Night Owl Cards

( Quit smiling, Raffy). I'll tell you what sucks: It's not Furcal pulling a Willie Davis and making three errors in one inning of a postseason game. Or Billingsley making zero impact in back-to-back starts. Or Lasorda waving one of those truly terrible towels. Or Kent getting called out on a bogus third strike with two runners on base. It isn't even that the Dodgers were eliminated tonight. What definitely DOES suck is the fact that I am responsible for producing the local paper's sports section, and, lucky me, tonight I had to select a giant photo of Jimmy Rollins circling the bases and write a giant, happy headline about how the Phillies are going to the World Series. Weeeee! Here's the headline I wanted to write: WRONG TEAM WINS, I'M BUMMED In a super, small way, I'm glad the Dodgers didn't make it to the Series. Because if the Dodgers won the whole thing, I don't know how my boss would feel about a headline that took up the entire sports section....

Wow. No need for a caffeine buzz during that game. I felt like I was floating three inches off the couch for almost the entire game. I'm beat. I've got to stop doing that to myself. But the good part is the Dodgers won and now they're back in the series. And fortunately, neither the Phillies nor the Dodgers lost their heads (although you could make a case for Manny) during that brush-back nonsense. So, hopefully, the series will continue with a sense of decorum. Unfortunately, I know I won't be able to say the same for the TV networks. My count after the benches cleared in the top of the third: Fox showed the bench-clearing incident 6 more times. ESPN News showed it five times within a 15-minute period of airing the live postgame press conferences. I tried to put together a timeline of my thoughts during the game. There was no way I was going to blog live. I can't write coherently when I'm that emotionally invested. So I scribbled down some stream of conscious...

"Cole, you just hang in there until the sixth inning, buddy. We'll tee it up for you." (Apologies to Phungo, which posted this card earlier today ). Phillies 3, Dodgers 2. Geez, what happened to Derek Lowe in the sixth inning? He acted like he got served with paternity suit papers between innings. Even in the fifth inning he started behaving all squirrely, like he had spotted the paternity server in the stands. Before you knew it, bombs from Utley and Burrell, and the Derek Lowe face was in full effect. And, Raffy, I'm so disappointed. Manny Ramirez and Blake DeWitt, you're excused. The rest of you must stay after class and write 1,000 times, "I will not let fools twirling snot rags throw off my concentration."