Fishing Contest

The Baseball Today podcast had a lot of talk about the ongoing disgrace that is World Series Game Five. For those of you who are actual grownups, the Philadelphia Phillies lead the Tampa Bay Rays, 3 games to 1, in the 2008 World Series. In defiance of everything that is good and holy and commonsensical, the powers that be decided to try to play Game Five last night in what quickly became a driving, cold rain. Baseball games, you might think, are not played in the rain. Yeah. You might think that.

They played five innings, which is the limit for baseball games-according to the rules, if five innings are played, and the field is decided to be unplayable, the game is over. After five innings, Philadelphia led 2-1. So, game over, and the Phillies are world champions, right? You might think that.

But no. In the continued defiance of all that is good and decent, they began play in the sixth, during which Tampa scored a wet, sloppy, horribly fraudulent run. They then suspended the game, to be continued when conditions allow it. The weather in the Philadelphia area today, if this is even possible, is even worse than yesterday- thus, if there is a flicker of mental activity remaining in the powers that be, the game will be further delayed until Wednesday, during which it should still be cold, but at least it won’t rain.

It snowed here today, for frack’s sake. I took a picture of it, which I was going to post here, except for some reason, my phone won’t transmit the file-apparently it is too big. But it snowed here, briefly.

So, given a choice between a)calling the game after 5, which would have been unfair to the Rays, but at least legal according to the rules, b)never starting the game at all, which would have antagonized the networks and the teams, but sensible and fair to both teams, and c) calling the game after an inning or two, wiping it from the books, and starting fresh Wednesday, which would have also been sensible and fair, they chose d) suspend the game into a pseudolegal limbo, thus making 2008 infamous as the “Series with a 48 hour game”. According to Fox, they did introduce a new rule allowing for the suspension of postseason games in 2007, which is stupid and bogus, but I suppose fair.

It’s about damn time for baseball people to put the baseball ahead of all other considerations. You could have played Game Five at 1:00 in Philadelphia yesterday. Would that cause FOX to lose money? Sure-so MLB reimburses them. You cannot schedule postseason baseball for late October in the Northeast. It’s silly, it debases the baseball, which is your product, and its wrong. Period.

According to the Fantasy Focus podcast, Steven Jackson did not play on Sunday, which does not bode well for my fantasy team. I haven’t checked yet, but I have to assume I took a loss. My company, being retarded, doesn’t allow us to use the Internet, so I didn’t have a chance to check lineups Sunday, as fantasy players usually do. Like everything else that approaches having a personal life, my work interferes again.

The West Wing was on all day yesterday on Bravo, which broke my heart-I had to leave to go to work. They did something funny, though-after two episodes from the election storyline (Jimmy Smits/Alan Alda as the two candidates), they went back to several seasons before, when Rob Lowe was still on the show. It was okay, but it was mostly episodes I remembered. Then this morning, they went back to the Smits/Alda storyline, with Janeane Garofalo and Patricia Richardson as campaign aides, and Oliver Platt as White House counsel investigating the leak of classified information. Thanks to this program, I am not getting much done at home in the mornings.

It is interesting how many plotlines from the real world in 2008 make appearances in the show-the right wing base being uncertain about their support for a more centrist Republican nominee, the 527 groups throwing up ads that cause headaches, the question about whether to run negative ads or campaign honorably. All that’s missing is a good looking neophyte VP.

I am getting a lot of calls from headhunters, as well as from people trying to sell me a car. Makes it a little hard to imagine this talk of an economic slowdown, truth be told. I know that isn’t a true reflection of what’s going on, but it’s still interesting.

Interesting fact I learned on “Countdown” Monday-Elizabeth Hasselbeck was originally famous for appearing on Survivor. I only knew her for marrying a football player, and later, of course, appearing on The View. Everytime I say that, I picture the SNL satire where they sing, over the “View” graphic, “It’s the view…I’m all nude…”. I don’t remember what the sketch was about, though.

According to someone on Twitter, the Christian Science Monitor has stopped publishing a print edition. That’s a shame, because I know, though I don’t read it, it is quite a venerable publication. It seems like, according to everything I read, it is the first of many. I have to be honest, though-I don’t read the paper regularly, either. I will read it if it is available, but I don’t need it the way a previous generation did.

Rachel Maddow on the McCain campaign-“[they couldn’t win] a fishing contest where you’re the only one with a pole.”