The "Outta Leftfield" Weblog


Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Phils win! Wake up! Or not

There is this unwritten personal rule that I have subscribed to for years: I like to be the first person in the ballpark and the last one to leave.
What that means is that one never leaves a ballgame early, or to translate it further, if one cannot attend the game in person, one never goes to sleep until the last out of the game has been recorded.
To have violated that rule Monday night would have meant missing Jimmy Rollins’ two-out, bottom-of-the-ninth, dramatic double in the gap that scored Eric Bruntlett and Carlos Ruiz to give the Phillies an improbable 5-4 come-from-behind victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers to take a commanding 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.
In a similar situation last year in the NLCS between the same two teams, the Phillies’ Matt Stairs hit a two-run homer off Dodgers’ closer Jonathon Broxton to give the Phils a 7-5 victory en route to what would eventually become a World Series championship.
Like Monday night, Stairs’ blast last year happened later in the evening, after everybody but me had gone to sleep at my house. When Stairs crushed a Broxton fastball and sent it deep into the Los Angeles night in 2008, I let out a yee-ha that awakened The Blonde Accountant and the kids.
I’d say I was sorry about waking everybody up, but it was a really big home run in a really big situation and by my way of thinking, nobody should have been sleeping anyway, even if it was a school night.
A similar situation occurred Monday night. Everybody but me was asleep. Same teams, big game, big situation. And the Phillies pulled it off again! Phils win! Phils win!
Remembering that my hootin’ and hollarin’ last year awakened the neighborhood and at that moment finding nobody standing upright with which to do The Happy Dance, I was as subdued as I could be laying there in bed.
My solution this year was to start tapping furiously on The Blonde Accountant’s thigh, which in our house usually means something other than, "Hey, hon, the Phillies won a big ballgame."
Her response was something akin to, “Huh?” She stirred from her slumber as the Phillies mobbed Rollins, seeing absolutely nothing of the celebration, leaned over, turned on the nightstand lamp, and said, “Goodnight.”
I had to get up, go around to her side of the bed, and turn the light off. She had no recollection of the exchange the next morning.
But there was no doubt she was right about one thing: It was a good night.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Renee Stewart said...

Do you have an email address? We need to ask you for your permission to use one of your articles in an upcoming childrens book.

October 23, 2009 at 12:10 PM  
Blogger Mike Morsch said...

I can be reached at mmorsch@montgomerynews.com.

Mike

October 26, 2009 at 10:00 AM  

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Mike Morsch has been executive editor of Montgomery Newspapers since 2003. His award-winning humor column "Outta Leftfield" has been recognized by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the Suburban Newspapers of America and the Philadelphia Press Association.

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