This time of year is supposed to be everyone’s downtime. Nothing is supposed to be going on because after Tuesday’s MLB All-Star game, Wednesday is officially the deadest day of the year sports-wise.

Yet there are a bunch of huge things going on concurrently that are all competing for stories of the year – and dammit, it’s cutting into our downtime.

Thankfully the merciful end to the World Cup should still be a big deal, but it’s not. Already an afterthought, the brutal final killed any lingering buzz the “World’s Biggest Sporting Event” could have managed.

The irony of that moniker was on full display Sunday as there was nothing “sporting” about it. Screw the “Beautiful Game” BS that we’ve forced to endure for so long. Forevermore it will be known as the “’What’d I do?’ Game.”

Holland vs. Spain was a 120-minute snooze fest highlighted only by an out-of-control Dutch side and an overwhelmed referee. Hackery and acting were the only talents on display until the extra time goal, with the Orange side taking it to reportedly (I fell asleep for most of the game) unprecedented levels. Guys dropping like they were bazookaed only to jump up after the ref ignored them, kicks to Spanish faces and the chests followed by hands up in the air with a “who me?” expression – like HiDef digital recording documenting the gory details had yet to be invented.

As I’ve said before, four years until the next one is far too soon.

Then there’s baseball and the All-Star game. Monday’s Back-Back-Back-a-thon is now thankfully over. (If I was God for a day, the first thing I’d do after stopping war, world hunger, curing AIDS, malaria and give my iPhone better reception, it would be to have Chris Berman hit by a line drive in the throat irreparably damaging his voice box – and have the ball ricochet off him and hit Glenn Beck in the nads).

Yet the story about the actual game itself has been overshadowed after every Latino player came out officially boycotting next years game in Arizona.

That should be THE STORY, except everyone woke up on Tuesday to the news that George Steinbrenner had died of a massive heart attack.

Favorite Steinbrenner quote of all time: “We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned,” he said when the sale of the team was announced. “We’re not going to pretend we’re something we aren’t. I’ll stick to building ships.”

He did – for about 20 minutes. Over the past 50 years, no one has changed the game more than George Steinbrenner. He bought the team for $10-million in 1973 and today it’s worth almost $2-billion, a healthy inflation in value manufactured principally by his own changing the way players are valued. Or are over-valued.  He won 11 pennants and 7 World Series, returning the Yankees to their perch as the elite team in baseball, but his aggressive approach to free agency and complete disregard to fiscal sanity almost bankrupted the game and turned baseball into a two-tier system of the haves and the have nots.

Now the All-Star game will be a living memorial to the man who single-handedly almost ruined the game making the “Summer Classic” must not watch TV for everyone who is not a Yankee fan.

But wait, there’s more. Tiger Woods is in England facing the rabid British tabloid media and they are taking no prisoners. Not enabling like their buddy-buddy American counterpart, the press conferences at the British Open have been nothing short of juicy – an unprecedented event in the 350 years or so golf has been played at St. Andrews for sure.

Add on that he’s winless in 2010, hasn’t won a Major in over two years and was spotted with a new putter in his bag, the first ever for the 93-time tournament winner, this could be the most important of his career. Oh – and not to pile on the pressure, his wife is reportedly getting $750-million in the divorce.

But all that pales in comparison to “The Decision”, the televised PR disaster that was LeBron James’ announcement that he was dumping Cleveland for Miami Beach – something usually demarking sanity with most people.

But the way he did it, with a self-aggrandizing ESPN special and the constant referring to himself in the third-person was nothing short of vomit making. He even opened up a Twitter account calling himself “@KingJames” raising the douche-oh-meter to 11.

The NBA’s off-season has been much more interesting than the regular thing, and now the most highly anticipated opening game perhaps in league history is months and months away.

Oh ya, and NFL training camps opened.

So many stories. So much to talk about when we should all be kicking back in a lounger revelling in the hot, hot heat.

Only one thing about all of this is over and done with, however.

Wherever Billy Martin is right now – he just got fired.

Cheers – Gavin McDougald – AKA Couch