Remember back when I mentioned I'd be blogging live on Thursday during Game 4? I meant to type Game 5: since Game 4 was scheduled for tonight.
Yesterday I updated that plan after booking Thursday plans (twice!) to say that the only way I could liveblog would be if Game 4 was rained out and moved to Thursday so that Game 5 would be on Friday when I was free. Naturally, today Friday filled up. On the bright side, the Friday plans come at the expense of the Thursday plans.
Tonight, however, it all came together: Game 4 of the World Series has been rained out, and as a result starting around 8:15ET (6:15pm in Edmonton/Denver), Third Edge of the Sword will have its first ever live weblog as I cover Game 4 of the MLB 2006 World Series game in the new Busch Stadium between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers! I hope to make it enlightening, entertaining, and regularly updated. (Cross fingers that Blogger.com doesn't have an hour of downtime as they did earlier tonight when it looked like I might have been able to live weblog Game 4 and Game 5)
The rest of tonight will be occupied in collection a variety of graphics that I might be interested in interspersing throughout the post. Possible clutch players on each team, potentially relevent cartoons, photos of fireworks, that sort of deal.
I also will take the time to show some small baseball-warmup stuff: the three Tommy Lasorda "Real fans don't hide in October" commercials currently airing almost nonstop on MLB.tv. (Youtube is on "downtime" right now, so for now I'll just post HTML links to the YouTube pages, and embed them later when YouTube is back online)
WARNING: These mini-reviews contain spoilers. If you are familiar with MLB.tv, you know how to avoid this.. the same was as we avoid reading the game highlights listed alongside the video frame when watching "On Demand" games (hey MLB.tv, can you freaking cut that out?)
"College": The hottest of the bunch. A cute little Boston fangirl hides out in her university college dormatory (sorority?) bathroom, locked in to protest Boston's pathetic 3rd in the AL East showing. Tommy stands outside with a variety of her dormmates/sorority sisters trying to coax her out. The girls outside (particularly the black chick from NY and the quiet blonde between Lasorda and the door) are pretty smoking hot. The blonde has killer legs only barely visible in a couple of shots, and the black chick has a chest that makes you forget all about the national pasttime. It also features a hilarious moment when Lasorda asks the black chick to explain to the BoSox girl why baseball is still worth watching in October: "I'm from New York" she apologies in a slightly cocky way that makes you 100% believe it. (In reality, when I was in NYC during the 2003 ALDS, and the fans in New York sports bars were almost universally cheering for Boston. As one of the New Yorkers explained to me, as long as Boston wasn't facing against the Bronx Bombers, New York had no problem cheering them all the way to the WS. (No word how the 2004 World Series actually was received in Manhattan, though I'll wager that had NY not made it to the ALCS and instead Boston had beaten the Minnesota Twins to make it to the big dance, my New York confident would probably have been right)
"Cabinet":
The most uninterested of the three videos, this one features a father/son duo (it appears) hiding in the kitchen cabinets rather than watch the Indians sit out another ALDS. I have nothing much to say on this.
"Tree":
This is the most popular (from what I can gather) of the three spots. Not only does it followup with showing Angels and Blue Jays and (another uniform I forget) fans also banding together for the postseason, but has the absolute funniest moment of all three spots. It starts out with Lasorda and the young girl on the organ standing at the base of a tree, while a distraught woman explains that her husband has been up in the tree "ever since his team was eliminated from the playoffs". We can see "Frank"'s uniform, but apparently Lasorda cannot, as he instructs the kid to "hit it" and she plays an organ theme vaguely reminiscent of "Take Me Out to the BallGame" as Lasorda pleads for Frank to come down out of that tree, berating him that real fans don't hide in October. He then asks the guy's wife which team Frank is a fan of, to which she replies "the Cubbies". "Yeeeesh" Lasorda replies, shaking his head and looking down. Ha! As mentioned above, a man in a Jays and a man in an Angels uniform look on. There's a third man too, but with YouTube down I can't check who it is.
Right now on MLB.tv I'm watching the final Chicago Cubs game of the 2006 season, as they host the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies held a lead going into the 7th inning stretch, but the Cubs have just made it a 4-4 tie in the bottom of the 7th. This game is heating up, and I'll be watching its conclusion while assembling pictures.
Update, Thursday October 26th at 2:24am: The Cubs ended up winning the game 8-5. Not bad, not bad...
YouTube is back up, so here are the videos that are reviewed above:
"Cabinet":
"College":
"Tree":
