Memorial Day-Vacation Sports Journal 2014 Part 4

Sunday Continued

Off-Road Truck Race

Strangely, there was still racing to be watched, namely a CORR night race.  Why was this scheduled opposite the Indy 500?  I can’t even imagine the thinking or lack thereof.  Good for me though. 

Race one featured a massive crash and flip before even the first turn.  The driver had to be helped out and taken away by ambulance.  There were plenty of other hard crashes too.  Since it was at night, there were some great shots of the glowing underside of the trucks while they were jumping.

In the second race, a truck hit a dirt mound by the side of the track, barrel-rolled across the track, and had a cabin fire.  Thankfully, it was mostly confined to the passenger side and the driver was taken out and the ambulance had to make another trip.  I don’t know if the nighttime conditions were causing more wrecks, but somebody might want to look into it.  Pretty exciting races anyway.

What may have excited most viewers more was a commercial during the broadcast for CBS Thursday Night Football.  They called it a partnership with the NFL Network.  I’d call it more of a white flag of surrender.  The NFL Network was never a good idea begin with. 

Baseball

The Texas Rangers played another matinee against the Detroit Tigers, this time with Justin Verlander on the mound.  Eric Nadel was cryptically out today for personal reasons.  As much as I love Matt Hicks (and he had some great play calls on Saturday), we all become nervous when the Voice of the Rangers is absent.  It wasn’t Verlander’s day as he gave up 9 runs by the 6^th inning before he was removed.  The final score was 12-4 Rangers.  Take your time getting back, Prince.  During the game, it was reported that Josh Beckett of the Dodgers pitched a no-hitter against the Phillies.  In spite of my current Dodger hatred, I was impressed.

Between the NASCAR pre-race and an emergency trip to Sears to help my dad buy a new microwave (trust me, I was not in a fit mood to go out in public today), I missed about half of the El Paso Chihuahua’s game, but apparently not the interesting half.  There was no score through four, but from there, the lead changed hands several times. 

The dogs came back from losing the lead to a grand slam and another time after the Rainiers batted around.  Finally in the 9^th, down a run and down to their last out, they’d drive in three runs and take the lead for good.  Final 14-12 Dogs.  I can’t help but think that the double-header yesterday somehow depleted both teams, if not in pitching, then in fatigue.

I feel bad for the Tacoma fans.  It was a four hour game in an off and on light rain.  The players were playing in the mud, which probably thrilled the grounds crew.  The PA there kept playing the Imperial March, but I couldn’t quite figure out why.  I head WGN playing it when the Yankees were in town playing the Cubs; I get that.  More important than this win, I think Tim mentioned that the Chihuahua’s hat won the minor league hat competition.  A triumph of marketing over any common sense. 

NASCAR

It’s the Coca-Cola 600, where Foxsports attempts to jam 600 commercials into a six-hour broadcast.  (I shouldn’t joke.  That’s almost happened.)  At least the broadcast started well with a display by the Marine Silent Drill Platoon, those guys who flip rifles at each other.  Very impressive. 

The end of the Indy 500 was apparently pretty exciting, which makes me feel wonderful.  American Ryan Hunter-Reay won, fine young man.  Kurt Busch arrived at Charlotte Motor Speedway via helicopter, fresh off his sixth place finish in Indy.  That’s pretty awesome for a guy who’d never raced a lap of competition in Indycar.  I’m waiting for someone to do “The Triple,” and add in Monaco.  It’ll never happen, if for no other reason than you’d need the Concord back in service and a direct flight from Monaco to Indianapolis.  Juan Pablo Montoya has driven and won in all three types of cars, though.  Just speculating.    

Kurt Busch would come up a couple hundred miles short as his engine blew about ¾ of the way through the race.  He was still pretty upbeat afterward.  Danica ran up front early, went down two laps, got dinged in a wreck, then blew up.  I know, who cares?  Junior had a cool Superman image on the hood, but problems underneath the hood took him out of the running for the win, but was still running at the end.  Jeff Gordon guts out a bad back to finish 7^th.

My favorite paint scheme was Logano’s Pennzoil car in an eye-catching green, yellow, and grey.  More than half the field was not on the lead lap by halfway.  13 cars were on the lead lap at the end.  Jimmie Johnson, class of the field from the beginning, closed it out for his first win of the year, punching his ticket to the Chase.  But the most important question is: Who was that hot Sprint Cup girl in Victory Lane?

Hello, Juliana White!

