So I bet you’re thinking, “Man, he’s got a new baby laying on his chest every night. He’s probably been watching a boatload of football and baseball.”
Wrong.
Unlike four years ago, when then three-month-old M. slept on me for hours at a time while I watched the Red Sox- Yankees and Cardinals – Astros do battle in their epic LCS, L. is a little too little to be able to hang on dad that long. Plus, with the whole waking every three hours thing at night, I’ve had to reign back my traditional night owl ways. Some nights, I’ve been going to bed around 10:30. Thus, I’ve hardly watched any baseball since the first week of the playoffs. I flipped by ALCS game five as I was on my way to bed last week and saw Papelbon was in in the 7th (I checked the game during Must See TV, saw the Rays were way up, and gave up). I thought that was weird but didn’t bother to stick around and see if he escaped without giving up any more runs. Of course, the next morning I wake up and see that I missed another epic game. Oh well.
I’ve watched a few minutes of the first two games of the World Series but have had trouble getting into it. Part of it is the teams involved. First, I have a thing with Philly teams. It all goes back to 1980. The 76ers lost to Magic and the Lakers in the NBA Finals. The Phillies broke my heart and beat the Royals in the World Series. And the Eagles beat the Cowboys in the NFC title game in January 1981. I’ve had little use for teams from Philly since then, unless they were playing a team I hated more.
As for the Rays, I should really be into them, right? Great story, proof that spending and drafting wisely can turn an organization around, and something that breaks up the Red Sox – Yankees – Cubs trio that ESPN forced down our throats all summer. Yet, I’m having a hard time getting into the Rays. It’s not because of this year’s team. It’s because they’ve been a horrible franchise with no fan support playing in the worst stadium in professional sports for a decade. As the Royals have withered on the vine over the same period, the Rays were the firewall anytime the word contraction got thrown around. At least Kansas City had a baseball history and a reputation as a good baseball town back in the day. If push came to shove, Tampa was one of two or three franchises that might get the ax before the Royals. So I’ve rooted for the Rays to be awful. While the idea of contraction seems to have been shelved for the time being, it is a scary thought if they can continue to be good.
As for football, between working the past two Saturday nights and not being able to sit in front of the TV for six hours anymore, I haven’t watched much. There is a bigger problem, though. The mental midgets at our cable provider and our local CBS affiL.te are in a pissing match over the rights to the CBS feed. Thus, we’ve been without CBS since L. was born. That’s three straight Colts game we’ve not seen. That’s three straight Saturdays without SEC football. That’ll put a damper on anyone’s football appetite.