Sports Journal October 4-5, 2017

10-4-17

The opening news item on today’s El Paso Sports Talk show was that soccer goddess, Alex Morgan, had tweeted out an apology for her and her teammates behaving badly at a restaurant at Walt Disney World.  Part of me was thinking, This is your top sports story?  The other part was thinking, What could be more important than an Alex Morgan story?  But that might just be me (and the guy doing the news).  This woman is directly responsible for me showing up at Aggie soccer matches and watching women’s soccer on television.  I can’t imagine her behaving badly in public, given what a role model she knows she is to little girls, but nobody’s perfect.  I still love you, Alex!

On that note, the Stadium Network was showing men’s college soccer this evening, which was 100% less interesting than the girls.  (You Stadium guys still owe me a volleyball match.)  More importantly, the NL Wild Card game was on between the Rockies and Diamondbacks.  It was an epic game.  Unfortunately, reception was again a bit iffy, not to mention, I’m on vacation.  I didn’t try to keep notes during the game, which was too bad.  The D-Backs got an early lead and piled on to a 6-0 lead by the third.  The Rockies came with a vengeance in the fourth with four runs and knocked Zach Greinke out of the game.

But Rockies’ pitching just couldn’t shutdown Arizona.  In the seventh, Diamondbacks’ relief pitcher, Archie Bradley tripled in two runs.  I think that’s a good indicator of the quality of Rockies’ pitching.  In the eighth, Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story homered back-to-back, but Arizona tacked on three more runs in the eighth.  The Rockies still managed a run in the ninth, but 11-7 D-Backs was the final.  I flipped on KOA out of Denver for the post-game.  Annoyingly, the reception was decent there, so I should have had them on after dark.  In interviews, the players were disappointed, but they all thought it was a great game to have played in.               

10-5-17

Okay, this wasn’t funny at some point.  I lost my slip of paper where I’d written my TV viewing schedule for Thursday and Friday.  Now, I wasn’t exactly lost.  I sort of remembered what was coming up.  The Stadium Network’s schedule isn’t up on the Internet, so it wasn’t even complete.  But where was it!  I don’t live in a large apartment.  I turned the place upside down looking for it.  Late in the night, there was a storm going and I was lying down, trying to sleep, and all I could think was: Where is it!  

Lucky I remembered The Orville was on tonight.  I’d seen the premiere and hadn’t been hugely impressed.  Then I saw STD (or Star Trek: Discovery).   Other people who’d seen both, said Orville was the real Star Trek.  Tonight at least, I agree, it was.  Wonky physics, techno-babble, ray guns, spaceships, weird aliens, yep, it hit all the checkboxes.  Having Charlize Theron on as a guest star didn’t hurt.  Seriously, this was Star Trek: The Next Generation with some good humor tossed in.  I thought this would just be a parody series, but, no, it’s legit.  (I was looking forward to a faux Star Trek meets an ersatz Star Wars episode.  Oh, the gags that could go into that one.  That could be a whole series by itself.)  I can’t believe Seth MacFarlane has been able to control himself long enough to make some quality material.  I can hear his pitch to the network now.  “Hey Fox, I wanna do a copyright infringe-y Star Trek fan series, where I’m the captain and I bang hot chicks every week.”  “It’s your world, Seth.  Run with that.”

Elsewhere (namely the Stadium Network), the Colorado State Rams played the Boise State Broncos in women’s volleyball.  It was another trip to Boise (9-15-17).  The crowd was a bit smaller and the bleachers behind the service line were gone, but there were still probably close to 1,000 people in the gym.   These teams’ meeting last year late in the season had 1,400 there.  The Broncos had their band there and the crowd was mostly in white for a “White Out.”

Colorado State has an impressive pedigree in the Mountain West: 210-32, 7 championships in a row, and hadn’t dropped a set for several matches this season.  This Boise State reeling off two set wins to start the match was pretty impressive.  The first was close at 25-20.  The Broncos dominated the second 25-11.  The next two sets showed that it wasn’t going to be that easy.  The Rams took the third 25-23 and the fourth 25-19.  Both times, the Rams were ahead by quite a bit, but Broncos came back and made it close.  The fifth set was suitably epic.  CSU went up by three, but BSU came back and tied it at 11 with a pair of aces.  They tied again at 14 and 15.  In extra points, the Rams won the 16-15 point that was so long that the crowd stopped cheering and was holding their breath on it.  CSU finally took the set 17-15 and the match 3-2.  That was some good volleyball.     

In baseball, Jose Altuve hit three home runs to help the Astros and Justin Verlander beat Chris Sale and the Red Sox, 8-2.  You think Altuve wants it bad?  And, the Indians beat the Yankees, 4-0.