In spite of some great sports entertainment today, I still feel terribly cheated.  I wonder if I’m going to get ABC back for viewing.  The black screen wasn’t the IRL’s fault, but I can’t watch any of their races for the rest of the year, even if the station comes back.  Between not getting any sleep the night before, waking up super early, constantly doing and watching stuff, I swear that Sunday never showed up.  It was all one contiguous 48-hour Saturday.

Memorial Day-Vacation Sports Journal 2014 Part 3

Sunday

Today’s meal: Reheated pizza from yesterday.  They can’t all be gourmet meals.  Still great though.   

F1 Monaco

It’s 5:30 am.  The sun isn’t even up yet, but I am.  How could I resist the opportunity to finally see the Monaco race in English for the first time?  The broadcast said it was live as well (but I’m still skeptical).  In the pre-race, this track was compared to “threading a needle at 100mph,” and “riding a unicycle through a fine china shop.”  But who cares about the race?  It’s all about the glamour.  They showed scenes of the street parties that were going on only a few hours before the race.  The stands, the yachts, the hotel balconies, and even the even the free seating on the overlooking hill were filled.

Local boy, Nico Rosberg had won the all-important pole position, with his teammate Lewis Hamilton right next to him at the start.  The announcers mentioned there was some controversy about qualifying, which was never explained.  Mostly the rivalry between these two was hyped up. 

The only hope of an interesting race was either rain or a bunch of NASCAR’s showing up.  Essentially, Rosberg took the lead at the start and never gave it up.  The announcers tried to build up some drama, saying he might run out of fuel before the end.  Right.  Hamilton came in second, though he had to fight for it at the end against third place Daniel Ricciardo.  Even the other drivers politely pulled over to let them race, desperate to see some racing action themselves.  Hammy may have had some vision problems that cut his speed in the later laps.  I didn’t get confirmation during the broadcast.

There were a few interesting incidents.  Perez was knocked out by Button early in the race.  Gutierrez hit a barrier late and was taken out.  Suddenly I was missing the hysterical call of the Uni-mas announcers.  Four-time champion Vettel retired early with electrical issues.  Adrian Sutil, who’d managed to make three passes on track had the biggest wreck.  This brought out the Safety Car and a bunch of cars pitting for tires.  There was some gamesmanship as racers were blocked in to help teammates, such is the desperation for position on the world’s most famous slot-car track.

NBC went side-by-side with commercials during green flag racing, but did not break away during a wreck though.  I only noticed one, full-screen local break, and that was during another Safety Car period.  The feel-good story of the race for me was hearing that recently retired Mark Weber was out on one of the yachts, finally able to watch a Monaco race in peace.    

Indy 500

KVIA El Paso was still broadcasting sound with no pictures on Sunday.  I can hardly convey my disappointment.  This might be my favorite sporting event of the year, ruined for no apparent reason.  I didn’t even care to follow what happened.  Worst of all, I didn’t even get to hear Jim Nabors last performance of “My Indiana Home.”

Memorial Day-Vacation Sports Journal 2014 Part 2

Saturday

Today’s meal: A Digiorno rising crust pepperoni pizza from my oven.  Honestly, it probably beats pizzas from most pizza shops.  Recommended.

Gobal Rallycross

“Who?” you’re asking.  I think saw one of their races once before, perhaps last year, or maybe it was a different rally series.  It was on a different network.  Whatever.  It’s on.  This is the weekend for motorsports.

The series consists of little, up-armored compact cars racing around an asphalt and dirt track in heat races.  They use standing starts, which the cars didn’t have any trouble with.  (Ahem, Indycar.  Consider taking some notes.)  The track they were at was in Barbados and featured one jump.  The rules allow the cars to a take a “Joker” lap, which lets them to bypass the jump once during the race. 

How was the action?  Pretty darn good.  One of the heats featured a car flying too far on the jump that caused his passenger side door to fly off.  The main event started with one car sent flying into another car after hitting a high curb.  The car rolled and flipped on its back, spurting oil like a geyser.  For the rest of the race, you had cars going sideways and then some around the corners as they banged off one another.  The crowd there went nuts watching.   

Scott Speed, yes that F1/NASCAR washout, won the event easily, with what the commentators were saying was a possibly broken car.  I recognized a couple other names in field.  Speed was racing for an Andretti team, so it has some participation by a well-known organization.  F1 driver, Lewis Hamilton and his F1 car, were there for a short exhibition race with one of the rally cars.  I’m not sure when this event actually took place, but I’d think Lewis would have some business in Monaco to attend to this weekend.  The expense of sending him and that car over must have been enormous for a publicity stunt.  Red Bull may be putting up some big money for this series.

