What To Watch For: A Must!

If you’re remotely a baseball fan, try and catch tonight’s game between the New York Yankees and Cincinatti Reds at 7 PM on MY9 (should be channel 9 for those of you in the tri-state area) or MLB.tv for those out of the region. This is the first time the Reds are visiting Yankee Stadium since swept the Yankees in the World Series a little over 30 years ago. That team had a lineup that featured Pete Rose, Ken Griffey Sr., Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan. What a lineup that must have been but let’s not forget that team went up against the likes of Mickey Rivers, Thurman Munson, Lou Pinella, Graig Nettles and even Willie Randolph.

That was in 1976, this is 2008. This time the Reds team which is a sub .500 team still packs plenty of talent. Rookie Jay Bruce who tore the cover off the ball once he got called up and before his 7 for 39 slump which now has him hitting .318 on the year in almost 100 at bats. This team also has the pitching in Edinson Volquez who has a 1.64 ERA in 14 starts with a 9-2 record (one of those losses came in relief in an 18 inning game). He has allowed more than 2 earned runs only once all year long and has 105 strikeouts while only issuing 44 bases on balls. His team is 11-4 in games that he has appeared in, just goes to show what kind of pitcher he is.

Finally, the Reds have Ken Griffey Jr. Here is a player who is on the tail end of his career, only hitting about .240 or so on the season but gets to visit Yankee Stadium once again. He is a career .296 hitter at Yankee Stadium with 18 HRs and 50 RBIs. Hopefully he can put on a show once last time at the Stadium. Heck, this might not even be his last visit since the Tampa Bay Rays are interested in acquiring which would be another great move by that franchise. He has his summer home in Orlando – an hour away from where the Rays play. He can certainly bring some more veteran leadership to a team that just swept the best team in the Majors and really is proving that they are the real deal this year.

One can only hope.

The Streak Comes To An End

So it took a month and nearly three weeks (44 games) into the season but my streak came to an abrupt halt this past Saturday when the first game of the Subway Series took place. I had every intention to catch the end of the game because I was scheduled for an Actuary Exam from about 12:30 to 3, which would have left just enough time for me to get back from the test to see the last inning or two. As it turns out, the examination site had a few technical difficulties which had threatened to delay the test to another day – which would have meant my streak was still intact. However, after an hour of just waiting and seeing when I can reschedule or who knows what, they informed me I had to take the test then. Granted, I wasn’t thinking at the time that since the test now began at 1:30 instead of 12:30 and is scheduled to finish at 4:30… there was no way that I would be able to see/hear the game.

As it turned out, I took nearly the entire 3 hours to take the test and as I was walking out of the facility, I still hadn’t gotten a text message telling me a score from the game. I still had hopes that the game might have gone into extreme extra innings that by the time I would get back, somehow someway the game would still be on. That hope however, was quickly dashed when I got a text message telling me that the New York Mets had defeated the New York Yankees by a score of 7 to 4.

Well it was good while it lasted and ironically it comes a day or two before I head off to Norway. At the end of the streak, here is where everything is so far…

36 games on YES (81.82%)
3 games on RADIO (8.82%)
2 games on ESPN (4.55%)
1 game on MLB.TV (2.27%)
1 game on FOX (2.27%)

After catching yesterday’s game, I currently stand at 44 out of 45 games (97.78%) which isn’t all too bad in itself. Hopefully, it’ll stay that high over the course of the year – especially with the next two weeks guaranteed to take a toll on that mark.

As for the Jays, I’m at 31 (67.39%) out of 46 games with 28 of them on MLB.TV (60.87%), 2 on YES (4.35%) and 1 on ESPN (2.17%).

Baseball Season Goal

Well we are a month into the season and here is where I stand on my (revised) goal. There is a constant update on the left sidebar about the Yankees and Blue Jays but I just thought I’d give you guys an update so far with yesterday being a month gone by.

For the Yankees I have caught all 29 games so far and here are some random stats. 23 (79.3%) of those games I have caught on the YES Network which at times I agree can be a bit painful to watch but maybe they are growing on me since I am such a fan of their team. I caught 2 (6.9%) games on radio (one when our apartment had no TV and the other one was the night I was driving down to DC with my roommates for the Cherry Blossom Festival), caught 2 games on ESPN (one vs. the Jays in the opening series for the season and one against the Red Sox in Fenway), there was one (3.45%) that I watched on MLB.TV from Silver Spring, Maryland which is quite unique since I live here and don’t often get a chance to go out of the viewing area during the season and just the other day against the Indians there was a game on TBS. I don’t remember if that game was blacked out on TBS and I watched it on YES but I have it on TBS in my sheet.

For the Blue Jays, it had started off real well when I had watched 8 of the first 9 games but since then it has only been 11 out of 19 games. Overall percentage is down to 67.86% and I still have 62 more games of theirs to catch to reach the goal. Obviously MLB.TV has been the dominant viewing preference because they aren’t on tv much here but I did catch them twice on YES (7.14%) and once on ESPN (3.57%). They have to find ways to start scoring runs again in this tough AL East. I knew New York (even with their injuries), Boston and Tampa would be tough but Baltimore really surprised me this month. Two losses in a row for the Jays where they only scored 1 run on the Red Sox but on the other hand, only allowed 3 runs total in the two games. The pitching has been solid (Halladay with 4 straight complete games but only one win to show for it)… so the offense really needs to start picking this up soon.