Halos Heaven

I didn't catch much of the action yesterday. I spent the afternoon driving to New York, so I got some of the early game on the radio and a little more over dinner. Phil Hughes' meatball sandwich coaxed groans and jeers out of the patrons at the Times Square bar where I was eating, and this pleased me much more than the food. But I didn't go to Manhattan to watch baseball on someone else's TV, so I didn't see or hear anything from the NLCS until the final inning. I know it was a "marquee match-up" and all, but it's still National League baseball, which is like AAA½ these days.

Rangers 7, Yankees 2 (Series tied 1-1)

If you've never experienced the sorry routine of John Sterling and Susan Waldman, the Yankees' unspeakably pathetic radio broadcasters, check them out sometime. Their ineptness is only magnified by a playoff atmosphere. They are so loathsome they make me feel sorry about everything I've ever said about Fox and TBS. Not only is Sterling inattentive and incoherent once the ball is put in play ("line drive...in the gap...it is...over the wall, it's a home run...no, it bounced off the top of the wall..."), he is condescending almost to the point of bigotry. And whatever gains Waldman made for women in sports journalism by landing her job, she's more than reversed them by being terrible at it. I'm dead certain she eats constantly while on the air, since her infrequent comments all follow the pattern of "nom-nom-nom oh yeah, that fastball was definitely high nom-nom you don't want to nom-nom throw a high fastball there nom-nom-nom." I don't understand how Yankee fans, who otherwise love the sort of tickling self-adulation Sterling and Waldman provide, aren't outraged by this throbbing sore on their organization's hinter-regions.

Giants 4, Phillies 3 (San Francisco leads series 1-0)

This was supposed to be the Game of the Pitcher in the Postseason of the Pitcher in the Year of the Pitcher. I'm feeling cheated that it isn't still scoreless in the 378th inning, with Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum having both struck out every batter they faced for the first 27 innings, earning three perfect games each. Looks like it was a pretty average game after all. That's baseball; one start a no-hitter or a 14-strikeout submission hold, the next a pretty typical four-run eight hitter. Sometimes Cody Ross or Adam Kennedy hit a bunch of home runs in the playoffs. Speaking of which, the Giants seem to be winning a lot of one-run games in October. They have a nice bullpen, but I think their lineup, which is one of the lesser crews in the National League, is playing with house money. How many days in a row can they keep scratching them out? Of course they only need three wins in six games to go to the World Series now that they've won the first game, but I just can't trust them to knock out whichever contender emerges from the ALCS.

Poll

Who is in a better position to defeat the Yankees or Rangers?

49%

Phillies: They actually have some bats to go with those arms.

103 votes

23%

Giants: Tim Lincecum can pitch every day.

48 votes

27%

The cholera I just released into the drinking water at Yankee Stadium.

56 votes

207 votes | Poll has closed