In addition to commercials for the F1 race tomorrow, NBC was also advertising for a special on Kurt Busch as he attempts “The Double.”  There was also an ad for NASCAR on NBC, coming summer 2015.  I think they’re excited to have them coming back.

NASCAR

I didn’t bother reiterating by ban on watching Nationwide races as I sat down for the race.  How to describe what happened next?  I was receiving clear audio over the air for the local EL Paso ABC affiliate KVIA, but no video.  The other three digital stations that come in on Channel 7 were fine.  It was working fine earlier this week.  Unlike most of my problems, this one did not seem like a personal one, but rather one with the station.  Needless to say, I didn’t “watch” the race (or bother listening, I’m not that desperate for racing action).  I have some grim foreboding about tomorrow’s Indy 500.

Baseball

The Tigers played the Rangers Saturday afternoon wearing throwback Negro League Jerseys.  Likely this choice was made when they thought this would be a nationally broadcast game on Fox, which it wasn’t.  There wasn’t a lot of suspense in this game as the Rangers won 12-2.  I still haven’t heard the result of Prince Fielder’s injury, whether he’ll be out for the season or not.  They didn’t miss him today.  Of note, I think the Rangers had three triples in the game.  There were three challenges, all successful, two for the Tigers, one for the Rangers.  I’m forced to admit that all three were rather quickly done.

Fox finally decided to broadcast a national game Saturday night.  When I saw the lineup, I said, “Oh God, no!”  To have to wait two months into the season to finally get to watch an entire ball game on TV and then be subjected to an Angel’s game, was too cruel.  Somewhere, the Baseball Gods took pity, or weren’t paying attention.  We got the Cardinals vs. the Reds.  Whew!

Fox seems to have ended their association with the MLB Network.  The pre-game was in the Fox studios and all of the announcers were Fox.  This may be because the networks are now broadcasting national games against one another.  Veteran play-by-play and Reds’ announcer Thom Brennaman was joined by the rookie color debut of Gabe Kapler.  There was a highly unwarranted complimentary career reel for Kapler, who in my mind was one of the most over-hyped, underperforming ballplayers of his era.  In front of the microphone, I thought he was pretty good, though he was talking way too fast.  Keep the enthusiasm, but slow down the delivery.  Cardinals 6-3 with some 9^th inning drama. 

The El Paso Chihuahuas had a double-header versus Rainiers in Tacoma.  Though both games were seven innings, they started too late for me to even hear the results of one of them.  I was pleased to finally have confirmation of Rule 4.10 (a), which allows for seven inning games for double-headers.

Memorial Day-Vacation Sports Journal 2014 Part 1

Thursday

Today’s Meal: McAllister’s Deli, Sweetberry Chicken Sandwich from the Secret Menu and a Mixed-Berry Lemonade.  The sandwich was fine, though not as good as the two other items I’ve had from the Secret Menu: the Patriot and the Godfather.  I blame the bellyache on the fact that I didn’t stop when I was full.  The Lemonade was a disappointment.  It was just okay.  Given how good their sweet tea is, I was expecting more, especially after they’d been sold out the last three times I’d tried to order it. 

NMSU Aggie Baseball

I listened to their first WAC tournament game Wednesday night.  It started a bit after 8:00 and ended at midnight in gut-wrenching defeat.  They’d lead comfortably for most of the game only to lose it in the bottom of the 8^th.  Final score 11-10 against City State Directional Tech (who cares who they’re playing).  Today’s game in the Loser’s bracket (I assume there’s a more politically correct name for that, but I don’t know what it is), the Aggies bounced back 7-3, which means I’ll be able to hear them tomorrow.  Of note, one of Aggies uses a wooden bat.  Apparently none of the BBCor bats were heavy enough for his tastes.

Texas Rangers

I started listening to the Rangers’ day game on Wednesday, only to lose reception early on.  I was enjoying today’s day game, where they were whipping up on the Tigers, when the same thing happened.  A co-worker has suggested a neighbor is probably experimenting with a Tesla Coil.  I went to McAllister’s because they were the only nearby restaurant open before the game.  I started listening to the Aggie game, because I couldn’t hear the Rangers, and I had an upset stomach the whole time.  This wasn’t the best way to start a vacation. 

