Captain Midnight

That's me. Captain Midnight. Working in a restaurant and watching games in the wee hours of the morning on the DVR (the greatest invention in history -- better even than EZPass) has made it so. And through two games of the Rangers' first-round series against the Capitals, I have to say I'm pleased with the results. It would be immature of me to take nights off from work -- we need the money, and in this day and age, who doesn't? -- to watch first-round games. Hell, I didn't even have to work tonight, and was all set to enjoy Game Three, yet I jumped at the offer of a late-night shift. My friend Jen gets to go home and see her new boyfriend, and I get to work her shift, which should provide great lucre.

I'm able to do this with the Rangers all the time. I bought the NHL package, and nobody ever spoils the outcome because, sadly, nobody gives a damn about hockey. That upsets me to no end, but the bright side is I can insulate myself from
Rangers results and watch games as if live when I get home late at night. The missus is asleep, so I'm not blowing off quality time with her to watch sports. She's not a sports widow. Major husband points for me!

As an aside, Boston, naturally, has gone ga-ga for the Bruins this year -- all a team has to do here is have the best record in its sport or win a title, and the fans come out of the woodwork. Of course, they were there all along. Whatever. Anyway, all the people at my restaurant will be glued to the Bruins' Game Three in Montreal, but I don't think anyone will be watching the crawl to find out how the Rangers are doing, because they're very new at this hockey-watching thing -- nobody will be able to convince me otherwise, especially at my place, which is not a sports bar -- so I'll probably get home without any idea how my beloved Rangers have fared. I cannot wait!

And I love how the sports gods have rewarded my responsible fandom with two wins on the road. The Garden should be absolutely rocking tonight. And when I say the Garden, I'm not talking about the TD Banknorth "Gahden," the nice yet disturbingly antiseptic home of the Bruins and Celtics. There is only one Garden, and a Ranger game there is just awesome. I remember going to the first game of the 2007 Big East basketball tournament at MSG. My Syracuse Orangemen against the hated Huskies of evil uconn. That has become an absolutely wonderful rivalry. Two great programs, both of whom have enjoyed tremendous success in the last decade or so (the 2003 national championship for Syracuse, two titles for the Great Satan). I sat there at that game, rooted my ass off for Syracuse, soaked in the atmosphere at the game, and thought to myself, "Hey, this is nice, but this doesn't even come CLOSE to how electric this place was Monday night." Monday night? Monday night was a Rangers-Islanders game, a virtually meaningless, regular-season tilt. The place was on fire. I can only imagine what it will be like tonight, with the Rangers returning home like conquering heroes.

But they have conquered nothing yet. They need a win tonight. Washington is way too talented a team to let back into this series. Simeon Varlamov played well the other night in his first playoff appearance. Of course, King Henrik was out of his mind again, and the Rangers played a far more disciplined game, but still only won 1-0. The Capitals could turn the tables tonight. Were the Caps to pull off two wins in New York, the Rangers would have lost everything they gained in two games in DC and will be dead men walking come Game Five. Even if the Rangers take a 3-1 lead back to DC, the Caps just have to win one at home, then steal one in New York, and again, Game Seven on the road does not bode well for the Rangers. This is the brilliance of the 2-2-1-1-1 format. You cannot overstate how much excitement this creates compared to the 2-3-2. (I'm not suggesting baseball abandon the 2-3-2 for the 2-2-1-1-1. It wouldn't work, logistically. I'm just sayin'.)

Man, I can't wait. Let's go Rangers!

OK, the Yankee portion of the blog -- this blog is supposed to be mostly Yankee talk, right? Right.

I will be recording almost all nationally televised Yankee games, as those will be the only ones I'll be able to see, other than games against Boston (coming up this weekend, by the way!). So I recorded yesterday's game on TBS, but was not sure when or if I'd be able to watch it, as it was the birthday of the Queen of the Embassy (she just told me she likes that name). But I just couldn't friggin' sleep last night. The cats didn't help, but I woke up at 4 and just wasn't tired. So I watched the game. Some very quick thoughts:

Was there nobody on the bench who could have pinch-run for Matsui in the seventh? I know it ended up making no differnce after Posada's home run, but still ... that was a bad bit of managing by Joltin' Joe Girardi-o. Who watched that game that did not know that A) Ransom was going to bunt, and B) whoever fielded the bunt was going to realize that the guy running from first to second is a near-35-year-old guy who missed most of last year with a knee injury and is at least two months away from playing the field because of pain in said knee? Matsui is the DH, for goodness sake. Put ANYONE in there to run for him. It's not as if that would have weakened our defense in the next inning. You're going for the win right there, and you can't worry about whether you'll lose Matsui's bat two or three innings down the line. All that did was give up an out to advance nobody. Bad baseball.

Posada's home run: I'm sure by now there have been volumes written on this in the tabloids and other Web sites, so I'll just leave it at this: instant replay will overturn a call once in a blue moon, but that's it. Fair or foul, or whether home runs hit on the right side of the yellow lines in centerfield in places like Fenway or AT&T parks, where that line separates "off the tall wall" (ball's in play) from "over the small wall, and then off the big wall behind it" (home run). But they'll never overturn something like what happened yesterday. There's way too much ambiguity -- unless you put a camera on the foul pole that points straight along the wall, you'll never know who reached over the wall and where the ball was. At least not often. The Jeffrey Maier ball would have been overturned. That was 13 years ago.

Carl Pavano sure brought it yesterday, eh? Good. Proves even more what a loser he is. The guy has the talent to pitch that way when he wants to prove something to his former team and the team's fans, who have every right to be furious at him for stealing money for four years. But he doesn't care enough to bring it 35 times a year -- or in some years, AT ALL. Congratulations, Tribe fans. He's all yours. Don't get your hopes up.

Oh, one last thing. Some of you may think I'm a sellout for not adjusting my work schedule to watch the Rangers in the playoffs. Look at it this way -- and this is exactly how I'm looking at it: The money I make tonight just may get put toward tickets to the aforementioned antiseptic Gahden -- where the Rangers, if they get by the Caps, likely will begin Round Two against the Bruins. Oh, and toward a standing-room ticket to Fenway for Friday's Yankee game. Please, Joe, no Chien-Ming Wang Friday night. PLEASE!