Still Cheering for Baltimore and Oakland!

Hello,

Whoever organized the playoffs did a good job, having both the AL games played tonight is genius. The two AL series have so much more intrigue than do the NL series. There's just not a lot of intrigue involved with the Reds, Giants, Nationals or Cardinals.

Thanks to ESPN radio I was able to listen to the end of the Reds-Giants last night. Although I'm tired of Chris Berman. Although not an exciting series, this ending was pretty exciting. How does the Giants team strike out 16 times and still win?

I'm cheering for the Orioles to defeat the Evil Empire, the Yankees. Actually I'm cheering for anyone to beat the Yankees. I started following Baltimore about 2/3rds of the way through the season. They have been a fun team to follow. I enjoyed them beating the could care less Rangers in the AL Wild Card Game. Bizarrely MLB had the team who didn't have home field advantage open the series at home. That meant the first two games of the ALDS were at Camden Yards. Unfortunately they only split the first two games. So now both teams go back to the Bronx to conclude the series. Any remaining games in this series will be in New York. Game 3 is tonight and a victory for the Orioles would be a major confidence builder. It also would hopefully make the Yankees feel vulnerable and cause them to tighten up going forward.

I'll be cheering for Miguel Gonzalez to shut down the Yankees tonight. The Yankees will be sending my favorite ex-Dodger on the Yankees roster to the mound. That's Hiroki Kuroda, who I wish the Dodgers wouldn't have let go at the end of last season.

Also the A's came up with a crucial victory last night, beating Detroit 2-0. Detroit still leads this series 2-1 but any remaining games will be in Oakland. With the A's refusing to give up and playing at home I expect them to win this series.

Like last night, there are a lot of things to watch tonight. The two baseball games I mentioned and also three new series debut tonight. There's "Nashville", see my previous blog. Also debuting tonight is the decent "Chicago Fire". The last new show debuting is "Arrow". "Arrow" looks like it could be good, but it's on the CW.  The CW isn't exactly known for highest quality TV, their shows usually look a bit janky. Unfortunately I haven't been able to see the first episode of "Arrow" yet.

However "Arrow" ends up being, it won't get worse than the Cowboys-Ravens game Sunday morning. It will be the low scoring offense of the Cowboys against the incredibly tough Ravens defense. That's going to be ugly. Hopefully Tony Romo will throw less than 5 interceptions this time.

Another ugly game will be BYU-OSU Saturday afternoon. Neither team will have it's best quarterback, so it will be a battle of back-up quarterbacks. That formula doesn't inspire me to have a lot of excitement about this game. BYU can't score with their best quarterback, Taysom Hill, and BYU's defense gives up so few points. The quarterback playing for BYU, Riley Nelson, reminds me a lot of Romo. Both are completely overmatched and have serious ball handling issues. Both also try to do more than they should, which leads to some of those ball handling issues.

themusicaddict