Staying Up Late With Phil Mushnick



Sleepy Phil isn't just upset for himself. As always, he's looking out for the kids. From today's New York Post :

Please indulge this self-indulgence, but I hadn't missed the last out of a World Series game since 1960, when Bill Mazeroski broke my Yankee-loving, eight-year-old heart.

Wednesday night, in the seventh inning and with the Red Sox about to break a streak of over 80 years, drowsiness nevertheless dulled the senses; sleep was on the march. Again.

So I was moved to do something that as a lifelong baseball fan struck me as both necessary and pathetic. I set my alarm clock; I set it for 11:25 p.m. — the earliest the game could end — lest risk being asleep when the Red Sox finally landed on the moon.

It made me angry, like during the 2000 World Series, driving home on the Turnpike from Shea, fighting sleep with two kids asleep in the back seat at 2 a.m. on a weekday, after a day's work and after spending more than $600 — face value — on four tickets to sit way upstairs. I felt as if being a devoted baseball fan had imperiled the good and welfare of my family.

I felt like a jerk. I wanted Bud Selig to tell me whether this made sense, whether it met with his approval.

Learn to live with it? Take it or leave it?

It has become a given that all World Series games will start late and end late. But does that make it acceptable?

Is it acceptable that Boston's young Red Sox fans, in the midst of the team's greatest moments in over four generations, had a far lesser shot at seeing the ends of these games than a kid in Tacoma or Tucson? If so, why?

I had to watch the last 5 World Series prior to this one with UK starting times of 1am or later, so Phil can fuck off with his sob story about needing sleep. So he has to work the next day (gee, I wonder what that must be like) --- what would he have to write about the next morning were it not for the ballgame running late? If Phil is really concerned about his children or anyone else's missing baseball history for fear of dozing off, he can do something useful --- bust out the amphetamines, shut up and get out of the way.

Posted: Fri - October 29, 2004 at 02:58 PM      

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