hearns vs Hagler.

They could show anything. People would watch. They'd enjoy the games. As long as it was an event, and as long as it even came close to being an actual classic. Instead the channel is littered with AWA wrestling - "and in this corner, Baron Von Raschke!" - and poker. And more poker.

They'll show a mundane Friday Night Fights event from 1997 that wasn't even memorable to the participants, much less to sports fans in 2009. They'll show 10 straight hours of American Gladiators, and the only way you're enjoying 10 hours of American Gladiators is if your parents named you after a Greek god or you're related to Larry Csonka. It's almost as if the channel was created just to frustrate, not to entertain.

People used to criticize MTV for being a music television channel that never played music. But we've come to accept that videos don't play the role they used to in the music business. We accept that MTV now broadcasts reality TV and not much else. But ESPN Classic should be different. And if it's not, the network should at least take ownership of its programming and rename itself ESPN Poker or the Russo & Steele Car Auction Network.

Now I've gotta get back to my TV. Powerball is about to begin on Gladiators. Classic indeed.