How I spent my Thursday night ... and enjoyed it
The week of Major league Baseball's all-star break probably is the worst for a "staycation."
Outside of the all-star game, I usually find nothing interesting at night on the 200 or so channels on my cable television package from Monday through Thursday of this week. Last night, while my wife and youngest son were binge watching "Practical Jokers," I decided to boot the old desktop computer and watch some baseball, the independent variety.
The American Association and Can-Am League both do a great job of live streaming games, unlike the Wild Things' web streams that look like they are produced by a second grader. I went to the American Association site thinking maybe former Wild Things pitcher Shawn Blackwell might be on the mound for Sioux Falls at St. Paul. No such luck. Blackwell wasn't pitching.
For some reason I still can't explain, I visited the Can-Am homepage and clicked on a game between the New Jersey Jackals and Rockland Boulders. Rockland was up 3-0 in the sixth inning and who is on the mound for the Boulders? Former Wild Things relief pitcher Pat Butler. I decided to watch half an inning and saw New Jersey score six runs, five charged to Butler.
That was all I could take from that game, so I went into the family room and began watching "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" for about the 10th time in my life. By the way, doesn't an aging Mick Jagger now look like Don Knotts circa 1966?
During a commercial break about 40 minutes later, I returned to my computer and realized that I had left the live streaming of that Jackals-Boulders game running on the screen. The next pitch I see, Marcus Nidiffer, a catcher for Rockland who once played for Wild Things manager Gregg Langbehn at Traverse City, gets plunked by a pitch. That's when all the fun started. Benches emptied. Rockland comes back from down 8-3 in the ninth to force extra innings, having the potential winning run thrown out at the plate. Then some ejections. Then in the top of the 10th, a person in a red jersey (at the time I thought it was a bat boy) goes running behind home plate just as the inning is about to start. It's the New Jersey pitcher who plunked Nidiffer charging the Rockland dugout.
Though football season doesn't start for a few weeks, our old friend Pat Butler makes the first tackle of the 2016 season as benches empty again. There are more ejections, though no punches are thrown.
The crazy thing about the ejections is, the booted players from New Jersey must walk through the seating area to get to the visitor's clubhouse. That, obviously, is not a good situation but it made for some great entertainment.
In short, it was a fun Thursday night watching the shenanigans going on in another independent league. Below is an entertaining 10-minute video of the highlights/lowlights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da5Jr28tT0Y&feature=youtu.be
Outside of the all-star game, I usually find nothing interesting at night on the 200 or so channels on my cable television package from Monday through Thursday of this week. Last night, while my wife and youngest son were binge watching "Practical Jokers," I decided to boot the old desktop computer and watch some baseball, the independent variety.
The American Association and Can-Am League both do a great job of live streaming games, unlike the Wild Things' web streams that look like they are produced by a second grader. I went to the American Association site thinking maybe former Wild Things pitcher Shawn Blackwell might be on the mound for Sioux Falls at St. Paul. No such luck. Blackwell wasn't pitching.
For some reason I still can't explain, I visited the Can-Am homepage and clicked on a game between the New Jersey Jackals and Rockland Boulders. Rockland was up 3-0 in the sixth inning and who is on the mound for the Boulders? Former Wild Things relief pitcher Pat Butler. I decided to watch half an inning and saw New Jersey score six runs, five charged to Butler.
That was all I could take from that game, so I went into the family room and began watching "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" for about the 10th time in my life. By the way, doesn't an aging Mick Jagger now look like Don Knotts circa 1966?
During a commercial break about 40 minutes later, I returned to my computer and realized that I had left the live streaming of that Jackals-Boulders game running on the screen. The next pitch I see, Marcus Nidiffer, a catcher for Rockland who once played for Wild Things manager Gregg Langbehn at Traverse City, gets plunked by a pitch. That's when all the fun started. Benches emptied. Rockland comes back from down 8-3 in the ninth to force extra innings, having the potential winning run thrown out at the plate. Then some ejections. Then in the top of the 10th, a person in a red jersey (at the time I thought it was a bat boy) goes running behind home plate just as the inning is about to start. It's the New Jersey pitcher who plunked Nidiffer charging the Rockland dugout.
Though football season doesn't start for a few weeks, our old friend Pat Butler makes the first tackle of the 2016 season as benches empty again. There are more ejections, though no punches are thrown.
The crazy thing about the ejections is, the booted players from New Jersey must walk through the seating area to get to the visitor's clubhouse. That, obviously, is not a good situation but it made for some great entertainment.
In short, it was a fun Thursday night watching the shenanigans going on in another independent league. Below is an entertaining 10-minute video of the highlights/lowlights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da5Jr28tT0Y&feature=youtu.be
posted by Chris Dugan at
1:26 PM
2 Comments:
Come on Dugan... it's IMpractical Jokers. And it's hilarious.
Hey Stu, how's that softball team doing?
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