Happy non-Opening Day

SPRING DIDN’T COME THIS YEAR, so I loaded up my copy of No. 1 on this list to ease the ache of baseball’s absence. Random thoughts while rewatching Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS:

  • Fox had a baseball version of Microsoft Clippy splainin’ baseball stuff… because Joe Buck and Tim McCarver could not?
  • Forgot how Terry Francona would rock back and forth on the bench with nervous energy, looking like I felt inside.
  • All the Yankees hitters are goddamn scary.
  • Also forgot how Tito stuck with Foghorn Bellhorn and Caveman Damon through this whole thing. Nothing really doin’ for either of them in this game, but Tito’s faith would be rewarded later in the series. (Also, reminds me of how Tito stuck with Pedroia when he was first called up and stunk.)
  • Millar-The Steal-Mueller is still just an incredible sequence of events.
  • Now I kinda wanna rewatch the July 24th A-Rod-Varitek face-mask game — the one where Mueller showed us Rivera was human, after all.
  • Pokey Reese!
  • Manny’s helmet and Nixon’s cap — just filthy.
  • At various points, but mostly in the later innings, a lot of the fans look like how I feel now — tooting from the epicenter of a worldwide pandemic.
  • Why did we think it was possible to win this game?
  • Big Papi.
  • Without commercials, this game is four hours long. With commercials, over five hours. How did we ever survive this series?
  • Sixteen years ago — holy schnikes!