Baseball 5.5

Game on.

You know it's funny, but I predict this bizarre little 3 1/2 inning showdown in South Philly will be the most watched baseball game of the last few years. The TV ratings for the Series have been as terrible as expected, in part because Tampa is a great baseball team with no stars in an era when sports viewership can be as much Britney Spears as anything else (including politics). Who these millions of Americans who only watch the Yankees or the Red Sox in the World Series are, I have no idea...but it annoys the heck out of me.

But THIS...America will watch, just for the sheer oddity factor. The truly weird thing is that Major League Baseball and their evil masters at Fox may just find that the nation wants baseball in a tense, sudden-death-like hour and forty-five minute doses, as opposed to the four-hour marathons of a 9-inning playoff game. Will we see an 81-game season, with every game split in two? Just kidding, but...

Likewise, I was out of pocket today (more on that later) and heard Buster Olney on XM's baseball-talk station, who threw out the idea of the World Series as a one-week Super Bowl-type event at a warm, rain-free neutral site. Interesting to debate about, but a horrible idea. Two days of arguing about the bizarre events in the icy rain of Citizens Bank Park -- that's the kind of stuff that makes baseball America's pastime. A sterile dome environment would be awful.

On a personal note, I would have assumed that the Phillies in the World Series and last week of a presidential election would have been a lights-out week here at Attytood, but it hasn't turned out that way. Real life, in one form or another, has intervened every day this week, and all that news also means more work in putting out the newspaper (what is this?), so I haven't been able to give online readers what they might have expected here. My apologies.

The good news is I will be live-blogging all throughout Game 5.5 tonight, so come back later and check it out. One more thing: The Phillies are going to win the World Series tonight.

I guarantee it.