Thursday, October 18, 2007
buzzing like mid-August
Last night, a lone cicada buzzing like mid-August. Summery weather here preventing the trees from turning, they're shutting down for the winter, but slowly.
Baseball is a sport I follow mostly on the radio. It suits summer nights, I can write & read with a game on in the background, there's a rhyhm, a good game clocks in at around 3 hours or less. I switch off between Mets & Yankees games, depending on what's happening. I really like the late games on west coast swings. Late season, I usually have lseveral ponies in the races. Besides New York, there's a number of other teams that can carry me through post-season. But baseball lost me this year. The Mets folded & the other teams were gone quickly in the first round. Rutgers' early promise, then all the Top Ten upsets piqued my curiosity about college football. I watched large portions of a few very exciting games. Every year, the same schools, USC, LSU, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, the annual Big Twelve flops. So what? Although the standings are packed with familiar colleges, the feeling this year is that nobody is secure. I even joined a Pick'em group. I didn't imagine I'd be sort of hoping South Florida would beat Rutgers. One can only hope the BCS is a total mess.
[Rutgers 30, #2 South Florida 27. Great defensive 2nd half. Another undefeated top ten team toppled.]
What they say about the larger baseball playoff "markets" is absolutely true. There's small incentive for viewer watching the playoffs & Series without choosing a team. If you find regular season baseball boring, try post-season. The games are longer, the pitchers slow down, batters step out of the box after every pitch. The quality of pitching goes up - that how teams get to post-season, so scores go down except the occasional blowout. We get network producers & "impartial" broadcasters freaking out at the idea of five seconds with no talk or special graphics. Stats become even more arcane & meaningless ("...batted .363 with a runner on second base in all road games in which his team was behind by at least one run when the 7th inning occurred later than 11:15 pm, so yeah, I say he''ll get a green light to swing on a 3 & 0 pitch.") One cannot listen to this dribble unless one cares a little bit which of the two teams wins.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Baseball is a sport I follow mostly on the radio. It suits summer nights, I can write & read with a game on in the background, there's a rhyhm, a good game clocks in at around 3 hours or less. I switch off between Mets & Yankees games, depending on what's happening. I really like the late games on west coast swings. Late season, I usually have lseveral ponies in the races. Besides New York, there's a number of other teams that can carry me through post-season. But baseball lost me this year. The Mets folded & the other teams were gone quickly in the first round. Rutgers' early promise, then all the Top Ten upsets piqued my curiosity about college football. I watched large portions of a few very exciting games. Every year, the same schools, USC, LSU, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, the annual Big Twelve flops. So what? Although the standings are packed with familiar colleges, the feeling this year is that nobody is secure. I even joined a Pick'em group. I didn't imagine I'd be sort of hoping South Florida would beat Rutgers. One can only hope the BCS is a total mess.
[Rutgers 30, #2 South Florida 27. Great defensive 2nd half. Another undefeated top ten team toppled.]
What they say about the larger baseball playoff "markets" is absolutely true. There's small incentive for viewer watching the playoffs & Series without choosing a team. If you find regular season baseball boring, try post-season. The games are longer, the pitchers slow down, batters step out of the box after every pitch. The quality of pitching goes up - that how teams get to post-season, so scores go down except the occasional blowout. We get network producers & "impartial" broadcasters freaking out at the idea of five seconds with no talk or special graphics. Stats become even more arcane & meaningless ("...batted .363 with a runner on second base in all road games in which his team was behind by at least one run when the 7th inning occurred later than 11:15 pm, so yeah, I say he''ll get a green light to swing on a 3 & 0 pitch.") One cannot listen to this dribble unless one cares a little bit which of the two teams wins.
