The Heart Breaking Marathon
MISSING YANKEES GAMES
I didn't get to see the game this past Saturday against
the San Francisco Giants for two reasons.
Firstly, I was out of town in
I'm not sure how many of you know about this but each
year for the past seven years the Astros and the Rangers have been playing for
a Silver Boot.
And for people that may not know --- the Texas Rangers
and the Houston Astros play each other six times a year in interleague.
Three in
It is an outgrowth of the "natural rivalry"
established by MLB as part of interleague.
The winner of the series (best-of-6) will be awarded the
Silver Boot. A 30-inch tall display of a size 15 cowboy boot cast in silver,
complete with a custom, hand-made spur. If the series is split (3-to-3), the
winner will be determined by which club scored the most runs over the course of
the series.
They had the boot there in Arlington on display a couple of weeks ago when I went to see the Rangers/Brewers game in
anticipation of the series.
Here are a few photos of it that I took at that game ...
You can see the boot in the photo to the right and in the
photo to the bottom you can see a close up of the plaque portion of the trophy
that has an engraved name plate for each year of the history of the boot and
which Texas team won each of the
years.
Texas won
the game on Saturday that I went to and since the Rangers had won the series in
The other reason that I couldn't watch the game this past
Saturday is that it was on a Saturday.
For some reason Major League Baseball has decided that
out of market Yankees fans will be screwed out of watching ANY Yankees games
that take place on a Saturday that do not have a start time after 6:30 PM local
time or do not air on ESPN.
It used to be that if a Yankees game aired on FOX
Saturday baseball it wasn't available to out of market fans because of the
exclusive arrangement that Major League Baseball has with FOX.
I didn't understand this when I was younger because I
thought if a game was on a national television station like FOX --- it was
available to everyone in every location.
Sort of like if an NBA game is available on ABC, CBS, or
NBC --- I thought everybody got the same game.
But, as we all came to find out if a game is a Saturday
day game on FOX --- You'll get one of 3 to 6 possible games depending on your
area.
In my area I generally get a game that involves either
the Rangers, the Astros, or the Cardinals.
Not only are you not able to get the game on FOX, But
since FOX has an exclusive agreement for those games you can't watch them on
MLB.TV (Which I have) or MLB Extra Innings (Which I have).
I hate this, but I understand it.
But now --- even if a game is not on FOX --- You still
aren't able to watch it on MLB.TV or MLB Extra Innings if it's a day game that
starts between 11 AM and
And I just don't understand why.
The Saturday June the 9th game against the Pirates was on
YES instead of MY9 or FOX and yet it was unavailable on MLB.TV or MLB Extra
Innings.
I have the YES Network in my DirecTv package and that game
was blacked out on my version of YES and it just said it wasn't available in my
area.
Then the Mets game this past Saturday the 16th was also
on YES instead of MY9 or FOX and yet it was unavailable on MLB.TV or MLB Extra
Innings.
I have the YES Network in my DirecTv package and that
game was blacked out on my version of YES and it just said it wasn't available
in my area.
I don't understand why this is.
On MLB.TV it just says it's not available in my area.
I can listen to them on MLB radio but I don't have a lap
top and I don't have XM radio or anything so it's only available to me in one
room of my home.
I pay close to 100 dollars a month for MLB.TV and radio
and about 150 dollars for MLB Extra Innings and another 40 for DirecTv's HD
baseball channels and super fan package.
I don't understand why I can't see these games.
I know that the people that put together MLB Extra
Innings would opine that since I get about 135 or 140 games per team that I get
over 2000 games a year for my money so that's not much to complain about.
But the thing is --- I don't watch 2000 games.
I want to watch 162 Yankees games, I want to watch the
Astros and Rangers games that are blacked out in my area --- even though they
don't air on TV in my area, and some other games here and there.
You don't make it up to me that every single Saturday I
miss crucial Yankees games by letting me watch 140 Nats games and 140 Pirates
games.
Know what I mean?
Anyway, enough of that rant...
I've been AWOL from the blog for a few days so let me
briefly offer my thoughts on the final two games of the San Francisco
series...
YANKEES 5, GIANTS 6
This game just seemed painful though...
Wang didn't seem to have his best stuff but he battled
thru to pitch 86 pitches in six and a third innings and left the game with a
lead.
A lead that the bullpen promptly surrendered.
Still I had hope.
It seemed like we could come back and win the game.
Especially after Alex hit the homer to give us a tie in
the 9th to send us to extra innings on the road.
When he hit that bomb (his 28th of the year off of
Hennessey) I just knew we'd fight our way back into it and win the game in the
bay.
We had our chances.
Like in the 11th when we had the bases loaded with one
out for Matsui.
That's when I just knew we were going to take the lead.
I mean, there's nobody that I trust more to get a run in
from third with less than two outs than Hideki Matsui.
But he struck out and soon that inning was over without
us scoring a run.
That was a motif for the game as the Yankees had 17 base
hits and only 5 runs to show for it over 13 innings.
We left a small army of men on base and squandered
numerous situations with a runner on third (or runners on second and third, or
the bases loaded) in the game only to come up empty.
And the way that we were hitting, or actually the way
that we were not hitting, it may not have actually ended up mattering...
But why Scott Proctor was allowed to throw 40 pitches
over 3 innings and why we used every available relief pitcher at our disposal
and somehow not use Rivera is just beyond me.
Rivera should have pitched the 13th and 14th and if there
had to be a 15th then it would have fallen on the shoulders of one of the
starters.
I think Torre made a very questionable decision to not
use Rivera and to extend Proctor to 3 innings.
Especially when Proctor got into the jam in the 13th and
is on fumes.
Like I said, It may not have ended up mattering the way
we were hitting --- but I don't think he gave us the best chance to win.
And I'd love to hear a explanation of why that actually
makes a modicum of real sense.
GAME 3 : SUNDAY 06/24/2007
YANKEES 2, GIANTS 7
Now, unlike the second game of the series this was a game
that we were never actually even really involved in.
You know how when a pitcher pitches in a game and his
innings don't factor into the decision directly and when he doesn't get saddled
with the win or the loss?
Sometimes you'll hear people say or write that that
pitcher wasn't involved in the decision or something like that?
That's how I felt about the team as a whole in this game.
Our offense is sputtering again and we didn't muster up
any help for Mussina who had his own woes to deal with as he had to throw over
100 pitches just to scratch and claw his way through the 5th inning after
giving up 2 runs and 5 hits and walking three batters.
The Giants did well and were very aggressive on the base
paths all day and we just didn't seem to be into the game.
So we ended up dropping the series to San Francisco by
losing two consecutive games and 5 out of our last 6.
Which wouldn't be quite as bad had we not had such a
tremendously awful April and May.
This is where the first fourth of the season really
becomes an albatross.
It's sort of like those games that Pettitte pitches where
he knows if he gives up even one earned run it might be too many and so he's
pitching on a tight rope all night.
We're playing a season on a tight rope.
Boston lost Curt Schilling to the DL until after the ASB
and they got swept by the Mariners.
He's the time we could have gained ground.
But we didn't and since we have so much ground to make up
for losing these games is like falling into quick sand or getting stuck in a
tar pit...
Now it's on to Baltimore to face the Orioles ...
Leave a comment