Disaster

Well, here I am patiently awaiting another Red Sox debacle. Actually, I don't really think that's true, but how often do you get to impress non-existent blog readers with a fancy word like "debacle"? Last night's game wasn't a fiasco, Red Sox style. Really, it was just a baseball game. There were no horrifying bloopers or evil portents of doom to come. Mike Mussina pitched a hell of a game, the Sox didn't make any embarrassing or fluky errors (well, maybe Manny's miss that allowed three runs in, but we expect that from him), and they stayed in the game even after being down a hellish 8-0. Jeff and I thought Bill Mueller was about to tie the game in the ninth, but his failure to do so wasn't because he made a miserable or preventable error. My point is, the Yankees won, clean and simple. Tonight, the Red Sox probably will. I'm not sweating. Not a bit.

In other news, the presidential campaigners are "debating" tonight. Since King Kaufman didn't print my e-mail about the playoff/scheduling conflict, I will re-create it here for you, both of my faithful blog readers. Even though one of you has already seen it. Enjoy.


Dear Mr. Kaufman,

Your boss asked the question, "Don't you think it's lame that baseball couldn't schedule the playoff games around the presidential debates?" The more appropriate question should be, "Isn't it lame that the campaigns couldn't schedule presidential debates around baseball playoff games?" The campaigns chose a Friday night during playoff season for the least structured of the three debates and the only one that comes close to living up to the name. Clearly they were not concerned about people having to choose between this debate and entertainment. If they were, they would have chosen to air all the debates in the middle of the week when people are home to watch. Every network knows that weekend nights are the kiss of death for programming because nine-to-fivers have other plans on weekends, such as leaving the house. If both campaigns truly wanted everyone to see the debates they would have scheduled them for weeknights. And allowed them the opporunity to actually be interesting and informative.

The fact that the campaigns scheduled the town hall debate on a Friday night when playoff games had long been scheduled suggests that they cared little about this kind of conflict, or worse, wished for it. And if the latter is true, they would have found some other difficult time to schedule them. Also, tightly scheduled baseball games in the postseason cannot just be moved around. The timing of games affects crucial factors such as how much rest pitchers get. If Johan Santana had had another day of rest, the Twins might very well have won game 4 and we might be looking at a very different ALCS.

However, in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I'm a Red Sox fan.

Sincerely,

Lisa Dare