Sunday, July 15, 2012

Mad x 2

I've blogged about this before. You record the game, only to realize when watching it later that you forgot to record the show after the game, as it almost always runs over the allotted time. Tonight I set the game to record, thinking I'd be home from dinner by 8, so there'd be no problem. But then after dinner, our neighbor invited us over to watch Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park in the back yard. Of course we were up for that--but I forgot to record the 10:00, 10:30, etc. shows.

So after the movie, I'm home and I'm whizzing through the game. I'd had it on radio earlier and knew Clay was in a jam in a 0-0 game. Was glad to see he got out of it with just a run. We went up 2-1. They tied it on an Aviles error. We went up 3-2....and around that point I knew we weren't gonna wrap this up by 10 p.m. I just hoped we'd get a big lead, so I could then check the final pretty much knowing we'd won. But no. Albers walked in the tying run in the 7th, and a sac fly put them up 4-3. And the clock kept ticking....

As the 8th started, I was down to my last 12 minutes. Ellsbury doubled. Tying run on second, 0 outs. I'm thinking, Tie it and tie it QUICK. But my clock read 7:30. Ciriaco tried to bunt. Then he didn't. Then he did again, and popped it straight up, and the catcher caught it. If we're gonna bunt there, let's go ahead and have the guy square around, eh? I know it'd be good to have the speedy Pedro reach as a bonus, but as long as we're trying to get the tying run to third, let's just give up the out but let the guy square so he has more time to lay down a solid sac bunt. The clock read 6:00 as Papi came up, the tying run still at second. After a long-ass at bat, Papi takes ball four with just over 2 minutes left. Don't you hate it when there IS a clock in baseball?

And then they changed pitchers. Shit. A minute and a half left. That was that, as my recording ended before the commercial break even ended.

So there I was, with nothing. I could wait for the midnight replay (it's 12:25 as I write this and it hasn't started yet, so I would have been waiting even longer), and watched for almost 2 hours to catch up to where I left off. Or I could record that and watch in the morning. (Only to have it--you guessed it--cut off before the end since they started the replay late.) I could use various methods on the Internet to follow along with the last two innings--but it's a near impossibility to do that without seeing the final score flash in your face, ruining everything.

So I took a big dinosaur bone, bit down hard, and went to redsox.com, hoping for a picture of some celebrating Red Sox on the front page. I saw Buchholz...and the word "loss." Fuck.

Turns out Ross and Middlebrooks flew out to center to end our threat in the 8th. Then Upton donged in the bottom half to make it 5-3. We had the tying run up in the 9th, but couldn't do anything. The Rays won it 5-3. The whole rest of the fuckin' division won, too.

Again, Verizon and all the other cable companies need to work something out where if you record a live event, you see that live event, in its entirety. Short of this, NESN could at least realize that thinking a Red Sox game actually fits into a 3-hour spot is ridiculous. And most of the games start at ten after, so we're already down to 2:50. You know how many Red Sox games clocked in under 2:50 last season? 34 out of 162. (16 of 88 so far this year.)

Comments:
But I can't watch an mlb.tv game until it's over. But even if I could and it wasn't over, how would I not see the score when looking at the linescore?
 
Yeah, you're pretty much screwed trying to go online to watch it and not see the score somewhere. When NESN shows the midnight replay, do they have a "live" ticker at the bottom going, which shows the final score? Or is the ticker the same as it would have been when the game was shown live (i.e. most games in progress)?

Whatever the case, whenever I record games my box gives the option to customize the start and end times - so I can record "MLB Baseball" from 7-10, but then I change the end time to midnight to avoid such a situation.
 
I had complained about the scroll in the original version of this post--but then erased it because I noticed they ARE kind enough to show it without giving the final at the bottom every five minutes.

But still, the game was over, and I didn't wanna wait.

I have to get used to recording the next few shows. Usually I remember. But I shouldn't have to!
 

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