Short Division: MLB Postseason Coverage 2013
Before I jump into the four playoff series on the verge of happening, starting tonight, a few words about the Wild Card games from the past few nights.
Playoffs
One and Done: MLB Postseason 2013 (Ongoing Coverage)
Tonight marks the start of the MLB Postseason, featuring the first of two fights for the right to play in the Divisional Round between eternal enemies Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, followed by a second duel to the death elimination tomorrow between Cleveland and Tampa Bay. (There might be some fairly grandiose moments throughout this column because I just watched the new trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and might be mildly freaking out at the moment. I mean, new Hobbit footage AND a Reds postseason game in one day? Your intrepid writer’s mind melts like butter on hot asphalt.)
What I’ll try to do with the Postseason is to do all of my Round Previews in one article, before each new set of Series begins. This will culminate with a team-by-team preview of the two pennant winners, followed by World Series recaps. All part of our mission at the Addison Recorder to provide you with the best continual analysis of the major shakings and dealings of popular culture.
(Oh, by the way, apparently there’s hockey tonight, though I cannot verify such things as truthful.)
Game 163 and Beyond: MLB Postseason Coverage 2013
Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it?
One of the biggest criticisms (slightly warranted) of Major League Baseball is that the seasons tend to drag on forever. While it is your intrepid columnist’s opinion that the people who believe this are nihilistic, soulless goons more obsessed with watching grown men reduce each others brain matter to Silly-Putty, there is something to be said for the idea that the Baseball season is one long march towards an inevitable goal, the postseason. The corresponding argument is that because there is such a preponderance of games on the schedule, it is impossible to attach meaning to any individual contest, save for the latter weeks of the season.
The Hunt for Red October: This Weekend in Baseball
Welcome back, everybody.
Having essentially taken a summer sabbatical from the Recorder (you know, the pop culture column I helped found over a year ago), I feel that it’s time to get back to work. It’s been a great summer, full of theatre, farm work, and…..okay, maybe it’s hard to stay connected to popular culture when you’re living in the boonies of southwest Ohio. Nigh impossible, I might say. It’s almost unbelievable how quickly I fell back into the media stream upon my return on August 26th. (Case in point: while hanging out with friends and colleagues of the Recorder, the first question I was asked relating to anything popular was “Did you hear what Miley Cyrus did at the VMA’s?” In Ohio, I would have heard about that slowly, over a cold glass of Bell’s Oberon, on a patio, most likely three or four days after the fact. As it was, I immediately watched a clip of her performance with Robin “I’ve Really Been Doing This for Twenty Years, What the Hell is Wrong with You People That You Love Blurred Lines?” Thicke. My reaction: meh.)
With that being said, it’s the best time of the year to be a sports fan. Professional football has returned, with both the NFL and the BCS (See what I did there?…It’s been a long summer, you must understand. My humor will need a little bit of time to come back. Apparently, just like the Longhorns’ run defense.) going strong, things happening in NASCAR, Floyd Mayweather fighting the Ginger Sensation (Real name: Canelo Alvarez, which is a convoluted anagram of Satan’s Spawn.), and above all, baseball.
The Tragedy of Narrative: World Series 2012 Game Four Recap; PLUS 2012 MLB Awards Wrap-Up
As October turns into November, so yet another baseball season draws to an unspectacular conclusion. (What makes it unspectacular? Well, this particular World Series does, as well as anything that involves the Yankees winning. But that’s besides the point.) Now we turn to the inevitable stream of awards and hardware handed out to assuage the fragile egos of many a ballplayer, as well as to celebrate what went right for so many teams and what went wrong for all but one of them.
When last we left the World Series recap, the Giants had just gone up 3 games to zip-zada-zero on the Tigers, with imminent demise highly foreseeable for the boys from Detroit. Once again, I was at work during the majority (i.e. all) of Game Four, yet with the game featured on the big screen televisions in the bar at which I work. I did manage to see Miguel Cabrera’s home run that gave the Tigers their first (First!) lead of the Series, followed by raucous celebration from the Detroit fans.
And then the channel was switched over to showcase some football game featuring the New Orleans Downtrodden and the Surgically Prepared Monster that is FrankenManning.
Sigh. So much for prescient analysis.
However…
A Certain Certainty of Fate: World Series 2012 Game Three Recap
The World Series returned to Detroit for the first time since 2006 (back in the days when The Office and How I Met Your Mother weren’t hollow shells of themselves, and before we knew that Daniel Day-Lewis would, in fact, drink your milkshake) not with a bang, but a whimper. And what a whimper it was. Unfortunately, owing to commitments elsewhere (Recorder Halloween Party 2012?), I was unable to observe and comment upon the actual nature and intrinsic shape of the game. Things would have been different if one of the members of the staff were not only historically adverse to the sport of baseball, but also hosting the party. I’m sure there’s a provision about this in Robert’s Rules, and thus it went unchallenged. Consequently, I only witnessed brief snippets of the game last night.