One thing I did hear was that the Rangers have gotten some new radio sponsorship for challenge calls.  Oh, how I’ve loved watching the manager-umpire hokey-pokey dance while they’re trying to decide if they want to challenge or not.  I knew (and presumably everyone else) that this would turn into some stupid gamesmanship ploy.  I just didn’t know it’d be this bad.  And rest assured, it’ll get worse.  The time it takes New York umps to make the call, doesn’t include the wait times for the challenge/no challenge decisions.  Gee, I wonder if games are going to slow down and last longer because of this? 

Washington Redskins

I’m so gratified that the Senate, who couldn’t be bothered to take up a bill about cleaning out bad employees from the Veterans Administration, did find time to condemn and demand a name change for the local NFL team.  I’ve got handful of much more offensive names that would be way more appropriate to represent Washington DC.  Instead, I’ll suggest a completely inoffensive name that will appeal to children, just like the Chihuahuas: The Washington Toy Poodles.  There’s the Toy Poodles now charging out on to the field in their pink and white uniforms with their adorable mascot, Fifi! 

As a Dallas Cowboy fan (I know I’m pretty quiet about that but I haven’t had a lot to cheer about for the last, oh, decade), I hate the Redskins and look on with complete amusement at this situation.  On the other hand, the Redskins do have a pretty good national fanbase who do care and probably don’t want the name changed.  According to the last known poll on the subject, somewhere upwards of 90% of the people of being theoretically directly offended by the name, don’t care about it.  So who doesn’t like the name, and why are the rest of us listening to them?

I can see it now.  “It’s a game-winning, last second field goal!  The Toy Poodles have beaten the Cowboys!”  (JDH417, watching the game, grits his teeth.)  “G*d*mnit!  And the name change has made this loss a thousand times worse!”   

El Paso Chihuahuas

The dogs were out of town and KROD powered down for the evening before their West coast game came on, and I don’t have an Internet connection at home.  But, I do have some news to report.

One of the Tim’s guests during the dogs’ first home day baseball game has posted his review of the new ballpark.  He’s got the dramatic, sudden history of the stadium here, a bunch of pictures here, and a review of the food here.  Short story, he liked the place a lot.

I’ve also got a couple of reviews from people at work, who’ve gone to games.  Yes, the dogs have got some appeal here, up the road, in Las Cruces.  Both people who’ve gone very much enjoyed the experience and were highly impressed with the facility.  Both had no trouble parking across the street in the parking garage, which I find heartening.  The only complaint that both had was the high price of concessions.  No complaints about the food itself, which was great. 

One of the girls was irritated that she didn’t get to see enough of “Chico,” just barely getting a glimpse.  Given that she didn’t have her kid with her at the time, I found this a little disturbing.  She was worried about taking him along, him being a hyperactive little boy.  I told her, I thought there was a playground somewhere at the stadium, so she may take him next time and, no doubt, embarrass him in front of the mascot.

Friday

Today’s Meal: A Five Guys Bacon Cheese Burger.  Excellent.  Over the meal, I prepared my bid for the Los Angles Clippers.  Upon acceptance, I plan on firing all of the multi-million dollar salaried Black players and replacing them with sub-minimum wage hourly illegal aliens.  I may even convert the team to an indoor soccer league.  At the press conference I’ll say, “Missing Donald Sterling yet?”

NMSU Aggie Baseball

Back at the WAC tournament, the Aggies took the first game of an elimination double-header, 7-4.  Next, they faced the number one seed with their pitching staff highly depleted, giving up 6 runs by the second inning.  They made a good comeback run, but lost 9-5 and finished their season.  I’m sorry to see it end, since these Aggie games are the best reception I get for baseball on the radio.

Texas Rangers

Rangers are playing the Tigers again.  Weird to hear Eric Nadel call one of my favorite players, Ian Kinsler, making plays against the Rangers.  Then the signal cut out from the El Paso station and the game was over before I could pick it up on a Midland station.  So much for baseball today.

Artifacts: Peanuts Fan Letters

[I'm off until next Friday.  Please go ahead and peruse some of the older posts if you haven't already.  I suspect I'll have some Memorial Day sports posts when I get back.  After that, I 've got one more short adventure ready to post.  I'm working on a large haunted house adventure right now.  Hopefully, it'll get close to done while I'm on vacation.]

