Still, I’m playing better overall, although it seems like I am only getting one at bat per game, regardless of how long I’m in. Wednesday, I went in for the last 4 innings of the 7-inning game … except it got called after 5 innings, right as I was coming up for my second at-bat. Oh well. But I’m getting the ball out of the infield this year, so that’s nice – last year I would pound the ball in batting practice, and then shank it when it mattered. I was a one-bagger through and through. This year, I’ve got a couple of doubles already and even two of my outs have been sacrifice flies.

Now I just have to get my first home run…

• The Flyers beat the Devils TWICE in a home-and-home series
• The Eagles win
• Penn State beat Ohio State at the Horseshoe for the first time in 30 years.
• And (for me) finally saw Dallas win another game.
• And in the coup de grace, the Phillies win Games 3 & 4 of the World Series on the way to their 50-hour Game 5 victory to win the World Series

I can’t wait to head down to the parade today. I’m taking my camera although I’m not entirely sure that I’ll use it in the crowd. But who cares – the Phils won the World Series!!

But what to do when you’re wife doesn’t want to watch the entire Game 1? When she wants to watch that episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” on the DVR? Well, you stand up in all of your masculinity, put your foot down and tell her firmly, “Well, then … I’m going to have to go upstairs to watch it.”

That’ll learn ‘er.

Now, 25 years later, the Phillies are back in the World Series, and it seems like I’m going to have to watch this one from the sidelines, too. I understand that with the amount of time since the last championship, a LOT of people want these tickets, and for that reason, they would probably be expensive. But when I went to look, I found that it wasn’t just the demand from the fans that was driving up the ticket cost. It was the fact that every ticket I looked at was being bought up by ticket brokers — so that they could turn around and sell it for an even MORE obnoxious price:

The reason World Series tickets are so expensive - every buyer is a ticket broker

It’s criminal that these agencies can swoop in and buy up these tickets before the fans can, and then rape the fans to get a seat. One game – that’s all I want, but I can’t afford $600+ to go – $1,200+ if my wife were to come. I’m not sure why these brokers are exempt from the old statute that you can only resell a ticket for more 10% above face value. I could even see if they were to charge 2x what the face value was to cover their expenses. But this is a mark-up of almost 500%, and what’s more, the Pennsylvania legislature actually changed the law to allow ticket brokers to charge MORE for tickets.

Like I said, I’ll still watch the game and I’ll probably even go to a bar to watch a game with friends. But it pisses me off that as a fan of almost 30 years, I can’t afford to get a seat at the game because brokers can swoop in ahead of me and then ass-rape for a ticket. Business is business, but this is racketeering.

21.6IP, 29R/29ER (5HR), 16BB/8SO, a 1-4 record and a mind-boggling 12.08 ERA. Charlie – get this guy out of the rotation before he kills your chances at the playoffs!

But it was a very impressive Olympics overall — sure NBC focused almost exclusively on the U.S., when there were other great events going on, but I guess that’s to be expected. I had a little bit of Michael Phelps overkill, but there was no denying that his races were exciting and spectacles of human athletic achievement.

The judging in the gymnastics was … difficult to understand (yes, Shari got me to watch a lot of the women’s gymnastics events), but it was still breath-taking to see what they could do. And I watched a lot of volleyball and a smattering of other events when I could. I winced when the relays dropped the baton, sat wide-mouthed at the speed of other runners, and cheered when the men’s volleyball team overcame the tragedy of the murder of their coach’s mother-in-law to win gold.

It was the best of times and it will be well remembered.

Amusements

• Why the Russians Aren’t in a Hurry to Leave Georgia – If that’s what’s waiting for them in Russia — Yikes!

17G, 4-9, 101.2 IP, 71 R, 66 ER, 88 K / 44 BB, 5.18 ERA

But since his return, he’s been doing a heck of a lot better. Since his return:

4G, 2-0, 25.2 IP, 6 R, 6 ER, 13K / 7 BB, 2.14 ERA

I’m not a fan of Manuel, but sometimes it really seems like he knows what he is doing. Now if he can just get the bats going again.

Update 8/25: And he keeps getting better. His stats since he came back:

7G, 4-1, 48.2IP, 9R, 9ER, 38K / 13MM, 1.68 ERA.

In game 1, I had a decent game – 2 for 3 with a double and knocking in one of our 2 runs. In the fields, I made some nice plays although I did miss a grounded that ended up costing 2 runs (although, in retrospect, they were inconsequential since we never even beat their 1st-inning run total). Hopefully we’ll end up stunning the top seed today, but if not we’ll at least have some beer to drown the sorrows.

You can’t make this stuff up

• How to be understood at ComicCon – funny, but I’m a little disturbed that there is both a Klingon Language Institute and an Elvish Linguistic Fellowship
• The Process – What if there were no such thing as a stop sign, and a major corporation had to make one?

Unlike year’s past, HOlympics V did NOT start off in the early morning with a form of golf. Instead, we arrived a decent hour (or half-past decent, since half of the people were late), and started our day with the outdoor events, as the weather was predicted to be in the mid-to-high 90′s with high humidity. Luckily, the outdoor ‘sports’ had been truncated anyway, leaving us with horseshoes, basketball shooting and target shooting (using a BB gun and target taped to a tree. We’re high class all the way). Even at 10 a.m., it was evident that doing outdoors stuff early was a great idea – it was already sweat-dripping hot and even the beers couldn’t keep us fully cool.

