My roommate, Chris, and I were sitting in the WPRB studio Friday night, about to wax for an hour on the airwaves about all things Sport. Tops on the agenda were the Major League Baseball playoffs, except the series weren't looking too competitive as we turned on the microphones. The Yankees led the Red Sox two games to none in the ALCS, having bested Boston's top two pitchers, and the Cardinals had the same lead in the NLCS over the Astros.
That brings us to yesterday. Suddenly the Yankees had gone from up 3-0, marking their territory all over Fenway Park in the process, to hanging on to a 3-2 lead over a Red Sox team that has ensured that nothing will get done in Boston this entire week by winning, exhaustingly, after something like 438 innings and 29 hours of play in two days. St. Louis is heading back home down 3-2 after Houston's Brandon Backe reached into the Josh Beckett Well and threw one-hit shutout ball for eight innings in Game 5.
I don't even know where to begin.
In a little over a week I went from hating baseball (after the Twins bullpen turned into a Byung-Hyun Kim clone army and blew its chance against the Yankees) to remembering why the baseball postseason is still the most riveting. After watching Monday night's Red Sox-Yankees 14-inning odyssey, immediately followed by the Astros winning in the ninth to take the series lead, I am reduced to thoughts that can only be expressed in bullet form: - The second most awful thing about being a sports fan is drafting a touted prospect only to see him swerve into ditches all over the pro scene — like, oh, I don't know . . . Christian Laettner. The most awful thing is watching a guy who used to swerve into ditches for your team come back for another team and be an MVP candidate and twice a hero in extra-inning playoff games. That would be Boston's David Ortiz, formerly of the Minnesota Twins. - St. Louis' starting 6-9 hitters have one RBI in 57 at-bats in the NLCS. With the 2-5 hitters batting .347 in the series, you'd figure there'd be a few more RBIs from the scrubs in there. - Someone told me recently that he wants the Yankees to win because it confirms his belief in capitalism. . . . And I want Kerry to win because his hair is puffy. - The Cardinals' vaunted offense has been shut out twice in the postseason — once by the Dodgers' Jose Lima, who has thrown one other complete game shutout in his career, and once by Backe, who allowed more than one hit per inning this season. Hmm . . . and they have to face Roger Clemens and Roy Oswalt in the next two games? - Wisdom from Chris: If you were the Red Sox and you had to be down 3-2 in this series, is there any other way you would have the first five games go? All the momentum is on their side, and they have Curt Schilling's Bloody Ankle pitching in Game 6 — which will already have happened by the time you read this, either making this section incredibly prophetic or a waste of the last 20 seconds for both of us. - More wisdom from Chris: He was watching the game Monday in Frist with all the oh-so-enlightened fans when some people started grumbling about Boston catcher Jason Varitek and the Great Motor Skill Challenge that is trying to catch a Tim Wakefield knuckleball. "He's trying to lose the game," they said. "He wants to go home," they cried. Then Chris stepped in, foaming at the mouth over the ignorance. "Varitek isn't Wakefield's regular catcher. It's Doug Mirabelli. He has an oversized mitt." Silence in Frist. No one can own a room like Chris. - And, yes, when he recounted this story to me later I nodded along as if I knew that, too. - It appears that FOX is trying to piss us off this year with the coverage. Let me get this straight: There are a maximum of two (2) games a night and somehow we haven't gotten to the NLCS until the ninth inning twice already. Oh, how silly of me. I can turn to FX to watch the other game if I want on my imaginary TV that has such a channel.
And then there's "Scooter" — that lovable scamp. If you've missed him, he's a little floating, talking baseball that comes on at some random point in the game to describe, in a tone intended for children and Manny Ramirez, some ridiculously simple aspect of the game — like what a curveball is.
What's worse, though, is that he appears to have no sponsor, meaning this is all FOX's idea. I just want to be in the marketing meeting once where they have the conversation:
"So, what should we do this year?"
"How about prerecorded interviews with the players that we can play during down time?"
"You're fired."
"How about segments where the players describe in-depth how they do what they're best known for?"
"Get out of my office."
"How about a talking baseball that tells you how to run the bases and stuff?"
. . .
"Yes. This will unite the world in harmony."
If Scooter could explain to me how to write a good Shakespeare midterm paper, I'd be set.
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