Seeing as how I did not get out of class and back to my room until 8:28 last night, here's a mailed in Game Report about watching baseball games without seeing them. Yes, it's Gameday...unmasked!
The first thing I check is the MLB.com scoreboard. In this case, I noticed one run for Boston and none for Toronto -- remember, this was around 8:30. I opened up Gameday, clicked Boxscore then Pitchers, and there was Lilly, with only one run and two hits through five innings. The lone run came on a homerun.
"Ortiz," I said to myself. Well, not to myself. Some guy walking by the open door overheard and looked quizzically at me speaking to the empty room, then put me out of his mind until 11:10, at which time he would throw a garbage can at my window. Or something like that. It was probably a different guy. The point is, Lilly wasn't stinking up the joint.
And sure enough, it was Ortiz in the fourth. As I watched Magpie crumble over the choice of pitchers in the sixth and seventh innings, I remarked to myself (this time silently) that I didn't really know what was going on. Gameday following leads to multi-tasking, which leads to a short attention span, which leads to kittens.
I haven't seen much of the Ted Lilly Face what with him on the DL and all, but I certainly saw it tonight. In the top of every inning. His mug shot at MLB.com is a perfect example of the face. The same face that was attached to the arm that threw the ball that landed in the little area where the cars turn around at the former SkyDome Hotel. Yeah. Why Lilly was left to face Manny, I don't know. I remarked at the time that he didn't really pitch all that bad, he was just required to throw 1.4 games instead of 1.
So Chulk came in, retired a fraction of a batter and left with approximately seven men on base. League got two outs on one pitch. Naturally, he was lifted for Schoeneweis after walking Millar. You see, you need the lefty setup man in there for Trot Nixon. Oh, and not just anybody can pitch to Gabe Kapler. That's Speier's job. The list of available pitchers on Gameday was getting shorter by the second: Batista, Frasor, Walker, Marcum, McGowan. Okay, not that short, not after September 1, but Gibbons was still cycling through his bullpen faster than Homer Simpson looking for a vending machine slot without an apple in it.
But it didn't really matter for the rest of the first nine innings; the damage was done against Chulk and I had to be content with the cruel mistress that is the MLB play-by-play service.
...Actually, I'll be honest with you. I didn't see much of the last part of the game on Gameday. Too busy informing others of the latest developments in the chat. The developments weren't occuring in the chat, but on the radio. After 11, instead of Blue Jays baseball on the FAN Radio Network, I was left with lacrosse updates and bad, bad, bad music from a time we shall not name.
A few selected excerpts from the songs that were nowhere near as good as listening to Jerry Howarth call the game:
"This ain't the way love's supposed to be. Let me hear you say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
"I was a workshop owner..." then something about diesel and weasel.
"If there's no good reception for me, then tune me out. We don't need no static with our love." (Magpie chimes in with "That's 'You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio.'" I don't ask why he knows these things, or why that was allowed to be the name of an actual song.)
"We should always stay in love, each and every day. I could never leave her for another girl."
You get the point. You see, aside from Wells' homer in whatever inning it was, it's very hard to follow anything on GameDay without being devoted to it. Much like baseball on TV, I find. I know I'm not the only one without cable, so let's hear from everyone out there who uses GameDay or the inferior CBS Sportsline tracker, Yahoo!'s whatevertheycallit or, God forbid, ESPN Gamecast. What do you get from it? Why, if at all, is it better than listening to the radio? What thoughts can you share with those of us who need to learn how to cope with a delayed Internet broadcast feed and a buggy game tracker that gets stuck on the plate appearance three batters previous while the official scorer determines some trivial matter? Your thoughts are appreciated.
For now, I'll finish with these...uh...lyrics, I believe they are known in a nominal sense. And please keep in mind that this song was presumably popular at one time. The chorus: "A mountain of love, you should be ashamed. We used to be a mountain of love, but you just changed your name."
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050913012605512
