The email from my editor Jon came in at 9:53 p.m. Pacific Time. “I hope you weren’t playing detective tonight. Epic.”
Oh, crap. Game six. I completely forgot about it. I missed the whole thing. I’ve been going on and on encouraging people to watch these games and I missed the whole thing. I had no idea what had happened.
“Epic”? Really? No way. But Jon has never sent me an email after a game before. Usually when he sends me an email it’s about how I need to alter the wording of a very offensive statement in my column or he’s just letting me know that he’s deleted the statement altogether for legal and moral reasons.
I’ve been overloaded with my other projects — most significantly wrapping up the editing of a film I’ve been working on for over a year. How overloaded?
I had completely forgotten that the game was even on.
I was sitting 10 feet away from a perfectly good television. I didn’t have it recorded on my DVR. I didn’t have the score updates coming in on my phone. Nothing. And now I hate the editing process even more.
After I got Jon’s email, I went online to check out this “epic” game. Yep, there it was. Everywhere! Facebook, Twitter, Google News, ESPN, Yahoo!, CBS Sportsline, Sports Illustrated — I was quite possibly the last person with electricity to hear about the game.
I scoured through the game’s recap, play-by-play and box score. What I was reading barely made sense. And the more I read, the more frustrated I got. How could I have missed this game? I had listened to three different baseball podcasts yesterday in preparation for the game. This game was incredible. The Cardinals overcame two two-run deficits and hit a walk-off homerun in the 11th inning. This is movie stuff.
And looking closer at even more recaps, I found there was so much more than that. Pitchers pinch-hitting, unnecessary intentional walks, star players injured, extra-inning home runs, base-running brainfarts, three blown saves, costly errors, more, more, more … and David Freese!
Epic.
And after reading an article at www.youcantpredictbaseball.com, I realized I missed one of the all-time greatest World Series games. Maybe even one of the all-time greatest baseball games ever. I can’t believe I just typed that last sentence. [Editor’s note: Jed, I had to delete the last sentence. You didn’t expect that kind of language to get through, did you?][Note to editor: I thought it would make me feel better. Didn’t work.]
So, now I’m “that guy” — the one who’s a huge baseball fan and who will now have every one of his friends ask, “what did you think of the game” and say, “how amazing it was even though I don’t like baseball that much” and “it must be even more fantastic for you because of how much you love baseball” and “maybe you could write a column about how great the game was.”
And I will only be able to nod and force a smile and pretend like it is not killing me inside to have missed a game for the ages with so many available technologies.
We have game seven tonight. It’s the first game seven of the World Series in almost a decade. At first glance, it looks like it’s the Cardinals’ game to lose. It’s always hard to bet on Tony La Russa because he does tend to out-think himself. But this team seems somewhat blessed, and their run from almost a zero chance at making the playoffs to here has been a heck of a story.
At this point, I’m only slightly rooting for the Rangers because they haven’t ever won the World Series. But, I would be a lot more positive if Ron Washington was not going to be involved in any of the decision-making.
The way things tend to go, I figure this next one will be a blow out. However, I have no idea which way. It could be the Cardinals, but they’re using Chris Carpenter on short rest. That is not a good thing. He already tried that this off-season and got pounded.
It could be the Rangers, but their bullpen looks fried. That offense just keeps on hitting and scoring. And they’re going to need it with Matt Harrison pitching. However, it seems like, historically, that teams don’t bounce back from losses like last night.
But I will be watching. No, I am not editing. No, I am not writing. Yes, I have my DVR set to record. Yes, I have my phone set for updates. I will not miss this one.
