rrgirl writes in Requiem for The Dan Patrick Show:
oh my – is everyone on the planet but me in melt-down mode? I suppose 17 innings of baseball will do that. is there anything statistically significant when a game becomes a double-header or comes close? all I’ve had to deal with today is a bridezilla episode over breakfast and the daily dementia minefield with Mom all afternoon. an icecube in the sportsbra has been a great comfort tonight.
I’m partial to odd numbers. symmetry works better visually with a focal point, though ten has precedent with digits, commandments, Dr. Laura books, Letterman lists…
Sorry about the Bridezilla Moment and the Mom Situation. Being childless (geez, that makes me sound positively barren, doesn’t it?), I can’t empathize with the former but I know where you’re coming from with the latter. Dealing with an ageing parent is probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to deal with. Readers in their 40’s and older will know what we’re talking about. Readers in the under-30 category probably don’t. But get yourselves ready. It’s going to happen to you. Be prepared. Don’t expect your siblings to take care of it. Start here.
The 17-inning game was, thank God, a win. It’s the listless 9-inning losses the Mets have been putting up this season that has me in meltdown mode. Ice cubes in the sports bra don’t help with those. I read in Newsday this morning that the Mets fired Rick Down, the batting coach. The offense was en fuego last season, but this season we’ve sputtered. Has it been Down’s fault? I don’t know. Maybe, partly. But as far as Carlos2 is concerned, when you’re getting paid $13.6 million and $14.5 million a year, I think you should be able to figure things out for yourself. Or at least display a little more creativity. (Delgado, it’s OK to hit to left. Really.)
Our pitching has, on the whole, been very good. Props to Coach Jacket. Still, dropping three to Colorado in Denver by a combined score of 34 to 12 is completely unacceptable. So the air is thinner there; other teams are able to pitch effectively at Coors Field. What if we had to play the Rockies in a division or championship series? Do we write off all the games played in Colorado? My suggestion is for the Wilpon family to build a high-altitude training facility for the Mets pitchers so they can learn to pitch in the thinner and (usually) less humid air of Denver. (If Gilbert Arenas can have a high-altitude house, then the Mets can have a high-altitude bullpen.) A related benefit is that the pitchers will also improve their red blood cell count.
The All-Star break has been a nice little rest period for me. I needed to decompress from the first half of the season and get rejuvenated for the second half. Although I did get kind of desperate for baseball last night and tried to get the Triple-A All-Star game on MLB.TV but gave up when the computer acted up (I think we need to defrag, plus the hard drive needs replacement). Mets Deprivation ends tonight with the Reds at Shea.
With the second half of the season on tap I’m ready for life to get back to normal. But then I remembered that the DP Show is going off the air next month. Reality rears its ugly head. I need to re-establish a new level of normal. My weekday afternoons turning into a DP-free zone will likely enhance my productivity, but all work and no play makes me a grumpy person. Plus it’s not like KO spends a lot of time on sports while on Countdown, and certainly not in a Big Show-type format. When — if ever? — will we get to hear KO talk baseball with DP and Peter Gammons again?
I heard somewhere a few days ago (on Mike and Mike or The Herd) that the price for All-Star Game tickets was thus:
- $60 – Futures Game
- $150 – Home Run Derby
- $300 – All-Star Game
Sold as a package, that’s $510 a pop. Of course, tickets were resold for a lot more. All hail the free market. My question is: What are normal people supposed to do?
It’s like in politics and especially the presidential race. Most of us can’t drop $2000 to support our candidate, and even if we could what does $2000 get you when some corporation or Hollywood star or influence peddler is raking in $100,000+? Heck, a lot of regular people would be hard-pressed to come up with even $100. All that most of us have to give is our vote. And even that doesn’t seem to count as much any more.
