TV VIEW:WE'D BEEN in the bullpen for days warming up for the World Series, making sure the right arm was loose enough to combat any creeping RRFCNS (Repeatedly-reaching-for-cheesy-nachos Strain).
We’d made it through Game One and Two, but the time difference left us a touch fatigued, so good sense got the better of us and we taped Game Three.
And you know how it is when you’ve taped an event you intend viewing any second soon.
“LA, LA, LA, LA, LA,” you bellow when you inadvertently happen upon a sports bulletin.
Although, in fairness, the chances of the World Series being mentioned in any of the sports bulletins we inadvertently happened upon yesterday morning were probably slim. That might be because it’s as worldly as the East Clare under-14 road bowling championships, and they are rarely mentioned on, say, Sky News.
So, we made it to the telly without hearing the result and settled down in frenzied anticipation. True, we noticed the build-up was exceptionally lengthy, but with ESPN you expect these things, so you just fast forward at full speed, leaving the picture as blurry as the scene most likely witnessed by Mick Kinane whenever he took a lift from Sea The Stars.
(Speaking of which. While thrilled to hear that Sea The Stars and Zarkava are about to get it together at the Aga Khan’s stud in Kildare, we’d appeal to the media to give the couple some space; the last thing they need is to be turned in to the equine version of Jordan and Peter Andre. You know:
“EXCLUSIVE – Zarkava: Sea The Stars’ Affair With Cart Horse Wench Broke My Heart.”
“EXCLUSIVE – Sea The Stars: Take Me Back Zarkava, Life Without You Is A ‘Mare’.”
“EXCLUSIVE – Zarkava: My Steamy Night With Rip Van Winkle.”
“EXCLUSIVE – Aidan O’Brien: What Rip Van Winkle Does In His Private Life Has Nothing To Do With Me.”
“EXCLUSIVE – Rip Van Winkle: Zarkava Just Used Me To Punish Sea The Stars, May She End Up In A Glue Factory.”
It would all be way too unedifying, so back off everyone.)
Anyway, an epic of frankly epic proportions was Game Three. In short, the Phillies went 3-0 up in the second inning, but by the bottom of the sixth the Yankees had turned it around big style and led 6-3. But then Jayson Werth pulled one back for the Phillies, 6-4. The cheesy nachos were disappearing as fast as Liverpool’s title hopes.
And then: “For your information: end of programme.”
Laugh or cry? An impossible choice. We opted for tears.
You could, of course, at so grave a time like this, ring the telly company and complain, but they’d probably just inform you that they have no control over the elements in Philadelphia, that the almost-90-minute rain delay was a bit beyond their control. An Act of God, if you like – and while the rain may have fallen from the Sky it didn’t mean the company was actually culpable.
As the commentator in Game One put it, when the Phillies’ Chase Utley hit a home run, “FORGET ABOUT IT!!!!” So we did.
Partly because, much as we enjoy it, we can’t get as emotional about baseball as, say, Jon Stewart, largely because we’re the uninitiated foreigners looking in.
The Daily Show presenter is a New York Mets fan and explained to us last week that a Yankees v Phillies World Series was the stuff of nightmares for every right-thinking, semi-human, half-decent baseball fan.
They are not, it seems, all that loved – outside of Yankees and Phillies land. The despair he felt about the pair of them reaching the World Series was, he said, akin to finding his wife in bed with a Yankee and a Phillie. He simply put his faith in a higher power – any higher power – that they would both lose.
Dave O’Brien and Rick Sutcliffe, our hosts on ESPN, weren’t quite as feverish as Jon, until they brought us “Our Mastercard Priceless Moment” and “Our Pepsi Play of the Game”, at which point they nigh on spontaneously combusted with excitement on Wednesday night. We half expected Dave and Rick to purr over “Our Fannie May and Freddie Mac Loser of the Game” award, but no sign yet – there’s time though, we may not be done til November 5th in New York.
Whatever is to come, the highlight of the entire 2009 World Series will remain the appearance of the beyond-legendary and now 84-year-old Yogi Berra before Game One.
He’s the most quotable man planet earth has ever given us, the one credited with the first utterance of “its déjà vu all over again”.
“As a general comment on baseball, 90 per cent of the game is half mental,” he once declared, but perhaps his finest moment was: “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t go to yours.”
A grand slam homer.
