Why does Crusty Baker continue to use Mike Lincoln for more than one inning?

Time zones are funny things. You can be eating dinner somewhere and feel like it’s lunch time in real life. If I want to watch or listen to a Reds game in real time, it has to be a day game, which is usually 8pm my time. Otherwise, I have to wait until the next morning, and unless I tiptoe around the internet, the chances of finding out the outcome before I finish the game are pretty good. Now, if I could avoid Facebook, it’d be easier, but I have to use Facebook as part of my job.

But I CAN watch. If I put it on the lowest quality and watch in the morning before all the morons start playing their Farmville and using up all the bandwidth, the internet in my office is good enough to watch, which means that for a majority of games (i.e. night games), I can see them. This makes me very happy.

However, there’s always the recognition that this already happened, and it just isn’t the same as watching a live game. That’s why I was happy to find one café with good enough internet to watch. It was a joyous Sunday evening, sitting at the bar, drinking almaza, Mike Leake pitching well, the future looking bright, and the Reds rallying in the seventh inning. I was going to make this a Sunday evening ritual.

Then they turned off the internet.

See, in Lebanon, everything is about appearance. Everything is superficial. At 10pm, glowing computer screens are no longer considered ok for the ambiance. So I can either enjoy six innings and not see the end of the game, or I can go somewhere else and listen to the whole game.

So I was watching Monday’s game this morning, ending already blown thanks to Facebook, and see that Mike Lincoln blew Cueto’s W. Lincoln pitched well for one inning, but Baker never learns. At least they managed to win this one. Not a big fan of the ninth inning drama, either. On the flip side, if I were the Marlins fan, I’d be pretty upset.