On the One Hand...

On the one hand, you have to love last night’s come-from-behind 6-1 White Sox win over the Blue Jays. I mean, they were down 1-0 with one out in the seventh and Andrew Vaughn facing starter Robbie Ray, who’d already struck out 13 Sox hitters. I didn’t expect Vaughn to tie the game with a homerun to right center, though I was hoping his sacrifice fly for the go-ahead run in the eighth would’ve gone a couple of feet further for a grand slam. But no sense complaining, given the results. Also, hats off to Sox starter Carlos Rodon, who gave up but one run in five innings. Rodon also yielded six hits, three of them doubles, along with two walks. Rodon managed one 1-2-3 inning and yet somehow managed to escape with minimal damage. This Toronto team can rake, as the kids like to say. On the other hand, everything that’s wrong with baseball was on full view at Guaranteed Whatever. The two teams combined for 27 strikeouts in a game that took 3:34 to play. Compare that to last night’s two NBA playoff games. Hawks-76ers clocked in at 2:27, Clippers-Jazz at 2:31. You think those games weren’t loaded down with commercials? The Bulls’ last regular-season game, against the Bucks, was done in a mere 2:12. So, a regular-season baseball game lasts an hour longer than either of two NBA playoff games on the same night. What do you think people are going to want to watch on TV, strikeouts or scoring? The Jazz came back from thirteen down at halftime to win 112-109. I know what I’d be tempted to watch.