MAINE: THE WAY BASEBALL SHOULD BE

This is what I've been looking forward to since April: John Maine is the starting pitcher tonight for the Mets.

John. Freaking. Maine. Game 1. NLDS. The Team. The Time. John Maine.

One word: unfuckingbelievable.

The Maine Man is in there because Mr. Postseason Orlando "El Douche" Hernandez tore his calf running at Shea Stadium yesterday (man, they can't bulldoze that place fast enough for me) and has been SCRATCHED from the NLDS roster, and possibly the entire postseason. (He really shouldn't have followed Pedro's workout regimen.) Oliver Perez will take his place in the rotation, boasting a gaudy team leading 6.55 ERA and a fantastic 3-13 record (1-3, 6.38 with the Mets). I will now dent my skull with a fungo bat while the "Meet The Mets" song plays on an endless loop at a deafening volume.

Did I tell you I got my NLCS Game 6 tickets in the mail yesterday? WOO HOO!! Looks like I won't be needing those! Oh, and they're $110 a piece for upper deck box seats (I don't think I've spent that much on upper deck seats at Shea in my ENTIRE LIFE), with a $10 fee per ticket. This means that if they sell 50,000 tickets they still make HALF A MILLION DOLLARS PER GAME, regardless if they play it or not. I'm so glad I gave money to the Pedro Needs A New Hot Tub For His Panama Mansion Fund. What a joke.

NEW WORLD SERIES BLOGNOSTICATION: Yanks beat Padres in 5.

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As for last night's Yanks/Tigers game, I tuned into FOX for about 5 minutes and instead of baseball I got treated to gratuitous shots of Denzel Washington and other various celebs that were in the crowd. NOTE TO FOX: NO ONE GIVES A SHIT! I don't care if Donald Trump is getting a hummer from Regis Philbin, POINT YOUR CAMERAS AT THE GAME! Not even my mute button (greatest invention ever) could help me with this. For those of us who follow baseball all year and look forward to the postseason, we get rewarded with broadcasts that pander to the lowest common denominator, kissing every demographic's ass as they try to interest those who don't watch baseball all year. Awful. Get ready for 7 more years of this. I never thought I'd actually be BEGGING for a YES Network feed of this game.

I think it's time to make sports TV broadcasts more like DVDs, with selectable camera angles and commentary. If you don't like the announcing team on channel 1, switch to your local team's announcers on Channels 2 and 3. If that doesn't cut it, you can listen to Channel 4, where comedians will give you an R-rated MST3K-like cavalade of sports jokes. It's the best idea I could think of to get the annoying smug voice of Joe Buck out of my ears.

One other question: why do they show the Yankees during every weekday primetime slot? And don't tell me that it's because New York is the biggest market, because NEW YORK is playing LOS ANGELES today, the two biggest markets on the PLANET, and it's on at 4 PM ET. The Yanks? They're on at 8, of course. Friday? 8 PM! Do you see a pattern here? Oh that's okay, I haven't seen the A's play once this year, why should I expect to see them in the playoffs?