A beautiful thing

Last night, and again tonight, I'm getting the very rare opportunity to watch live Major League Baseball featuring the Red Sox. And it is great.

God bless Opening Day in Japan (only a two hour time difference from me), God bless my satellite TV service, God bless the sports package on my satellite TV service, God bless the DVR on my satellite TV service, and most important of all, God bless ESPN Australia for not only carrying both games live, but when the game went into extra innings last night, God bless them for running over the scheduled air time. (The scheduled air time for the game was from 9pm to midnight, and as midnight approached, I was half convinced that someone would be asleep at the wheel -- or more likely, not at the wheel at all -- and allow the game to be cut off so that Madden frickin' Nation could run as scheduled at midnight.* And as 11:56 turned into 11:57 which turned into 11:58 and so on, I became more and more convinced that this would happen. Because really, this is baseball in Australia! Who cares if some random show about Americans playing a video game about "gridiron" cuts into the end of some random baseball game, right?** But even then, when I fully expected this to happen, if it actually had happened, I think my tortured screams would have woken you up in the States.)

*As I became more convinced of this inevitable scenario, my hatred for Madden Nation grew to levels of hatred of which I never knew I was capable.

**Don't get me wrong -- I'm quite glad that ESPN Australia apparently has some dude that has to stay back at the offices to monitor the game. (For our purposes here, let's call him DTHTSBATOTMTG.) But you almost have to feel bad for him. I could very easily imagine the following phone call between him and a friend:

Dude's Friend: Oi, mate! Wanna grab a few beers?

DTHTSBATOTMTG: Mate, I'd love to, but I have to wait until a baseball game being played in Japan finishes so I can switch the programming over to Madden Nation.

DF: (Dead silence.)

DTHTSBATOTMTG: (Embarrassed silence.)

DF: (Incredulous silence.)

Yeah, I think you get the point. An apt analogy to an Aussie working at ESPN Australia would be like a guy working at The Lifetime Network; it would be completely incomprehensible to his friends, and worse, he would know that no rationalization would allow him to save face with them.

Anyway, I'm savoring these two games. They may be the highlight of my year. And here's to hoping that the order of the teams in the picture above doesn't change for another 161 games.