Ah, yes, here we are again.  The time of year when three or more sports overlap and it seems that all of the games that I am interested in are on the tube at the same time.  The TiVO can record one and I can watch another, but the problem is that today there are five on at the same time, and we only have two TV's in the apartment and I'm not swift enough to run from room to room to keep up on all of them at the same time.

There is the replay of last night's WNBA playoff game between the Storm and the Phoenix Mercury that I didn't get to see when it was on live. I already knew the outcome, but just hadn't seen the game, so it is kind of down around number five on my priority list for channel hopping.

But the Mariners/Rangers game started at 5:30 our time,, followed at 6:00 by both the Seahawks/Vikings game and the Angels/Jays game, and the Yankees/Tigers game was in the mix in that time frame as well.

The problem with all of this is that just when it is time to change channels for the next 10 minute stretch of catching up, something important and/or exciting happens in the game of the moment.  But, if I don't change the channel, I miss something equally important and/or exciting in the next game on the surfing schedule.  And, to make things worse, college football is about to toss itself into the mix any day now.  What's a body to do?  I can't, unfortunately, clone myself.  My daughter likes baseball and football, but not enough to watch the games and report on them for me (now, if hockey were on right now, I wouldn't have any problems, because she loves to watch hockey--just against the possibility that some colossal fight will occur sometime during the game (I think she is a closet Canadian)).

So, on I continue to go with my schizophrenic television watching schedule, never really knowing everything that happens in any particular game of a Saturday or Sunday.  If this were the last three years, I would say that it would be over in about another three weeks, and all I would have to worry about would be college football mostly on Saturdays, and pro football mostly on Sundays.  But this year, it is beginning to look like there might just be Mariners baseball into at least the first week or two of October, if not farther (please Lord????????), so I might just have to figure out some other means of keeping current with all of the important games.

Meanwhile, in other more amusing news, I could not help but ROTF and LMAO when I read this and this .  It looks like Clay "not quite a truth teller" Bennett and his cronies might finally be looking down the barrel of what they have coming to them,. After all, it's not like those of us who really pay attention didn't know that he never really meant to keep the Sonics in Seattle from the get-go, but now Commissioner Stern has spoken with the $250K fine for Aubrey McClendon and could very well put the proverbial bug into the board of governors of the NBA that Oklahoma City will just have to wait a while longer for an NBA team, and it could very well not be the Sonics that they end up with.

Oh well, my friends, the Hawks just scored another TD and it is time to check in on the M's,  who were down two runs the last time I peeked in on them in the seventh inning, then on to the Angels and Jays who were tied 2-2 the last time I looked in about the fifth inning.  Here's to productive sports viewing for you all this fine Saturday evening.

Although he is about three months younger than Roger Clemens, Jamie is an entirely different type of pitcher. Roger still has a power fastball (something that Jamie never really had, after all), and doesn't need to rely on stealth and craftiness to get a batter out.

The Mariners have been shut out seven times during Moyer's 23 starts this year. Now, I will be the first to say that this is not all his fault...the offense has been downright offensive (in the icky sense of the word) for a good part of the season. Still, it has become far less difficult for opponents to miss Mr.Moyer's 79 mile an hour fastballs this year than it ever has been before.  His record is 6-10 this year, with 23 home runs given up (five in one game not too long ago). Not a good sign to say the least, since a good many people consider him to be the "ace of the staff" (notwithstanding the 20 year old Mr. Hernandez, who is still in his first full season in the league and has a lot to learn before he can fit that definition).

Jamie would make an excellent pitching coach, and I think it is time for him to fill that role. He has been a mentor to the young pitchers for a long time, and they respect him. Let him make a contribution in that way. The M's are now the fourth youngest time in the majors (after having been about the second oldest for a couple of years after the amazing 2001 season), and they need to get a little younger yet.

The team has done better this year than I thought they would, but not as well as I expect they will do next year once all of the youngsters start to gel as a group. There are a few pitchers in the minors who deserve a chance to show what they have, and it might as well be now given the state of the AL West. The A's are on their annual late summer winning streak (not that they will fare any better in the post season than they usually do, of course, even if they do win the division. The Angels are hot on their tails. The Rangers, being the Rangers, will likely have their annual pitching implosion any day now, and their offense is not going to be enough to keep them in the race.

