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We are a two-alarm-clock household.
My wife gets up about 5 a.m. and gets ready to be at work between 6:30 and 7. I go in later, so I have a later wake-up time. Right now, we’re sharing a car, so I sometimes take her to the office and then return home for a quick nap.
Nancy’s clock-radio with a buzzer quit early in the week. So she trusted me to set the alarm with my battery-powered LCD travel clock until she could go buy a new one.
I performed my new job well for a couple of days, but she still reminded me often before she went to bed. (She usually makes it until the sixth or seventh inning of St. Louis Cardinals games, but I watch the entire game and then the post-game interviews before I consider going to bed.)
But Thursday morning (or Wednesday night) was different. When I got to bed, she was awake enough to remember to remind me to set the alarm. I still was awake enough to reach over and do it — or so I thought.
Nancy raised up in bed quickly and said: “Did you set the alarm?” I looked at the clock and thought I saw “1:32,” and I said, “Yeah, I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
I looked again and this time the clock said “7:32.” When I looked at the on-off alarm switch, it was neatly there on the right under “OFF.”
Nancy quickly called in to work and explained that her alarm clock had died and that she had just gotten up. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be in the office for an 8:30 a.m. training seminar over the Internet. The techie-types like to call such sessions Webinars, but it seems like a pretty hokey, too-cutesy word to me.
Still, I was due to be in the conference room in less than an hour.
Nancy took a quick shower and I took a quicker one. We dressed rapidly and jumped into the car. As we started up Kanis Road, my wife kindly offered to drop me off and keep the car. We rushed down 12th Street and waited until we reached Woodrow Street to get on Interstate 630 to head downtown. (I still prefer Wilbur Mills Freeway, which is what it was called when it was built.)
She pulled up next to the Stephens Media office at Second and Main in Little Rock about 8:10 a.m. I even had time to grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen before the training started. It worked out well because several of my fellow Webinar-ists were caught in creeping traffic as they closed in toward downtown or tried to cross the Main Street Bridge from North Little Rock.
Still, the day turned out to be a struggle. We even had trouble getting a computer hookup from St. Louis to work. Eventually, it did and a second session in the afternoon went smoothly, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that when the alarm clock fails early on a given morning, you seem to be swimming against the current the rest of the day.
My goodness I’m glad I didn’t threaten to hold my breath until the National League won the Major League Baseball All-Star Game again because 1996 was a long time ago and my face would be quite red by now.
Yes, the Nationals defeated the Americans 3-1 Tuesday night in Anaheim, Calif., thanks to the bases-clearing double by the Atlanta Braves’ Brian McCann. I wasn’t happy when Phillies and National League manager Charlie Manuel pinch-hit McCann for Yadier Molina after only one at-bat by the Cardinals’ catcher (in which he produced a single), but it sure worked out later.
I liked it when sports writers used to call the teams representing the respective leagues the Nationals and the Americans. I don’t know why they quit, though I can probably blame it on the late Bowie Kuhn, whom I thought was the worst commissioner possible until Bud Selig showed me just how bad he could be — Exhibit A: the 2002 All-Star Game, which ended 2-2 after Selig let managers Joe Torre and Bob Brenly whine until he bought their excuse about not having any pitchers left and declared the game a 2-2 tie after 11 innings. He should have acted like a commissioner and said, “Boo hoo, boys. You should have thought about that instead of trying to win a popularity contest by playing everyone on your bench so early.” But I digress … I don’t suppose the powers-that-be would “allow” the team names of Nationals and Americans now because the Washington team nickname is Nationals.
Also, imagine my surprise when Marlon Byrd, the only Chicago Cubs player in the game, turned out to be the defensive star of the game by forcing out David “Big Papi” Ortiz with an alert throw to second from right field in the bottom of the ninth inning.
St. Louis Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright bowed his neck and worked out of a jam in the seventh inning after teammate Matt Holiday misplayed a line drive to left field into a double.
Way to go, guys. Let’s not wait another 14 years (2024?) before we win the next one, since idiot commissioner Selig has the winner receiving the home-field advantage for its league champion in the World Series in October.
One more thing … I’m sorry that George Steinbrenner died Tuesday morning, but you would have thought the longtime New York Yankees owner was Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox Sports, the way the Fox broadcasters went on about him. I didn’t even mind having a segment about what he meant to the Yankees, New York and even baseball during the pregame show. But Fox had to keep pounding us with it by breaking into play-by-play coverage during the game with interviews of various Yankees managers, players and former players. Enough is enough. We realize that New York is Fox’s biggest market, but the rest of us can’t stand the arrogant jerks — yes, even players I like are arrogant jerks when they play for the Yankees.
When Philadelphia hitter Chase Utley was ruled safe at first in the ninth inning of Phillies-Rockies frigid NLDS game in Denver early Monday (CT), the ump making the sign that first baseman Todd Helton was pulled off the bag by pitcher Huston Street’s throw, TBS announcers Brian Anderson and Joe Simpson barely mentioned that it appeared that the ball may have hit Utley in the batter’s box.
If it did hit him, the ball should have been ruled foul.
They never mentioned that Utley ran down the edge of the grass along the baseline, never entering the area marked as a runner’s lane until he got to first base. If his running outside the lane prevented Street from making a good throw, the umpire could have called him out.
Utley moved the runner ahead of him to third, thus allowing him to score on the fly ball by the next hitter up, Ryan Howard. That turned out to be the go-ahead and eventual winning run.
I don’t know if either was the case, but the announcers should have done more “investigating” with replays than they did. It may have meant the difference in the game.
In either case, the TBS announcers seemed to have the attitude of “it’s late, let’s not make too much of a fuss about it.” Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they just didn’t pay attention.
Mike Dougherty's Blog 