Saturday Night Playoff Baseball Fever

A meteor did not land on Fenway Park Friday, meaning that the Rays and Red Sox survive to play a second game of their Division Series. There is little way to feel good about rooting for either one of these teams, with the Rays having assorted unsavory characters on an actual, bad-human-beings level and the Red Sox being, well, you know.

In later action, Oakland looks to salvage a game in its own decrepit stadium against Detroit. There will hopefully not be any kind of sewage overflow, either metaphorical or literal, during the course of the game or its immediate aftermath. Things like that have been known to happen in the mausoleum that houses that low-budget franchise. Maybe in Moneyball II, Billy Beane can trade a player and receive enough cash from another team to get some plumbing work done in the Colosseum.

After a largely uninteresting opening slate of games in these playoff series, the disinterested fan has little to root for other than that it won't be a blowout - unless you want to root for a blowout so you have an excuse to do something better with your night.

Here's something we can all root for: that TBS, which will be airing both of today's games, can actually figure out basic aspects of broadcasting a baseball game such as how to have cameras follow the ball, how to have cameras that stay still, and how to have camera angles that aren't completely stupid. I'm not holding my breath and you shouldn't either.