W ednesday wasn&#8217;t a good day for fans of live sporting events on television.</p><p>Major-league baseball was finishing its All-Star break, and the NFL, NBA and NHL all are in their offseason, leaving the day after baseball&#8217;s All-Star Game as possibly the slowest day in American sports.</p><p>After all, 24-hour sports networks can&#8217;t just run static when there are no live events to show. To fill time on slow days like Wednesday, cable channels have turned to replaying classic games and events.</p><p>&#8220;There&#8217;s some nostalgia (with replaying famous events,)&#8221; said David Berson, ESPN&#8217;s vice president of program planning and development. &#8220;People either saw the game and want to relive it again, or they didn&#8217;t get to see it, heard the buzz and want to see it.&#8221;</p><p>Replayed sporting events aren&#8217;t just limited to obscure or old events like the 1957 world middleweight title fight between Gene Fullmer and Sugar Ray Robinson, which was on ESPN Classic at noon Wednesday.</p><p>Events as recent as the 2008 home-run derby from Monday night are being replayed, allowing viewers who may have missed Josh Hamilton&#8217;s home-run-hitting spectacle a chance to see it.</p><p>&#8220;After all the buzz people have heard about it, they want to see it again,&#8221; Berson said of replaying the derby.</p><p>Another example of an &#8220;instant classic&#8221; was this year&#8217;s Wimbledon final where Rafael Nadal dethroned Roger Federer. Tennis fans tuned in to watch the final when it was shown live. However, as the match grew into nearly legendary status, Berson said it was rebroadcast on ESPN Classic for the more casual sports fan.</p><p>Showing events a second time isn&#8217;t just limited to ESPN. On Wednesday there were replays of everything from the World Cup of Pool on Fox Sports Midwest to a replay of Padraig Harrington&#8217;s British Open performance from 2007 on The Golf Channel.</p><p>Replayed sporting events seem to have found their biggest home on niche channels like The Golf Channel and the NFL Network along with the obvious, ESPN Classic.</p><p>These types of channels, as their names suggest, seem to force the issue on what types of events can be replayed. That often leads to some of the more odd rebroadcasts, such as Wednesday&#8217;s showing of the 1998 NFL Quarterback Challenge or today&#8217;s scheduled showing on The Golf Channel of Retief Goosen&#8217;s playoff victory over Mark Brooks in the 2001 U.S. Open.</p><p>For followers of rebroadcast sports, the love is for the older sports.</p><p>&#8220;I like seeing how much things have changed just in the last 20 years,&#8221; said Roger Siegel, Excelsior Springs&#8217; assistant activities director. &#8220;You can watch football games and see how little the linemen were then and how big they are now.&#8221;</p><p>Siegel represents many fans who enjoy the opportunity to look back at games and remember when they saw the game live. Games like the 1982 Stanford and California football game, where the band went on the field before the game ended, are sure to get him to slow down, watch and remember.</p><p>&#8220;I watch a lot of them for the memories,&#8221; Siegel said. &#8220;I know exactly where I was when Doug Flutie threw that pass for Boston College. It&#8217;s just memories from the past.&#8221;</p><p>Replayed events aren&#8217;t just limited to national events.</p><p>Locally, Metro Sports replays events as part of its &#8220;Metro Retro&#8221; program. Each Monday it shows a different high school event, such as this Monday when it rebroadcast a football game between Rockhurst and Blue Springs from 1999.