GAME 51: I'm on Strike

GAME 51 - May 31: Nationals 14, Astros 4

I got up early today so that I could do some gardening before the temperature hit 90. It was not pleasant; I hate hot weather. But I kept reminding myself that after a few hours of misery, I'd be able to reward myself with a cool shower, a glass of wine, and the pleasure of watching Roy Oswalt on the mound for the Astros.

I should have known that things weren't going to be hunky dory when I logged onto mlb.tv, and it told me that the game was blacked out - for me. The Astros were playing at home, but their opponents were my "local" team (the one I don't cheer for), so I wasn't allowed to watch the game online. I grumbled and clicked on the radio broadcast, which was not blacked out. After a few minutes, it occurred to me that since it was a local game, it was probably on television. What a concept: baseball on television. I never watch TV, but my husband does, so we do have one. Sure enough, the game was on TV, but I was stuck with the MASN broadcast. After an inning or so, I realized that I didn't really need to listen to the Washington broadcasters. I muted the TV, and turned on mlb.tv's Houston radio stream on my laptop.  Little problems, easy to solve. I settled in to watch the game.

The Astros had big problems, hard to solve. From the start, Oswalt was clearly unhappy with umpire Bill Hohn's pitch calling. In the third inning, after one particular strike that was called a ball, the camera caught the Wiz turning away with a kind of weird smile. Not a good kind of smile. A couple of minutes later, Oswalt was ejected, the Astros were down 4-1, and the game was on its way to complete and crazy meltdown.

I said in the title that I'm on strike, and I am. Strike 1. I'm not going to tell you how the Nationals ended up beating us by 10 runs today. You can read it on astros.com or in the Chronicle. I'm done for the day.

But you know what Scarlett said: Tomorrow is another day.