I wasn’t expecting much out of the first three events – I knew that I would do decently at horseshoes, but the BB gun competition was more of a crap shoot (get it?) and I’m normally ATROCIOUS at shooting hoops. But I actually did pretty well at hoops, which surprised me though my expectations elsewhere were pretty on the mark.

And away they go

The second segment of the day involved the ‘away’ games: go-kart racing and bowling. So, we packed up in 3 cars to grab some food and then get in some souped-up, Indy-style go-karts to race around the track for the chance to have the fastest lap time. I started near the back of the pack but had a great time as I darted in and out of the slower and less-experienced drivers (I have all of 3 times under my belt now), garnering the 4th best lap time of the group. I know that it sounds silly, but those go-karts are quite fun to race around the circuit, skidding around turns and accelerating around the straight-aways as you gun toward slipping past your opponent.

Bowling … well, we weren’t quite as successful at bowling – mostly because our ‘planning’ for this even was a little loose, and it turns out that Saturdays are league days. Hence, we weren’t able to get a lane and complete this event. Note for next year … plan ahead.

Back to the Arena

Thus, it was back to the house for the indoor events: ping pong, darts, foosball and beer pong, followed by our annual HOlympics Hold ‘Em Poker tournament event. I was struggling early with my scores, but this was my chance to shine. I’m usually a contender in darts, have never finished less than 3rd in poker and figured that my college days would have me prepped for beer pong. Well, 2 out of 3 isn’t bad.

Ping Pong: Easily my weakest event – I don’t think I’ve EVER won a game at this event. And this year was no exception as I lost 21-11 in the first round. Then I faced our overall foosball champion in the first round, and lost 5-3. Ouch – two first round outs. Well, at least I had my strong events coming up. Or so I thought. The first one up was beer pong, and I was up when Gary came out of nowhere with 3 straight hits. I came back but not enough as he upset me in the first round (I felt only slightly less bad when the youngest of the competitors – an avid beer ponger – also lost to Gary). So, 3 indoor events and 3 first-round bounces. Not good.

But I salvaged the day in my two strongest events. I sailed through the competition in darts, winning our Cricket-style games fairly handily to run the table and take first place. Then came the drunken spectacle that was poker. Drunken, at least, from one player’s less-than-sober perspective, that is. We were all remarkably un-drunk, but one player was … well, laying down at the table. And yet he still finished 2nd … to me. So, I ended the night with two 1st-place wins, but it wasn’t enough to pull me out of 5th place, 0.5 points behind the person ahead of me.

Well, that’s just incentive for next year…

The Official Tally

Event Winners

• Basketball: Jim
• Horseshoes: Joe
• Target Shooting: Jim
• Go-Karts: Steve
• Bowling: n/a
• Ping Pong: Krishna
• Beer Pong: Gary
• Darts: Marty
• Foosball: Steve
• Poker: Marty

Final Standings

1. Name – Points
2. Jim – 64.5
3. Fred – 52.5
4. Steve / Dave (tie) – 50.5
5. Joe – 50
6. Marty – 49.5
7. Krishna – 45.5
8. Gary – 42.5
9. Josh – 34.5
10. Austin – 31

Other Fun Stuff

• Best Star Wars Remakes
• Review of the Force Unleashed – I want this game…
• Tiltviewer – interesting photo viewing app
• What Millionaire Athletes Can Do With Their Money – good article, though a bit older (I’m behind on links)
• Baseball Boss – interesting app if you’re a baseball fan

The Exelon team came out slugging – with an ungodly springy bat – and were pounding homers not only into the outfield but into the trees (by comparison, our best hitter, using a normal bat was easily 50′ short of the trees). I’m not saying that the bats made the difference, but had Bryl used their bats he would have destroyed the ball – or killed the pitcher, one of the two.

All night, we traded the lead. 2-0 lead for us in the top half of the 1st. 2-3 at the bottom. 5-3 at the bottom of the 2nd. 6-7 at the end of the third. And so forth. And then it came down to the top of the 7th, and final inning with us down by 5, we exploded for 6 runs to take the lead. They came back with a single tally to tie it up, 19-19. Extra innings.

We made the most of our top half of the inning, scoring 3 more to make it 22-19. All we had to do was hold them. It turned out that in our effect to protect the lead, we made a couple small errors, but it was ‘small ball’ that ended up killing us. An easily 2nd out wasn’t, so the subsequent ’3rd out’ was actually only 2. An easy run got them within one, and then a towering homer drove the tying and winning runs in to end the game, 23-22.

But I was happy with how we played, and how I played. I took over 3rd base for our injured coach/3B, who slipped onto 1st to minimize the strain on his torn rotator cuff. I did surprisingly well despite my not having played there all season. My box score:
Batting: 4-5, 2R, 5RBI | Fielding: 5CH, 1PO, 2A
SEASON – Batting: 12-21, 7R, 6RBI, .571 | Fielding: 40CH, 27PO, 2A, 2E, .950

Granted, I only had 4 singles, but 2 of those could have been extra bases but there were people ahead of me on the basepaths. And I also had a sacrifice fly that brought in one of those 5 RBI, so all-in-all, I’m happy with my performance (finally). And like I said, we played a solid game overall. As Jake said, “If you’re going to lose, this is the best possible way.” It almost felt like a win since Exelon is one of the ‘biggies’ in the league. And if we could almost beat them, we might just be able to take a game or two from Katz or Harmelin to put us into the playoffs. Next game – Thursday night.