Scalzo: Cable finally hits home

A few weeks ago, just after I got cable for the first time in 13 years, I was out eating lunch with my wife when I noticed that ESPN was broadcasting an arm-wrestling match. I haven’t done much arm-wrestling since seventh grade, when I lost a match to Jodi Aldstadt because I forgot to wear deodorant that day and didn’t want to spend the next six years with the nickname “B.O. Joe.” I feel comfortable recounting this story because I no longer forget to wear deodorant and because I’ve since won multiple Ultimate Fighting Championship titles.

Anyway, the arm-wrestling match was an incredibly stupid, staged competition featuring tattooed rednecks on steroids. I can’t believe the guy I was rooting for lost.

This is cable’s inherent weakness. You end up putting off reading James Joyce’s “Ulysses” because “Along Came Polly.” Like cheese curls and Browns football, it’s simultaneously terrible and addicting.

The last time I had cable was in the winter of 2001 when I was an intern at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, living in a studio apartment the size of Cleveland’s trophy case. The cable subscription was apparently left over from the previous tenant, but when I called to cancel, the customer service representative told me that I was wrong in a tone that suggested her job would be much easier if she didn’t have to deal with pinhead customers who waste her time with fraudulent claims of free cable.

I hung up. The next day I started getting free newspapers, too.

Since my next apartment didn’t have free cable — and because by then I had become a full-time, permanent journalist with a four-figure salary and waterproof blazer — I decided to spend my extra cash on student loans. Also, food. But now that my salary is comfortably in the five figures, and because newspaper reporters are so optimistic about the future, I figured it was time to splurge.

My biggest problem with cable is this: If you walk into a McDonald’s and order a double cheeseburger, you’re not also required to buy an apple pie, a milkshake and 50 other items. But if I want ESPN, I’m stuck buying Lifetime, the television equivalent of the Filet-O-Fish sandwich.

Enter Sling TV. For $20 per month, I get 20 channels, including ESPN and TNT. (And, alas, Lifetime.) The good news is, I can watch Cavs playoff games for (hopefully) three months, then cancel. The bad news is, I risk increased exposure to things like original Lifetime movies (“My Husband Can’t Fold Towels”), NASCAR highlights or Skip Bayless, a once-respected newspaper columnist who became a cable-TV cartoon character, quadrupling his salary in the process. I can’t believe he sold out for $500,000 a year. I’d do it for half that.

Obviously, my main reason for getting Sling is because I want to see Cleveland break its title drought, which is like rooting for Napoleon when he invades Russia. You somehow convince yourself that he can succeed where all others have failed.

But even in sports Siberia, I’ll be there, in front of my TV, sweating out a deep playoff run. I’ll be sure to wear deodorant.

Joe Scalzo is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write to him at scalzo@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter @JoeScalzo1.