Nothing like a good ballgame to lighten things up

Third-baseman Alec Bohm hits the second of the Phillies’ five homers. Click for video…

It’s not just having voted and gotten all that behind me that makes me more cheerful today.

There’s baseball. Good baseball, breaking the way I want it to go. Almost as good as going to Fenway Park and watching the Red Sox pound the Yankees.

Of course, the better game was Game 1, Friday night. I even had a blasphemous thought, in the last moments of the game, when a single ill-fated swing of the bat still could have given it to the Astros… I thought, “This is a great game, even if the Phillies lose.” And it would have been. Fortunately, they won it, 6-5, after having come back from 5-0.

Then there was Game 2, which doesn’t bear talking about, so let’s move on.

Then we moved to the East Coast, which is where the game is best played (even though they still didn’t move the time up to a more reasonable hour). And there was a delay of a day due to rain.

But Game 3 was worth waiting to see. Sure, it was kind of lacking in suspense, but that was fine. I’d like to see a similar game tonight. Then, we can have a close, suspenseful Game 5, with the Phillies winning the way they did in Game 1, and we can all celebrate, and not have to go back to Houston and be subjected to all that loud orange waving around.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading about the game this morning in The Boston Globe. I think I’ve mentioned how much I like that paper now since I started subscribing while I was up there, partly because their sports department actually seems to still understand that baseball is our national pastime.

The Globe, and other accounts I glanced at, focused on the same thing I did in my only two tweets during the game. First, I was shaking my head in admiration for the Phillies’ starter when I wrote:

Then, it occurred to me to follow that up with something on his counterpart:

Which was also impressive, in its own way. He tied a World Series record allowing those five homers in only 4⅓ innings.

I hope to see the Astros distinguish themselves similarly tonight. But much more than that, I want to see the Phillies win…

2 thoughts on “Nothing like a good ballgame to lighten things up”

  1. Brad Warthen Post author

    I guess last night I should have posed as an Astros fan — surely there’s something ugly and orange around here that I could have worn — and repeatedly tweeted, “Wow, we’ve got a no-hitter going!”…

Comments are closed.