The Classics

Last year I watched the Cubs beat the Braves in Game 5 of the NLDS at Bailey's Sports Bar & Grille. There was a Cubs fan sitting in the booth in front of me, and his friend was keeping a close eye on the Browns/Steelers game that was happening at the same time. The friend would say something like, "Look at that...wow!" and the Cubs fan said, "You know, man...I know you're into this Browns game right now...but right now...it's not happenin', bro."

That's how I feel about good playoff baseball. Nothing else matters, especially when the Red Sox once again pull out an extra-inning victory and force GAME 6, with Schilling going, and the realm of possibility opening wider for this dead and almost buried Sox team. David Ortiz is a game-winning machine. He has 7 RBI in the last 2 games. The home crowd goes wild.

Over in the NLCS, I had been flipping back and forth and witnessed one of the best catches I've ever seen in my lifetime--Carlos Beltran robbing Edgar Renteria--to the limits of full extension. Jeff Kent hits a ball that would still be going if the Astros didn't play in a dome off Jason Isringhausen to send the series back to St. Louis with the Astros up 3-2. Both pitching staffs held the best hitting teams in the NL to 0 runs for 8 1/2 innings until Kent's blast. The home crowd goes wild.

Meanwhile, I flip over to the St. Louis Rams and Tampa Bay Bucs...yaaaawwwwwwwwwnnnnn.

Is there anything that can be done about these weather updates? Local channels get into this frenzy of updating the weather with a huge block of middle Tennessee covering the bottom left-hand corner, a crawl at the bottom that shows all the counties that are in danger...of a thunderstorm! And a key that shows what all the colors mean filling up the bottom middle third of the screen. The David Ortiz single that won the Red Sox game barely poked over the color key and it was almost like radio trying to figure out what was going on. Do people watching playoff baseball really need to know, every second, about these tornado watches? Aren't people who are concerned about the weather turning to The Weather Channel, or if no cable, other local stations?