Saturday night was Perfect Storm of live sports events

If you had a big-screen TV with low miles, an understanding wife, a lawn that didn’t need mowing and kids who could ride their bikes to Little League practice or piano lessons — and $100 — these are the sporting events you could have watched live on television on Saturday:

The Kentucky Derby, Red Sox vs. Yankees, the last four rounds of the NFL Draft, one (fantastic) NBA playoff Game 7, one NHL playoff Game 2 and, oh, yeah, the Fight of the Century, Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. That last one is what you would have needed the C-note for.

People were calling it the Perfect Storm; people call a lot of things the Perfect Storm ever since that movie came out. But if you were tuned into all of these, then you can relate to George Clooney and the crew of the Andrea Gail.

You have been to the Flemish Cap of televised sports.

Hopefully, your ice machine didn’t break, and you noticed the storm clouds building about the time the ponies were called to the post at Churchill Downs.

There’s a lot of talk about people going off the grid for their TV viewing pleasure with the advent of streaming media and “House of Cards” on Netflix. But if satellite and cable TV are dying, live sporting days such as Saturday suggest it’s going to be a slow death that lingers.

Think George Burns and Methuselah and Julio Franco.

DirecTV even launched a campaign around the “Perfect Storm,” or “Sportsmaggedon,” or whatever you wanted to call Saturday’s TV sports extravaganza. DirecTV called it both.

I also received a personal video greeting from the Dos Equis guy, although the marketing types who work for the Mexican beer giant probably had more to do with it.

The Dos Equis guy said Dos de Mayo would be the biggest Saturday ever for watching sports and drinking beer, preferably Mexican beer that is served with two red equis.

“In Kentucky, I understand that many beautiful women will be donning their largest hats to watch very small men ride very big horses,” the Dos Equis guy said as only he can, “while in the City of Sin, two particularly fit gentlemen are crowning the day with a fight for a belt which, quite frankly, I find to be more ostentatious than practical.”

He also said that I was his amigo, and that I should stay thirsty.

According to Internet projections, the Kentucky Derby is expected to win Saturday’s viewing war by roughly the same margin Secretariat won the 1973 Belmont Stakes. More than 15 million pairs of eyes were expected to be focused on the big horse race, or mostly focused on it, depending on the number of mint juleps one had.

And that is the power of a big event such as the Derby, and the power of free network TV. Even Ironman and the other Avengers would be hard-pressed to thwart that combination.

The NFL Draft was expected to attract 5 million viewers for its final rounds and the naming of Mr. Irrelevant, followed by the NBA playoff game with 4 million, Mayweather-Pacquiao with 3 million, Yankees-Red Sox with 2.2 million and the NHL game, Capitals at Rangers, with about 450,000.

When I arrived at the South Point sports book just before noon, it was only about a third filled — nothing like the Super Bowl, or the first weekend of March Madness.

I thus was able to watch the final five minutes of the hockey game sitting down. New York won 3-2, and the volume was turned up, despite the many baseball games in progress.

Too bad the NHL Board of Governors wasn’t meeting at the South Point sports book on Saturday — it probably would have awarded us an expansion team on the spot.

Jimmy Vaccaro, the sports gaming legend, kept poking his head out of the back offices, and people kept coming up to chat sports with him. Vaccaro said he wasn’t going to the big fight because he went to the big weigh-in and almost got swept away in a tidal wave of Manny Pacquiao fans.

He said it was going to be a big day at the betting windows, the vacant seats and the lack of cigar smoke in the sports book notwithstanding.

Up in the Grand Ballroom, there were few empty seats for the South Point’s Kentucky Derby viewing party. There were a lot of women wearing big hats, just as the Dos Equis guy predicted.

A lot of the big hat women and other people clutching betting slips jumped up and down as American Pharoah and the other ponies came pounding down the stretch.

One guy didn’t.

David Montoya was getting a massage from Jennifer, the on-site masseuse. Her fingers apparently are magic, because Montoya never lifted his head from the massage cup during the entire 141st running of the Run for the Roses.

The most exciting two minutes in sports? Perhaps. Unless you were getting a neck and shoulder rub from Jennifer with the magic fingers.

The Derby viewing party seemed like great fun, except I then had to ask who Mr. Irrelevant was, because he was either selected during the horse race, or after they had switched off the NFL Draft for stock car racing.

Local leadfoot Brendan Gaughan was doing a live interview — somebody said there had been a big crash. The volume was turned down, though his old man, Michael, owns the joint.

I found out from a guy wearing a Louisville T-shirt and chomping on an unlit cigar that this year’s Mr. Irrelevant was Gerald Christian, a tight end from Louisville. The Cardinals, the Arizona ones, gave him jersey No. 256, because his name was the 256th called.

So it was around 4:30 when I stopped by my friendly neighborhood Twin Peaks, the one on Eastern. They were showing the big fight, and charging a reasonable $20. Around 75 people were standing in line. They looked a little restless.

Dark clouds were forming over Henderson and Boulder City.

It already had been a Perfect Storm for televised sports. But it appeared the really heavy stuff wouldn’t be coming down for a few more hours.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.