I'm (not) mad

Pretty sad to see otherwise sane baseball people turn into squealing babies after Buster Posey got his ankle smashed into creamed corn trying to block the plate. Buster Olney launched a week-long diatribe claiming there should be a rule against catchers blocking the plate, as if a line in a rule book would ever stop what happened to Posey. The catcher is the last line of defense between a runner and home plate, and while there is a rule preventing the catcher from blocking the plate unless he is in possession of the ball, it probably hasn’t been invoked since 1892. Plain and simple part of the catcher’s job is to try to prevent runners from scoring on close plays. Catchers are hockey goalies without quite so much padding. Read this article and you’ll see that the play in question had more to do with the choice of the runner than with Posey. Scott Cousins chose to steamroll Posey even though pretty much any player with a modicum of skill could have slid around his tag to score. So it’s not that catchers need to be protected from their better judgement (MUST BLOCK PLATE!), it’s that runners must be stopped from treating catchers like tackling dummies. If you follow Olney’s reasoning you can make a case that batters should be banned from standing in the batter’s box because Tony C. got hit with a pitch.

I’ve become the worst kind of fraud Bruins fan. Frankly, I embarrass myself. I know next to nothing about hockey. I never watch the Bruins during the regular season. Everything I pretend to know about the team I’ve stolen from Toucher and Rich. Yet since the playoffs started I have made it a point to watch all of their games. Actually, almost all. There was a game or two against Philadelphia on Versus which is not included on my basic cable package. When the Bruins advanced to the Eastern Finals I begged Lisa to spring for the upgrade sports package so I could watch the games (Random aside: the sports package includes the MLB Network, which is awesome, and the YES Network, which is not awesome.). I’m happy that I did because I got to see Game Two, in which Tyler Seguin played one of the most dominant periods of hockey ever (two breathtaking goals and two assists), and Game Seven, which in terms of sheer nerve-wracking drama rivaled any other sporting contest I’ve ever seen. I was yelling so loud at the TV during the third period that I was afraid I might wake up my daughter sleeping in the next room.

Lisa and I finished watching “Six Feet Under” a couple weeks ago. It’s the kind of series that affected me so much that I feel like I should write a whole post about it, but I probably won’t. Because I’m the most intellectually lazy person you’ll ever waste two minutes of your day reading since you stopped reading Howie Carr’s column back in 1993. After much debate and negotiation we’ve decided to take a run at watching “Dexter.” We’re streaming it on Nexflix so the picture quality leaves a lot to be desired, and Lisa finds the central premise of the show (serial killer as vigilante) highly suspect, but we’re both engrossed by the first season’s Ice Truck Killer mystery. Yup, we’re just two lovebirds snuggled together on the couch with our herbal tea watching a show about one serial killer trying to track down another serial killer. Nothing wrong with that.