I’m a big fan of Peanuts. I’ve got a whole bunch of the old paperbacks still. Back when I was in grade school, somehow I got the fan address for Charles Schultz and wrote him a couple of letters. (That address might still be valid for fan letters.) No telling what I wrote, but these are the replies I got back. If they weren’t in such poor shape currently (I’ve cleaned up the scans a little), I’d have them framed and on the wall.

Artifacts: Susanna Hoffs

Now if there’s two words that will get the attention of any guy who was a teenager in the 80’s, it's Susanna Hoffs, lead singer of the Bangles. This interview about her solo album is from a magazine that was probably a giveaway with a purchase. (Sorry for it being in pieces. It just won’t fit together cleanly.) I own this album (and even her second solo album). The Mariah Carey ad was on the same page as the Hoffs ad. Yes, at one point Mariah was an up and coming young star with a debut album, and not a diva.

Sports Journal 5-18-14

Soccer

You know it’s been a poor sports weekend when you’re starting off with soccer.  Oh, it’s likely more my fault than sports in general, but athletics haven’t done anything to rouse me from my funk.

I thought last weekend that somehow the English Premier League had its championship.  Imagine my surprise as two teams were playing for a cup and neither of them were the team that was being congratulated last week.  I have no idea. 

I decided to give it a look-in because my favorite soccer team, Arsenal, was playing.  How did I acquire a favorite team in soccer when I don’t even have a favorite hockey team, a sport which I actually watch regularly and enjoy?  Simply, they are the favorite team of my favorite F1 driver, Jensen Button.  Also, they seem to be nicknamed, the Gunners, which would actually be a great team name.  Unfortunately in our repressive thought-controlled society, we’re unlikely to ever see that name used here.  (More on team names later.) 

My Arsenal guys managed to make the greatest soccer comeback of all time as they were down by the insurmountable score of 2-nil, but tied it in regulation and went into Extra time.  Failing to break the tie, the teams into Extra Extra time.  Arsenal scores!  Yea!  Championship! 

Wait, why are they still playing?  Two minutes later, the teams decided to stop playing for whatever reason, and Arsenal had indeed won, this time for sure.  I have no idea what I watched or how the game works, but my guys won!  I wonder if there’ll be another championship next weekend?  (Actually, I think there is.)

Cycling

Oh yeah, now I’m officially scrapping the bottom.  Even I may not read the rest of this post.  Actually, I enjoy bike racing, or did.  Because of all the scandal in the sport, it’s lost a lot of prestige and, frankly, it’s highly un-cool to say that you like it these days.  It was the Tour of California.  Cyclists in the final stage were challenged by high mountain elevations and even higher state taxes, and a flat out urban sprint, dodging illegal aliens left and right.  I’m just kidding.  It was an upscale neighborhood.  No doubt the residents had sent the lawn workers away for the day.  What’s great about cycling is that the winner gets kissed by trophy girls on the podium, the way God intended.  The winner had twin ruby red lipstick marks on his cheeks during the interview.  Awesome.

Hockey

My ability to watch hockey seems to be diminishing as summer temperatures rise.  I skipped the Sunday game, even though I like the Blackhawks.  I paid indifferent attention to the Saturday game where the Ranger drubbed the Canadiens.  They were playing in Montreal, and I couldn’t help but notice that there was an Expos banner up in the rafters with the hockey team’s banners.  This brings up the obvious question of what did the Expos ever win?

I think I missed mentioning this early in the baseball season, but late in Spring Training, I saw the Blue Jays in an exhibition game at Olympic Stadium.  The Montreal fans were encouraged to break out there old Expos jerseys, and they actually filled the stadium there.   Where were all of these people when they had a team?  Seems like there’s good-sized potential fanbase there.  Montreal Rays?  Montreal A’s?  Hmmmm.

Indycar

Wait.  That was a hockey update?  Weak.  I deserve a good, cheap shot into the boards for that one. 

Well, it’s about to get weaker.  Local boy, Ed Carpenter won the pole for the Indy 500 for the second year in a row.  I couldn’t watch more than five contiguous minutes of qualifying, in spite of four hours of coverage over two days.  Sunday was particularly bad as ABC/ESPN spent an hour doing nothing before drivers actually went out on track.  The new qualifying format made no real sense to me.  The change was probably mandated by the lack of needing a “bump” day, which certainly means that they’re probably paying a few teams to start to make up the field of 33 cars.  Still, I’m looking forward to the big race next weekend.  Sort of.  During the cycling, NBC was advertising the Monaco race starting at 5:30 am.  Memorial Day Sunday promises to be a very long day for me.