Jamie, do us all a favor (yourself included), and do an Edgar.  Announce your retirement for the good of the team; and the good of yourself and your family. Dan Wilson is gone, and he seems to have taken your best days with him. So, bow out now--it's not like you don't have a lot of other things to do with your six kids and your foundation.....

Yesterday started just like any other weekday for me. To whit, I fell out of bed at exactly 4:56 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, knowing that I had to be on the clock for work at 5:00 a.m..  I drug my sorry self across the room to my desk and turned on my computer so that I could log in just in time.  (It's a very good thing that I don't have my webcam turned on, or anyone and everyone could have seen me as I sat there in shorts and tee shirt, with my scuzzy slippers on and feet on a chair as I spent the next 12 hours sounding very professional and acting as if I were in some $1MM office somewhere instead of in the middle of my room, discussing health care matters).

Normally, my days go pretty smoothly and it is 1:30 in the afternoon before I know it. Not yesterday, oh no. I needed things to go right, and they couldn't have gone more wrong.  First my MS Outlook crashed about 20 times. I live my life in that program. It is how I know who I am supposed to call and when I am supposed to do it. Without it I am like the blind trying to lead the blind.  Then the terminal server decided to act up. Needless to say, I did not have a good day and was at screaming level frustration before the time came to call it quits for the day, necessitating my taking about a 3 mile hike downtown and back just to work it off.

Then, despite the fact that I promised myself two weeks ago that I would just ignore the goings on in Mariners baseball in order to save myself headaches and pains in my gluteal regions from another sucky season (can I say that on the Internet???), I turned on the Mariners/Rangers game, figuring that I wouldn't have to devote too much mind power to it after my bad day. Big mistake! Captain Kangaroo reruns, could I have found them on Nick or some such place, would have been an infinitely better choice, given my  mood.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mike Hargrove had done some shaking up of the lineup:  Sitting Richie Sexson for the day to rest his bruised heel and substituting Roberto Petagine; moving Adrian Beltre up to the 2 hole; moving Jose Lopez down to the 3 hole where he rightly belongs as the best hitter on the team right now; and moving Raul Ibanez to the 4 hole.   What am I saying? That lasted all of less than the first five minutes of the game!!!

The home plate umpire called a bad third strike that anyone with a TV and/or a TIVO could see was below the knees, which did not sit well with the current batter, one Mr. Ibanez (yeah, yeah, I know....Seattle, bad officiating.... LIVE WITH IT!), who had a few words to say to the ump prior to vacating the box and going back to the dugout.

Not 30 seconds later, Raul--who tends to be the most quiet and softspoken member of the team--was on the steps of the dugout, throwing things and remonstrating rather vehemently with said home plate umpire. Of course, this got him immediately ejected from the game. It did not, however, stop him from going back out to the plate and getting his money's worth before exiting the game once and for all.   All of this led to the substitution of Willie Bloomquist into left field and Ibanez' place in the batting order.

Before the night was over, I had a bad case of heartburn and a nasty headache, from ####ing my forehead into the wall repeatedly as stress relief (see my earlier posting which includes said stress relief kit). Sequential loss number five was on the books; the fire demonstrated by Ibanez should have ignited a win, but didn't; and I said words that I am neither supposed to say nor have I said in eons.

The headache and heartburn are still with me as I sit here working this morning (yep, in shorts and a tee shirt), and I am thanking the Lord that the game is radio only today and I can ignore it, because I certainly can't be listening to the radio and working, now can I? I'm not going to look up the scores up on the toolbar above this blog. I am going to pretend that baseball doesn't exist in the Great Northwest today (and tomorrow, too, because it is an off day for the team). Perhaps by Friday I will have gotten over my baseball DT's and can really ignore it for the rest of the season (unless the 1969 Miracle Mets suddenly get reincarnated and swoop into Seattle......yeah, right, like that's really going to happen). Is there a 12 step program for baseball addicts??????