Love versus Hate, 7th inning stretch
September 24, 2009
With Steve Staggs presiding over the latest increment of action in the slowest baseball game, real or imaginary, ever enacted, Hate has gone down without scoring in the top of the seventh inning, leaving the score deadlocked at 5–5. The game, which began a year and a half ago and which sped along through the first few innings due to a backlog of game pieces on the backs of 1978 cards I’d already written by that time, has long since slowed to the pace of continental plates shifting. We may not find out if Love is stronger than Hate until I’m too old and feeble to remember why I started playing the game in the first place, unless I get hit by a bus or crushed by a falling piano, in which case the game will have to be considered a rain-shortened affair or something, which right now, the score knotted, would leave everything completely inconclusive.
Anyway, I thought I’d take a moment and consider the action thus far, and stretch, and maybe go take a leak, get a beer, sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” etc. I wanted to pass along an internet radio broadcast of the first few innings of the fake game, performed hilariously by Jere (aka gedmaniac) of A Red Sox Fan from Pinstripes Territory, but the broadcast on YouCastr seems to be no longer available. So, unless that can somehow be resurrected, a visit to the original, ongoing post for the game will have to suffice for anyone curious to see what’s happened so far (and why I started the game in the first place). But if you don’t feel like the long version, here’s the line score and the heroes thus far:
123 456 789 r h e
HATE 021 101 0 5 12 0
LOVE 200 300 5 9 0
Hate heroes
Garry Templeton (2-run HR)
Darrell Evans (RBI single)
Brian Downing (RBI single)
Alan Ashby (solo HR)
Love heroes
Pete LaCock (leadoff triple, run scored)
Len Randle (RBI double)
Bill Buckner (RBI single)
Jim Colborn (3-run HR)
Cardboard Gods 
I like the picture. That’s from “Do The Right Thing”, right?? It’s been a loooooooooong time since I’ve seen that flick.
Right, that’s Radio Raheem in the midst of Spike Lee’s nod to Robert Mitchum’s character in Night of the Hunter.
I think I speak for many of us when I say that my life will be devoid of any meaning at all until we know who wins this game. I am not joking.
I’ve been oddly interested to see how this games goes, too. At first it looked like it would have way too much offense, but it seems to have settled down, restoring my faith in 1978 Topps replays.
It’s pretty high-scoring so far, but it could have been even moreso. There’ve been 17 men left on base throughout the first 6.5 innings. Hate really could have put Love in a hole in the third but couldn’t really cash in with the bases loaded and just one out.
YouCastr became focused on youth sports and their major site overhaul meant all the old files went away. They did give me plenty of warning, but I hardly had space for all the broadcasts I did. I think I saved maybe one ‘cast, but my broadcast (as Castiglione and Trupiano) of the Love vs. Hate game now lives only in our minds. (Maybe I’ll just wait till it ends and announce the whole game over again.)