The Cardiac Kids strike again...

I don't really know that I can accurately describe my emotions yesterday, except that they went from hopeless (work), to hopeful (rainout), to happy (T, Joe and the Bing!), to confused (the game's not on TV down here?!?), to resourceful (laptop + internet = game), to ecstatic (up by 15!), to concerned (down by 1), to happy (up by 1), to hopeless (down by one), to out-of-my-mind-batshit-insane (Lucious!!!!!!!), to awkward (Jennifer?), and then to bed. What follows is a photo collage of my experiences:

Rainout! Which = Time with Mister Tyrone...

But they didn't have the game on at the bar!! Thank God for laptops, because I would never have lived it down had I missed...THE SHOT! (The "smiling" blueberry muffin below has nothing to do with baseball; it was just proof that God loves me and everying will be OK.)

Dray-mond!!!! (#23, representing Saginaw!!!)

One of my favorite pictures of the game, Korie and coach. So Sweet!

Gotta love coach Izzo's enthusiasm, too. :) Bring on the children of the corn!

Of all the articles/blogs I've read so far on "the moment", my buddy J. Davis, I think, described it best (in the Oakland Press):

Down one.

Just a little more than 6 seconds to play and your best decision maker is on the bench wearing (sweet-looking) sweats and a boot Shaquille O'Neal would have trouble fitting into.

Your 6'7," 240-pound sixth man (Draymond Green) catches the inbounds pass and dribbles into the frontcourt.

Three seconds left.

That power forward almost blasts your starting power forward (Delvon Roe) in the head with the ball; but he ducks.

Two seconds left.

Your back-up point guard (Korie Lucious) catches the pass.

One second left.

Gives a little upfake. Takes a step to his left. Fires up a three for the win...Cash money.

That's exactly how the end of Michigan State's second round, 85-83, win over Maryland in the second round of the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament went.

Anyhoo, back to baseball. The Rays are up 11-4 and have hit six homers so far, making for a long day. I'm pretty sure I'm going to take my laptop out on the porch, enjoy the sunshine and finish out there. :)

Later, kiddos.

-Sportsgal

Hello, Ugly.

You can probably guess from the title of this entry that I'm back in Tampa covering the Yankees. It's only been three years since I've lived here but it seems I've already forgotten how to properly handle the traffic without blowing a gasket, gah. I hate me some traffic. The upside to hitting 4 p.m. traffic for a 7 p.m. game is that I finally managed to get a seat in the Yankees press box that offers a view of the field. (I'm usually sitting facing either, a) a photo of Babe Ruth, or b) a grey wall with no electrical outlet and no hope of knowing what's going on the in the game. Today I'm in the second row with a view of the field and, more importantly a great view of the TV which is tuned to March Madness games. Epic win.)

Anyway, it's the Rays first road night game so it was nice to be able to sleep in this morning, get up and clean/decorate, make lunch and generally be lazy until I left the house at 2. (Quite a welcome change having to be up at 6:30ish).

I finished fixing up the downstairs area the last night, a process that took so long I completely forgot about St. Patrick's Day until my buddy Ryan texted me, "GREEN BEER!" Oops. Ah well, maybe next year.

Today marks my most favorite day of the year, not only because we're in the middle of spring training but because March Madness officially kicked off today. (This, I maintain, is the only concrete proof I have that God both exists and loves me. Sometimes.) Only about five games in and there's already been some major drama: No. 2 Villanova nearly lost to No. 15 Robert Morris (73-70 in OT), Old Dominion upset Notre Dame (11 over 6), Murray State beat Vandy by a point (13/4 upset), and Florida pushed to BYU to double overtime before losing by seven (10/7). This is the most wonderful time of the year, and if the folks at Mackinder-Harkins would get their stuff together and post our brackets already, I'd be even more excited by being able to follow the Madness as it relates to my potential winnings. :)

As I write this, Ohio (14) is up 17 on Georgetown (3) with about 10 minutes left in the game. Because of this I have completely lost interest in the baseball game I'm covering. If there are people out there who don't LOVE college basketball in March, they are no friends of mine.

I had a dream last night that a centipede popped out of my ring finger (I need to stop falling asleep to CSI) and when I woke up, my finger was bleeding. I feel like this game is NEVER going to end. I missed Cortney while she was in town, but will try to make it out to see Shane before the Astros break camp. I like pickles. OK, that fills my nonsequitor quota for the evening, time to be constructive and baseball-y now so I'm not stuck in the pit that is "George M. Steinbrenner Field" any longer than I have to be post-game.

Toodles, kids.

-Sportsgal

Getting into the Swing of Things

Today the Rays are in Fort Myers facing the Red Sox, and it's the first really warm day we've had in a long time (game time temp = 78 degrees). It's the first time we've had the windows in the pressbox open and it makes a lot of difference. ... When they're closed, it's almost like watching the game on TV; everything is muffled. When they're open the breeze wafts in, you can enjoy the sights and sounds of the crowd, and the smells of the park, and everything in general is just extra baseball-y and good today.