Baseball

Why am I even bothering with these section titles?  First up, I have to mention the NMSU Aggie baseball I listened to all afternoon on Saturday.  The second game of the double-header was rather memorable at 22-15 Aggies.  I think the football team would be happy if they could score like that.  It was a 7-inning game that, no surprise, took longer than the 9-inning game that preceded it.  There was something like five pitchers used in the first inning.  That was the end of their regular season.  They’re off to the WAC tournament this week.

In Major League Baseball, the rash of pitcher arm injuries continues unabated.  I don’t pretend to have any special knowledge about this subject, and apparently neither do the people who get paid to take care of these guys.  For all of the babying of Strassburg’s arm, he still ended up needing surgery.  My Rangers are getting devastated for the second year in row over injured pitchers.  Nobody seems to know what they’re doing when it comes to managing arms, especially new pitchers.  I think this issue will be (or should be) headed to the Commissioner’s office.

I was pleasantly surprised that KROD was carrying the ESPN Yankees-Pirates game Saturday afternoon.  I almost listened to it instead of Aggie baseball.  Unfortunately, apparently nobody at the station was listening either, as local commercials kept interrupting the game.  I changed stations in sheer frustration.  Let’s see you guys at KROD pull this kind of amateur hour broadcasting during a Cowboy game or during your local sportstalk sometime.  If it’s too difficult for you to broadcast national baseball games correctly, why don’t you just broadcast dead air/ESPN sportstalk (same thing) in between commercial breaks instead? 

Chihuahuas

This is what’s known in journalism as “burying the lead.”  I have to make another apology to the team.  On the team’s website, there’s a link to a contest for best minor league cap.  After perusing the entries, I’m forced to conclude that “Chihuahuas” is not only not the worst team name, it may not even be in the top ten of bad names.  The Biscuits, the Rubber Ducks, the Sand Gnats, the Hops (beer hops), the Kernals (cob of corn), the Tourists, and the Manatees are just a sampling of, not just worse, but much worse names.  I won’t even get into some of the weird, disturbing logos. 

There’s some winners on the list like the Arkansas Travelers, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the Tulsa Drillers, the San Antonio Missions, but for the most part, most teams are lucky to even have a questionable name.  Listening to all those Texas League games, I had just assumed most minor league teams had good names.  How about those cats?  We got Mudcats, Fishercats, Rivercats, Rockcats, Valleycats, and Flaming Cats (I’m just kidding about that last one).  I’m beginning to think somebody should take up my gag name, Surfing Bears, for real.  (If I ever own a team, I’m naming them the Gunners.  I expect harsh criticism from the PC police.)

 

The team, meanwhile, has sent down the hero of their first homestand, Jake Lemmerman, to Double A.  I said Triple A rosters were fluid.  His game-winning grand slam lives on in the promos. 

The Las Vegas 51’s came to town and lived up to their second-best record in all of baseball, taking the first three games in the series.  On a Dog Day Sunday afternoon, where El Paso fans were encouraged to bring their dogs, the 51’s went up 7-0 halfway through the game.  Game over?  Hardly.  In the bottom of the 6^th, Cody Decker would drive in a go-ahead run for the dogs, capping a 7 run inning.  (No word on what he was wearing though.)  Needless to say, the sell-out crowd went berserk.  From the sounds of it, I don’t think any of them left at 7-0.      

The score would go back and forth again, but El Paso would prevail 10-9.  Another signature game for the team at home.  Unlike the Diablos, where it didn’t matter if they won, it only mattered what the promotions were (really, they didn’t budget for promotions in the post-season, the fans and team management literally didn’t care if they won or not), I think the fans are expecting more now.  The Chihuahuas need to win to keep their fanbase.  Victories like this are exactly what they need to keep the buzz going.  Another thing that helped this series was having local El Pasoan, Omar Quintanilla, playing, albeit for the opposing team.  The fans did applaud him and give him a warm welcome.  Very knowledgeable. 

My only disappointment with today’s game would have to be with the canine fans.  I don’t know how many dogs were in attendance, but I only heard one distinct bark.  Apparently the dogs were sitting on their paws for the game.  What were they thinking while their owners were going crazy?  Would the dogs rather have been home watching golf or hockey?  Mad that they never get taken to basketball or football games?  I blame their owners for not properly training them.