NLCS: The TBS Baseball Comedy Hour...and some decent baseball

I'm sitting here waiting for game two of the NLCS to begin.

I wasn't happy with the outcome of game one last night, all 13 freaking innings of it. I have to say, I'm not really all that fond of baseball games that have a bunch of action in innings 1 through 3 or so (as last night), then nothing much really happens until, oh, extra innings. And, of course, since the Dodgers didn't win last night, I'm not happy with that. Although, right at the end, I got to the point where I didn't really care much who won, so long as the game ended. Soon.

On the other hand...

If they hadn't gone to the 13th inning, those of us watching the game on TV wouldn't have been treated to that shot of the Dodgers' catcher grabbing himself. Twice. He was sending signs to the pitcher, but I'm not really clear on whether they've integrated grabbing himself into the signs, or whether that was punctuation that the catcher inserted himself, just for shits and giggles. Certainly, he got giggles here, from my roommate and myself. I started laughing and said, "Did you see that?" Roommate looked at me and said, "I'm glad you saw that, too. I thought I might have been imagining it."

No. It was no hallucination. And it was very, very funny. I just wonder if anyone called TBS or the league or the FCC to complain. Because, you know, some people just have no sense of humor.

This series is interesting in another respect, at least in this house. This is because I bleed Dodger Blue and my roommate, who grew up in Missouri, is a dyed-in-the-wool Cardinals fan. It's just a good thing that we both have a sense of humor about the fact that both the Dodgers and the Cards have shown themselves entirely too good at snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. Sort of like the Dodgers did last night.

So, if the Dodgers don't win this series and go on to the world Serious...erm, Series, I won't be happy. On the other hand, I won't be surprised. I won't be like they've never done that before.

On the way, there will still be lots of entertainment...even if the Dodgers' catcher doesn't repeat his performance from last night. Because there are always stranger and silly things that go on in baseball games. Like the plague of long, scruffy beards.

What is that all about, by the way? I know that baseball players are an incredibly superstitious bunch, and will do things like not change their socks, or their underwear, or not shave if they are on a streak. But some of these beards have clearly been around much longer than that. And, are they all on streaks of some kind? We got a good laugh from the Dodgers' (and formerly the Giants') pitcher Brian Wilson last night, though, whose beard is now so long that he had a rubber band around the bottom of it, presumably so it wouldn't get in the way of his pitching.

Yes, I know, Wilson is eccentric. I just didn't realize there were that many eccentrics in the Major Leagues. But, from the proliferation of scruffy beards, it's starting to look like I was wrong, and there are plenty of them.

Well, the game is on now. I'm going to go watch.

Go, Dodgers!