Thankfully we have many more great sports calendar days throughout the year than worst days, but good golly, these specific days put you through the wringer and are torturous to endure.  

To preface, these specific days are focused mainly during the summertime when there's not much on. I'll make it as painless as possible, but they must be identified, and the realities must be faced.

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5. NFL Hall of Fame Pre-Season Game Day

That first week in August is the first taste of football we get since the NFL draft, and we start getting excited and anticipate this game as if it's going to fill that void we've been missing for so long. You may even be thinking about it all day and planning your whole evening watching this game. But as soon as that first drive starts, you realize this will be some pretty trash football. This set in for me with last year's Steelers Cowboys game. I was excited to watch it but got upset with my wife for planning the evening to go bowling with her and her friends during the game. I had the game on my phone during the activity, but I realized very early on that I would have more fun bowling than watching this game. That football itch we've been suffering through feels like it's finally going to get scratched when this game starts, but honestly, it just makes that itch worse.

The only people that may get any satisfaction watching this game are people whose teams are playing in Canton, Ohio, and are getting a look at their upcoming rookies, but even they don't play much. You're mostly going to be watching players on the practice squad or in next year's USFL. What sucks as well is we only get one of these preseason games and have to wait another week before all the other teams play their first preseason games. On this day, it gets realized that there's still a long way to go before getting to any real competitive football.

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4. Pumpkin Patch Day

This only relates to men with girlfriends or wives who drag them out to go pick out a pumpkin. Now, if you've got a girl that is totally cool with picking out a pumpkin on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening, you won the lottery. But for most of us, every year, we are inevitably going to get dragged out usually on Friday-Sunday to put on some matching fall attire, to spend more money than we should on a plant we're likely to forget about until Halloween and spend what feels like endless hours taking Instagram photos of picking out "our" pumpkin. There's nothing more infuriating than finding out we have to change out of our jerseys, leave our comfy sofas and go out into the cold to find a piece of seasonal decoration. Maybe you can get away with having your phone on hand and catching the game while walking around, but that may not go over well with her.

I wish I could think of other hacks or methods like going out of your way to pick one up at a grocery store or stealing one of the office's pumpkins. But it's not about actually having the pumpkin; it's about the "experience" of picking one out. And while you're out doing that, your team is down 28-3 at the end of the 3rd quarter and comes back and wins it on a hail mary, and you missed it all while picking out a damn pumpkin.

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3. Opening Day of Little League World Series

          There's probably no more giant slap in the face than when these games start playing on ESPN. We've already gone through sports hell not having anything worth watching since the NBA and Stanley Cup Finals. We've had nothing but baseball dominating the past few months and are pretty sick of it at this point. Now in August, we start realizing football is just right around the corner, and we have to tough it out a little bit longer and get to September. Still, just before we get there, we get punished watching little kids playing baseball as if we haven't gotten enough baseball throughout the summer. And it's not even good baseball; it's little prepubescents hitting the ball talking about who their favorite marvel superhero is or what their favorite ice cream flavor is. I'm not blaming these kids at all; they're just playing a game they love and trying to win it all in their age group. I blame ESPN for making these games too accessible on my television than they should be. This is one of those "darkest before the dawn" days.  

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2. The Day After the College Basketball National Championship

          This isn't necessarily the worst sports day on the calendar because of what games are on or lack thereof; it's that feeling of knowing this is the beginning of the end of the sports year. Yeah, we have some NBA and NHL left, and their playoffs are coming up, plus we have The Masters shortly following. But if you're not a die-hard baseball fan, you know that the sun is beginning to set, and it's not coming back to rise until the beginning of September for college football and NFL. We were just given the greatest tournament in sports with March Madness. But with that gone, you realize there's very little left to get excited about, and soon after, you realize there's not going to be any good sports to watch for a while. Every two years, we are treated to either the World Cup or Euro Cup, which lightens those early summer days (except this year because FIFA is corrupt) with some quality soccer, but they only go as far as mid-July.  

          This day sucks so much because you know it's starting to loom over you that the best sports days are mostly behind you, and what's left is beginning to end, and will have to wait a good while before we see anything significant returning

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1. The Day Before and After MLB All-Star Game

It's mid-July, and there's not a single thing on these two specific days. Not one. The NBA Summer League has likely wrapped up, and if it's a World Cup or Euro Cup year, they've pretty much finished up as well. You're well into the summer with a good two months from football, and it feels like an eternity since the NBA Finals finished in mid-June. Even if you wanted to force yourself to watch an MLB game on these two days, tough luck. You have no choice but to go outside or pick up an extra shift at work. Good luck if you want to dabble into the MLS; not likely you'll get to catch a game on these days either; the MLS takes a weeklong break the same week as this event is going on. How convenient. These two days genuinely are the WOATs of sports calendar days not only because there's not a single sport on those specific days, but it's been a while since we've watched anything good, and we're still a long month and a half from anything worth getting excited for.

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