FRS

The FRS had an afternoon game in Seattle which started here on the east coast at 4:40 PM. Perfect timing for me as I could listen to the game while I put another coat of gloss white on the trim in the middle bedroom.

I fired up Gameday Audio, selected the Boston radio station that broadcasts the games and I was greeted by some inane sports talk show. At first I thought they might be in a rain delay, knowing the pacific northwest, but then remembered that the Mariners field had a retractable roof, so a little liquid sunshine wouldn’t halt play. I clicked on the link for the Seattle radio station’s broadcast and sure enough they were nearly through the top half of the first inning.

It was kind of neat to hear a different set of voices with a different perspective of the game. The roof was open and because the stadium is near the city’s rail yard there were quite a few times when you would hear train horns blasting in the background that, for me, added to the ambiance. Half way through the game the TV and radio broadcasts swapped play-by-play guys and I got to listen to their long time announcer, Dave Niehaus. He has been doing Mariner’s games for 32 years and you can hear why he has been doing it so long and is getting inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this Sunday. A very nice listen even if his team loyalty is misguided.

During the breaks between innings there was sometimes silence and sometimes commercials. I remember when I first started to listen to the Red Sox games on the internet all I ever got was silence, but sometime in the last couple years I started hearing all of them. I wonder if it was because MLB.com blocked certain ads. That seems unlikely, because as much as baseball frowns on gambling (right Pete?) one of the sponsors I did hear from several times was the Swinomish Casino. A big sponsor of the Red Sox baseball games is Foxwoods Resort & Casino as well. The only thing I can come up with is the radio station has a two tiered sponsorship plan for advertisers, one cheaper one for local coverage and a more expensive one for the national coverage.

I stopped listening to eat dinner with the game tied at three runs apiece. When I came back I tried the Boston broadcast again and they were doing the game, so I stayed with the old familiar voices. The game was still tied, but the FRS finally won the game in the 12th inning earning a three game sweep of the Mariners (which took a little of the sting out of being swept by the Angels in the three games before.) Tomorrow is an off day before the dreaded MFY come to Fenway Friday for a weekend series which means I’ll probably get to see some of the games on TV.

And apparently mine is pretty small.

I didn’t vote for players for the baseball All-Star Game this year. Matter of fact I have never voted in all the years they have let fans do it. I don’t think it should be a fan based popularity contest, the players should be chosen by the league managers. They can vote for anyone they like except their own players.

The last couple of years they have even allowed the fans to vote on an extra player for the bench, pretty soon the fans will get to vote on what kind of pitch the pitcher will be throwing.

Anyway, I broke down and voted for the extra player this year because they were giving away a week’s worth of MLB.TV. Which is kind of a smart move on their part, because with the All-Star break in the middle of the giveaway week you only get to see like 4 games.

So right now I’m watching Baltimore put the hurt on the FRS in a small window while I blog. The video quality is not bad in a tiny window, but full screen it is very pixelated. Not something I want to pay $80 a year for. Besides I like the whole listening thing much better, it is easier to multitask.

MAL: We’re not gonna die. We can’t die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so very pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die. Huh? Look at that chiseled jaw.

This is what happens when you win the World Series, you get to play on TV a lot. Last Saturday on FOX, yesterday on TBS, tonight on ESPN and this coming Wednesday on ESPN2. So far the FRS are 1 and 1 and trailing by one run tonight going into the 9th.

Hasn’t left much time for Netflix disc watching. We still have 3 episodes of Due South to watch on the first disc of Season One and we also have P.S. I Love You collecting dust on the coffee table.

On the way home from work tonight we stopped by the cable company and picked up a converter box. We need the box to get Versus, Le Tour starts in less than two weeks.

Usually it happens in June and usually it is the MFY overtaking them, but this year it is different. The FRS almost always start strong and lead the Eastern Division until the middle of June or early July when the wheels come off and they fall from the top spot. Usually the New York Yankees replace them in first place.

This year the swoon started early as yesterday’s loss to Baltimore caused the Red Sox to relinquish first place in the division to the Tampa Bay Rays. Who? Up until this year the team from Tampa was known as the Devil Rays and for the first ten years of their existence have never won more games than they have lost, even their best year, 2004, they were 21 games below .500. If they knew all it took to become a winner was remove the Devil from their name, I’m betting they’d have done it a lot sooner.