Stay classy, KSDK! St. Louis station squeezes, silences "greatest tennis match of all time" for Cardinals game

OK, so it would've been nice if that new retractable roof had been available to the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club this year. Still, at some point during the hour-and-a-half rain delay during the men's singles final at Wimbledon, don't you think the people running KSDK — the Cardinals flagship station in St. Louis that was at that moment carrying NBC's tennis coverage — would've come up with a better Plan B than carrying both the ballgame and the tennis match on split screen?

And airing the audio of ... the ballgame?

With Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer deep into their instant-classic tennis match, KSDK came up with possibly the worst solution imaginable to handling its Wimbledon-baseball problem. The station — which outbid KLPR-11 in the off-season two years ago for the rights to the Redbirds' Sunday games — may have had someone on duty who didn't quite grasp the enormity of what was happening on center court. Perhaps he, or she, couldn't imagine Nadal and Federer would grind it out for another hour. Perhaps they figured, worst case scenario, there would a third straight tiebreaker to decide the match, not realizing there is no tiebreaker in the fifth set at Wimbledon.

As it was, 16 games were required to decide the match, with Nadal finally besting Federer in a thriller that John McEnroe, and seemingly every anchor on ESPN (including the ones who do baseball) called "one of the greatest I've ever seen."

And seeing was all they got to do in St. Louis — because KSDK went with the Cardinals' audio on the split, relegating Nadal-Federer to the white Bronco chase in the equation.

So slovenly was KSDK that whoever was at the switch didn't even bother to go full-screen on Wimbledon (according to this viewer) when the ballgame was in commercial. Needless to say, even when the Cardinals were trailing and the Wimbledon final was entering its nail-biting home stretch, KSDK left things just as they were.

If it's any consolation, ESPN Classic will reair the Federer-Nadal final Monday at 6 p.m. St. Louis time. The Cardinals have Monday off.