Monday, August 14, 2006

walt whitman bridge*

Late last week, after being thoroughly tired of missing first pitch because I’m still at work, or heading home from work, the MG household made the decision to acquire a DVR from Time Warner.  (We are actually not technophobes, nor Luddites, just busy and not realizing that this was an affordable option.) We picked up our new box yesterday, conveniently arriving at the Time Warner store-thingie in time to watch the end of the game, which was of course on one of the many screens around this location.

(Our obvious interest in the game - despite the security guard yelling at us that we had to Sit Down And Wait For Our Number - got the one guy in the store who cared about the game to wait on us as soon as our number came up, where we had a lengthy and spirited discussion about the Mets while he processed the paperwork faster than I have ever seen a Time-Warner employee do ANYTHING. “Clearly, the Mets are on everyone’s mind these days,” TBF commented.)

I proudly programmed the box last night to get the pregame show and the game, and noted to TBF the wonderful feature attached to live events. I think he was peeved he didn’t get to set up the DVR, but he was busy hammering bookcases together.

I got off the L train close to 8pm, giddy that I could actually see all of the game, and not just the highlights. We didn’t have to rush home, or try to cook dinner while craning our necks towards the television set hoping we didn’t miss something.  We took our time making dinner and settling down.  TBF immediately pounced upon the DVR remote, and hit the wrong button. The button for the live tv.

And we saw that the game was at 9-0 in the 6th.

He promptly got up and said, “We don’t want to see this game.”
MG: “They could rally.”
Rolling of eyes, but he returned to the couch and the remote and we began watching the game in fast forward.

As things got worse… and worse… and worse… I grabbed the laptop and watched the game out of one eye. I went over to Faith And Fear In Flushing, which was a slight tactical error, because the game was already over in real time at that point, and one click in the latest post took me to the ESPN boxscore.

“It gets worse,” I said, quickly closing the browser window.
“How much worse?”
“Bad.”
“Did Pedro get hurt??! Willie needs to put him on the DL until playoffs,” TBF said.
“No, not that.”

And then TBF hit the “Live TV’ button by mistake.

13-0.

Well, at least we didn’t try to drive down for the game. Our Philly friends are so going to have trash talking privileges when we see them next if the Mets don’t turn something around in the next day or so, and remember that THE SEASON IS NOT OVER YET.

Go Mets.

*title taken from the song of the same name

-----