My wife, the love of my life, the mother of my children, my reason for being and doing almost everything I am or will ever be, has one slight character flaw. She HATES sports on television on channels that aren't twenty-four hour a day sports channels.
I could watch penguin-punting on ESPNU all night long at Max Vol and she would care not a feather to a farthing, but when the pro football behemoths on Sunday evenings start to run long and delay The Amazing Race which, in turn, delays Whatever It's Called and she can't watch Cold Case when she expects to, I hear about it.
She has a point. The home improvement shows have their own network and so do the foodies and the fashionistas. We have about a bajillion sports channels in our basic package and yet all the special stuff on isn't on those outlets, specifically, the World Series. In recent years, her husband has watched teams play in the Series about whom he has little knowledge and even less interest, since his team, the Yankees, had absented themselves through an early playoff exit (let us never speak of last year, okay?). Is she impressed or inspired by my stoic sacrifice? HA!
What really gets her going isn't just that the World Series goobers up the television schedule for Fox (who goober up baseball like nobody's business. The same people who tried a blue disc highlighter on a hockey puck during their mercifully short attempt at broadcasting the NHL, do some fundamentally unnatural things to baseball coverage and one of the first and foremost is allow Tim McCarver to sit in the booth and have a microphone. But that's a rant for another time.), But what really gets her annoyed is how the other networks slide reruns up against the baseball games because they don't want to burn off fresh episodes of expensive programming for smaller audiences.
She doubts this is actually true and I agree with her (because I know which side my bread is buttered on). People who normally watch a Mets' game during the season tend to not watch QVC during a rain delay, so my wife's point really is 'the World Series goobers up all television for everyone'. Because she's relentlessly logical, and understands the concept of best of seven, after Game One she was rooting, quietly, for the Phillies because they had the shorter distance to capturing four games. Through Monday night however she was a Yankees' fan because they could've ended this thing in five. Thanks, A. J. Burnett. Now, she's nervous and more than that. She wouldn't know Andy Pettite from Petticoat Junction, but I expect she's rooting for him tonight. Not because she doesn't love the Phillies, though between us, I doubt that she does.
What she does love is watching Bones on Thursday night. And if Pettite and the Yankees can't Phinish the Phillies tonight, my secret about the "if necessary" game and its impact on Bones will not be a secret for much longer. Joe Girardi, I get into enough trouble in my house all by myself-I don't need your ball club's help. I'm praying Rabbi Charles' prediction has gone directly from his lips to Lord's ear. Otherwise, I won't not be sleeping on the couch until pitchers and catchers report for spring training.
-bill kenny
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