My roommates are officially gone which means the house is empty. They're the first long-term roommates I've ever had post-college if you don't count Luck-e, and they were awesome. I miss them bunches, but at the same time, there's something freeing about living alone again. It's nice to be able to run around the house half-clothed and sprawl out on the couch and watch crappy movies nobody likes but me and not have to worry about hogging the living room. I can also decorate how I want (more on that in a minute), which is extra fun.

This will all wear off by next Sunday and I'll go back to being lonely again, I know. The bright side of this is that my new roomie moves in that day, so let the fun begin all over again!:)

I started decorating the living room and will post pictures once I'm finished. I don't think I have any from the old style, but it's going to be a lot different...especially until I get a coffee table. The living room is HUGE and even though I have a sectional and two giant chairs the empty floor space in the middle is easily large enough to put a pool table in. I have no idea how to fix this, but I'm sure something will come.

UPDATE: It's 4 p.m. now, and we're only just now beginning the eighth inning here at City of Palms Park. Including today, just one game of eight so far was less than three hours and several have stretched into 3:30-plus range, including two extra-inning affairs. Sometimes it's nice to have extra time to work on stories and such but on days like today when I'm already swamped with preps stuff and need to get back into town asap to work on things, 4-hour games do me no favors.

Entertaining me during this loooooooooong game: David Price (Rays starter) got hit with a broken bat in the second inning and left the game. When we finally went down to talk to him, the exchange went something like this:

Reporter: Has this ever happened before?

Price: Yeah, once. Hit me right there (points to right hip, dangerously close to...yeah). During the SEC tournament. James Darnell. South Carolina guy. Fastball.

Me: That's not some stuff you forget, eh?

Price (who's black): I turned white, they said. (we all crack up) "I mean PALE. Not white. Pale. Gray. There we go. Gray. I mean...whatever.

And also, I love to read Deadspin, and if you were cool, you'd love it too. Yesterday, they called the Rays "Like Switzerland, with nuclear weapons." Who comes up with this stuff, honestly?

Alright, kids. Time to get a-movin'. More tomorrow. :)

-Sportsgal

Voice of the Turtle

"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

There's a tradition where I come from, and it's called Voice of the Turtle. Every spring before the Tigers' first radio broadcast from Joker Marchant for as long as I can remember, Ernie Harwell would come on and say the above passage. For a true baseball fan stuck up in Michigan and likely still under a foot of snow at the time, hearing those words was like seeing the first robin of the spring. It meant baseball was back, and it was always the best day of the new year.


When I got my license I started driving down here for spring training, but I always brought a radio to the first broadcast game of spring and listened to Ernie speak his magical words. He hasn't done it in a while and he sure didn't do it this spring, but they replayed it on the radio a few days ago and it was a nice flashback to my younger baseball days.


Covering the Yankees on Friday, I met a couple guys that do radio up in Detroit. They were in town to see Grandy (see left; but I still don't want to talk about it) and Thames, and gave me a sad update that Ernie isn't doing well at all. I'm still praying for a miracle for the man who made me fall in love with baseball in the first place, but it doesn't look good. Sad Christmas, kiddos. :(

On a happier note, this is the second consecutive day that the weather is beautiful at the park: Yesterday I was in Clearwater for Phillies-Rays and today I'm at home, and it's 65-ish and beautiful and sunny -- perfect baseball weather. I'm glad it's warming up a little, it makes it a bit easier to get up. I don't have a day off until Sunday, but I'm still hoping to get out of here early enough one day to sit by the pool while the sun's still out. I can't wait until it's warm enough to go midnight shark fishing again, I haven't seen my B-ton buddies in too long.

Speaking of B-ton, Luck-e called me yesterday. I haven't talked to him in a couple of months now, and despite the way things were left the last time around (haha), it was good to hear from him. Sounds like he's doing well; he's done a few shows at clubs and is working with Madden (the video game) to put out the soundtrack for them, so he's staying busy. Regardless, it was nice to be able to hang up and not have to worry about dealing with anything he was talking about. I'm going to AMI to get my hair cut Thursday and I think we're going to grab dinner at Jamrocks, we'll see. It'd be good to see him.

RANDOM BREAK: If you're into wordplay, add these stuffs to your playlist: Steady Mobbin (Wayne) and On to the Next One (Jay-Z). The latter is on the Blueprint 3, but I found the former sitting here during warm-ups and it's definitely worth the $1.29 iTunes charge. Ooh! And an oldie but always a goodie: I Gave You Power (Nas), where he spends the whole song rapping from a gun's point of view. It's one of those really crazy, profound songs he's soooo good at doing...like the song he pretended he was a cockroach. He's incredibly talented. Really crazy stuff.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program...I should probably start writing eventually here or I'll never leave. Til' tomorrow, kids!

-Sportsgal