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Diane Pucin’s live commentary on how TBS is handling the Dodgers-Phillies Game 5 telecast

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Somber souls

Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and former manager Tommy Lasorda, sitting shoulder to shoulder, looked like two lost souls in the stands. But they were dressed nicely.

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Torre does his analyst thing

Dodger manager Joe Torre said, before the start of this bottom of the third, that ‘This will be a key inning for us.’ If it is, it turned out well. Padilla had a 1-2-3 inning.

That timing thing

Reporter Craig Sager was still telling us how Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt was counseling pitcher Vicente Padilla on getting his release point corrected when a sound louder than Sager’s voice struck. It was the sound of the baseball leaving the bat of Pedro Feliz, a baseball that soon left the field. Feliz found his release point. Padilla? Not quite.

Just a little bit low...

For a two-year-old maybe. But the pitch that Chip Caray called ‘just a little bit low’ to Dodger pitcher Vicente Padilla? It was as close to being in the dirt without touching the dirt as possible.

Cliches keep on coming

Buck Martinez said, ‘You don’t have to be a rocket scientist,’ to figure out it’s wise to pitch around Ryan Howard.

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Creepy commercial DirecTV

Using the image of the late Chris Farley to try and sell your satellite television? Just kind of icky. In our house we were more horrified that David Spade would be part of the ad than interested in exploring the pluses of DirecTV. And it’s not the first time DirecTV has used a deceased actor/actress. It did the same sort of ad with Heather O’Rourke, who had been in the movie Poltergeist and uttered the famous ‘They’re heeeere’ line. She had died at the age of 12 during surgery.

While waiting for Dodgers to finish top of first...

Noticing that SEC refs who botched Florida-Arkansas game have been suspended until Nov. 14. How about umpire Tim McClelland who messed up early and often during the Angels-Yankees game? Shouldn’t he be out at least that long?

And Chip Caray’s first cliche of day

‘It’s do or die for the Dodgers in Game 5,’ says TBS play-by-play guy Chip Caray. That’s the intro? Caray even had an off day to craft his first sentence of this possibly final game of the NLCS.

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Dennis Eckersley not a fan of PitchTrax

During the pregame show Dennis Eckersley said he liked to get on an umpire’s case as much as the next guy. But the technology that gives us PitchTrax and Fox Trax, systems that claim to show where a pitched baseball crosses the plate, Eckersley said he’s not good with that. ‘I think it’s bad for the umpire, the PitchTrax,’ Eckersley said. ‘It’s not fair to them. I think that’s haywire, that PitchTrax. To me, I’m going by my eyeballs. I want to get on the umpires like anyone else but I have to cut them a break.’

That break was a little harder to cut since TBS had just finished a segment showing how badly third base umpire Tim McClelland had botched his work at third base in Tuesday’s Yankees-Angels games. As analyst David Wells harrumphed: ‘Maybe some Lasix surgery would help.’

‘How’d we get that shot?’

That’s what TBS pregame show host Ernie Johnson said when an image of Manny Ramirez (not real, no Showercam), wearing a blue head kercheif and standing in the shower came up on the screen. A little humor doesn’t hurt. Does it Dodgers fans?

You can check out Mike Penner’s live in-game updates here.

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