I know that as the years go by, we mis-remember the past.

I remember that Back In The Good Old Days (when baseball players didn’t care about the money) that the postseason took much less time. I also remember watching it – which means that the games started a LOT earlier and ended a lot more quickly, too. I know that the 1986 NLCS Game 6 ended somewheres right around after dinner.

And last night, the game started at 10 after 9. I detest Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, so I mute the game after Husband makes protesting kidz go to bed. Next thing I know, I wake up when Husband is carrying me to bed – it’s 2:30 AM and I’ve fallen asleep somehow, the inning after Utley, then Howard hit back to back homers.

Time between innings is so long somehow I just fell asleep on the couch – and in spite of so few baserunners, it took more than an hour to finish the rest of the game. Four and one half hours to finish a 9 inning game?

How many writers have pointed out/complained that ML policies are determined by Fox – (baseball must not interfere with “House” on Tuesday night – speaking of who – if you never had the misfortune to end up with a misanthropic piece of sniveling viciousness like him for a physician, count your blessings) and ESPN – Heaven forbid we be forced to show baseball games between teams if Mets/Yankees/RedSox/Cubs are not in them…

Fortunately for me, I still have out old school recorder from way back when you can fast forward over commercials. And I can re-watch games with the kids the next day at a more reasonable hour. But, you know, it is still not the same. And since the networks want to schedule baseball at times when it least interferes with (God Forbid) football and endless re-runs of Friends/Seinfeld/sitcom whatevah…

I did miss the real time ending of the ball game last night. But of course I checked it out and I see that Balfour was instructed to IBB both batters before he gave up the game losing dribbler down the 3B line.

I don’t like IBBs, especially 2 of em in a row by the same pitcher who is going to pitch to the hitter. I wish I was computer statty enough to check it out, but seems to me that that particular strategy fails more than works.

I don’t blame Longoria for trying to make the play instead of waiting to see if the ball would roll foul. If it had stayed fair, he would have been crucified. As it is, he’s gonna hear more than enough about how, being a rookie, he lacks the Veteran Presence to hit the baseball.

There’s only 2 story lines, you see:

1 – IF a young guy/team loses – it’s “they don’t know how to win” – like none of them ever played on a championship team in his life

2 – IF a young guy/team wins – it’s – they didn’t know enough to be scared (see 03 Marlins) and also, they were led by some Veteran Presence (like Mr. Marlin Jeff Conine) regardless of whether or not he did anything whatsoever on the actual field.

I tell you this – if the Rays win the Series, I’m gonna re-invent storyline #2.

Tags: Philadelphia Phillies, Tampa Bay Rays, World Series

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2008 at 10:47 pm and is filed under 2008 World Series, MLB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.